20 Horror Movie Endings That Are Practically Perfect
14. Rosemary's Baby - The Antichrist
Rosemary's Baby triumphs as an exemplary psychological horror, and one of the key things that makes it so successful is its ambiguity. Are the people around the pregnant Rosemary (Mia Farrow) actually trying to steal her baby, or is she going insane? Well, as we only learn at the end, she most definitely isn't. This cold, hard truth is conveyed in the most brutal way by its ruthless ending that confirms Rosemary's suspicions while also shattering her world forever.
Some time after being told that she gave birth to a stillborn baby, Rosemary hears an infant crying and makes her way into a hidden room where she finds the members of the coven surrounding a cradle containing her child. She's horrified when she looks at her child; we never see him, but Farrow's amazing acting tells us all we need to know. As it turns out, all of her suspicions about her neighbours were completely correct, and when she had a 'nightmare' about being impregnated by a demon, that was actually real. According to the coven, she has just given birth to the Antichrist.
As if this wasn't already grim enough, it also turns out that her own husband (John Cassavetes) had sold her out to the coven in exchange for them helping his acting career; what a scumbag. It's the perfect payoff to this story, and even though it'll probably ruin your day, it's hard not to love this conclusion wholeheartedly.