20 Horror Movie Endings Way Worse Than You Think
15. The Vanishing
The masterful 1988 horror-thriller The Vanishing concludes with poor, tortured Rex (Gene Bervoets) finally learning what happened to his disappeared girlfriend Saskia (Johanna ter Steege), but only by agreeing to experience precisely what she did, courtesy of the man responsible, the psychopathic Raymond (Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu).
After Rex willingly consumes drugged coffee, he wakes up buried alive, with the final scene showing Raymond relaxing at his home with his wife and kids.
This is so far beyond a garden variety "the bad guy wins" ending, because it leaves two terrifying possibilities wide open for Raymond.
One, it's entirely possible that, after killing Saskia and Rex, he gets the taste for murder and becomes an outright serial killer.
But the other, perhaps even more unnerving suggestion is that Raymond has satisfied his morbid curiosity and will now go back to living a normal life, his crimes never being known even to those closest to him.