20 Horror Movie Endings That Are Practically Perfect

And finally, we've got the denouement to Seven, a finale so exceptional that you'll wish you could forget it so that you could experience it for the first time anew.

David Fincher's masterpiece sees veteran detective William Somerset (Morgan Freeman) and brash rookie David Mills (Brad Pitt) hunting for a monstrous serial killer who's basing his killings on the Seven Deadly Sins. After several days, John Doe (Kevin Spacey) inexplicably hands himself in and offers to take Somerset and Mills out into the desert, where they'll find the bodies of his last two victims. They find something more terrible than they - or the audience, for that matter - could've imagined.

Once they arrive, the severed head of Mills' wife Tracy (Gwyneth Paltrow) is delivered to them, and Doe successfully goads Mills into shooting him dead, with this final death representing 'Wrath', destroying an innocent man and completing John's masterpiece of murder. Still, his victory is not absolute, for Somerset decides to stay with the police after all and says in voiceover: "Ernest Hemingway once wrote: 'The world is a fine place, and worth fighting for.' I agree with the second part."

Everything about this sequence is amazing. The harrowing twists, David Fincher's note-perfect directing, the superb performances, and, of course, that goosebump-inducing music from Howard Shore. Horrifying and chill-inducing yet counterbalanced by that gentle undercurrent of hope, this might just be the best horror movie ending of all freaking time.