20 Horror Movie Endings Way Worse Than You Think

Considering the very nature of the horror genre, it's hardly surprising when a horror film ends on a down note, where even if the protagonist makes it to the end in one piece, they've gone through so much trauma and lost so much that it can't in any way be called a happy ending.

And this is usually obvious enough to the audience, but what about those times when things are actually even worse than they immediately seem?

Sometimes it's tough not to think about what life looks like for the remaining characters after the end credits roll - what sort of existence are they actually going to have on the other side?

And even so, when you consider where things were heading in the story's final moments, things might actually be way, way worse than you actually thought.

That's absolutely the case with these 20 horror movie endings, which weren't merely content to put their characters through the wringer but laid out one hell of a tortured path ahead.

We can only hope that things went another way, but it sure doesn't look good...

You're Next concludes with undeniable "Oh you're so screwed!" vibes for its protagonist, but it's actually even worse than that.

After Erin (Sharni Vinson) fends off the masked home invaders and everyone else who was in on the scheme - including her own boyfriend Crispian (A. J. Bowen) - she's shot in the shoulder by a cop who believes her to be the aggressor.

At that moment the cop enters the house, where in a darkly comedic ending he's brutally killed by a trap Erin set to take on the attackers.

This is obviously an extremely bad outcome for Erin, who is likely to be blamed for at least the cop's death, if not also all the other dead bodies in the house.

But in an interview last year, writer Simon Barrett revealed his original plot for You're Next 2. 

Yes, Erin would've been blamed for all the deaths and sent to prison, and while being transferred in a prison transport, she would've been attacked by Lamb Mask (L.C. Holt), who survived being stabbed by Erin in the first film.

Basically, Erin and the various prisoners she's chained to would end up retreating to a meth lab where they'd set booby tracks to ward off their attackers.

As a sequel, that actually sounds pretty awesome, but for Erin it just sounds like another round of fresh hell, especially as this is highly unlikely to result in her conviction being overturned.