20 Horror Movie Endings That Are Practically Perfect
2. Don't Look Now - John's Death
Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now revolves around John and Laura Baxter (Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie), whose daughter recently drowned. The grieving parents go to Venice to renovate an old church, and they meet a clairvoyant who warns them they're in danger, a warning John firmly dismisses. However, he soon begins to experience mysterious visions of his own.
The picture culminates with a final scene that will genuinely traumatize you; not just because it comes right out of left-field, but because it is, in fact, heavily foreshadowed. Tragically, all of that foreshadowing only makes sense right before John is murdered.
A childlike figure in red wandering the canals, blood staining a photograph, a premonition of Laura in a funeral procession, the hints are there. Unfortunately, John's rigid rationality and failure to process his own grief spell his doom, and when he sees the little figure in red heading into an abandoned building, he excitedly follows her, believing it's his daughter. In fact, it's a hideous female dwarf (Adelina Poerio) who's evidently the serial killer that has been stalking Venice throughout John's time there.
With a horrible smile, she approaches the bewildered John and slices his throat open, closing the loop and concluding his story the only way it was ever going to end, all while Roeg deploys the same brilliant visuals and ingenious, Oscar-worthy editing he uses throughout the rest of this masterpiece. He crafts this death scene as a beautiful, haunting nightmare that'll shatter your nerves and break your heart.