10 Horror Films That Could Have Been Amazing if the Ending Hadn’t Messed It Up
Gonna do something a bit different and offer up a top ten list. It was fun to make, so enjoy. There are spoilers, so if you haven’t seen the film, maybe don’t read it if you plan to.
- Mama (2013)
Visually, this movie is an absolute delight. The cinematography is on point, and the lighting sets a decidedly spooky mood. Even the story is strong, which is hard to find in horror a lot of the time. Then I actually see Mama, and she is a train wreck. All the spooky is gone from the moment she enters the screen. At this point I just want the movie to end so that I can look back on all that scary stuff we saw just a little bit ago. Instead, we continue on to a sad scene on a cliff, where little children cry and make us sad. They cry for Mama, who until now was a monster scaring the tar out of them. Nothing ruins a good horror movie faster than an ending full of sappy emotion. I want to be scared, not depressed!
2. The Boy (2016)
Ok, maybe this movie never actually had a chance to be amazing, but it tried a little harder than you may expect from a movie about a creepy doll. Scary dolls are nearly over-used in horror, but The Boy actual had a fairly unique premise. What is really going on with that doll? It seemed obvious that a demonic force was left behind with the death of a child, and we wanted that ghost to make us shiver. Then, we find out the truth as a fully grown man steps out of a wall, and we discover that the boy never died. The doll never moved. The doll was only a doll. In reality there was just a dude living in the walls, getting his jollies by moving objects around when no one was looking. I paid for creepy dolls, and what I got was a bum still living with his parents.
3. Signs (2002)
M. Night Shyamalan is a divisive filmmaker. Personally I think he is a whole bucket of bullshit. Not many people will say that The Sixth Sense was a bad movie, but each subsequent entry into Shyamalan’s filmography can be hotly debated. With Signs, we are meant to experience an alien invasion through the eyes of farmers that wouldn’t exactly be all that caught up on current events. If we can assume a full scale invasion is taking place, this is just the tiniest little part of it that we get to see. The pacing, as with many M. Night films, is atrocious, but still - I need to see the twist! And what was I treated with? The Grinch that stole Christmas. Any tension that may have been building in this slow drawl of a movie was instantaneously lost when I found out that the aliens are really just out to ruin the day for all the Whos in Whoville.
4. Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge (1985)
Oh what a wonderful, homoerotic romp this was. Never mind the acting because who cares about acting in a horror flick? Forget about the giant plot holes. Just because Freddy can somehow jump out into a party of teenagers, completely breaking the nightmare rules set forth for his very existence, doesn’t make us balk a bit. This is because, rules or not, as soon as he says, “You are all my children now,” I am covered in goosebumps. Maybe not from fright, but just from the sheer joy of it all. Then we get to the end, in which we finally see the, clearly gay, protagonist saved from oblivion by the love of a girl. Caugh. Nothing can ruin a good slasher flick faster than the ‘ol, “Love conquers evil” ending.
5. It (1990)
Man that clown is creepy. We scream at the television, “But I don’t want to float!” We shudder as Pennywise does one creepy thing after another to those kids — and the judge from Night Court. Tim Curry was the perfect fit for Stephen King’s painted hell clown. Just his voice alone makes us shake in our boots. We got to imagine what it would be like if a frightening, snaggle-toothed clown made all of our own worst nightmares come true. Then, after watching for nearly three hours, we find out the truth. Pennywise is really just some sort of crab-spider living in a cave. A crab-spider that can be killed by a rock as long as you believe it can. Three hours (4 with commercials). I hope you at least didn’t read the book to find this out; that thing is a whopper.
6. Friday the 13th part VII: The New Blood (1988)
It is hard to expect much from a franchise by the time it has reached its seventh installment, but this one was actually not too bad at all. The concept of having a telekinetic protagonist take on Jason is both ludicrous and complete genius. How better to actually do some real damage to the killer that can’t be killed? We are treated to a few deaths that aren’t the best of the series, but certainly not the worst, but when we finally get to the end, we couldn’t be more ready for the showdown. Then the girl uses her powers to bring her father up from the water and drag Jason back down into the lake. Has nobody realized yet that the Lake can’t contain this guy? Why didn’t you psychically twist his head off? Why not sever every part of him and fling them to the ends of the Earth? You’ve got powers girl, and you decide to use them to drown a man that can’t be drowned. Sure, maybe she didn’t know. Maybe she thought it was the best possible scenario. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t completely ruin the entire movie.
7. The Descent (2005)
The Descent is one of the best horror flicks to come out in the last 20 years. It’s crazy claustrophobic cacophony of chills scared us to our very core. However, this list is dealing with endings, and that is where the film went wrong. Or should I say, that is where America went wrong. Overseas audiences were treated with an amazing ending that saw the protagonist escape the cave and see the sun again, only to snap out of it and realize it was nothing but a hallucination. She was still trapped in that hell pit, and she was never getting out (until the sequel of course). For some reason, the American version decided to drop the hallucination part, and just end with her escaping. I guess the studios figured that America had simply been through enough, and needed something happy in their lives.
8. The Mist (2007)
This one is a classic when referring to endings. I’ve debated the virtues of the end with so many people it isn’t even funny. The bulk of the film itself is actually fairly good. Unlike many “end of the world scenario” films, this one actually makes us feel like the characters are doing basically the same things we would. They are confused and scared, but a few oddballs aside, are doing the best they can to make it through. Thomas Jane and friends work their way through one problematic situation after another, until finally they are in a vehicle and hopefully headed away from danger. Then they run out of gas. A common problem for any would-be survivor of the apocalypse. But, what do they do? Do they search for another car, or gas, or even walk a little bit? No. Fearless leader Thomas Jane decides that running out of gas is just one too many problematic situations to deal with, and the only recourse now is to simply shoot everyone in the head. Then he doesn’t even get that right.
9. House on Haunted Hill (1999)
Ok, so maybe this is another one that wouldn’t have been amazing either, but the ending makes this remake completely unwatchable. The haunted house trope in horror is classic. Many of the scariest movies out there are simply about ghosts in a house. Though many of these movies suffer from over-explanation that totally kills the mood, House on Haunted Hill makes a far bigger mistake. After a whole movie of trying to build up tension to the grand evil that would consume the cast, we find that said evil is a cloud. A swirly black cloud of doom. Not a single thing about CGI black mist is scary, making the scariest thing in this bore, Chris Kattan.
10. Jeepers Creepers (2001)
And finally I come to the last on my list, and it is something special. I will be playing fast and loose with the term “ending” with this one. I can still remember sitting in the theater, watching two young white people have a boring conversation in a car, and suddenly realizing, “hey that car behind them is coming up pretty fast.” That’s when we get to see the most frightening truck ever caught on film barrel into view, and we are scared for those young white people. I mean, really scared. Those kids are toast! The entire first scene of this movie is amazing….and here is where the term “ending” gets skewed, as the entire rest of the film is bonkers. Nothing is good about the remainder of the film. Nothing. Why did you go down that hole? Idiots! This one should have been a short film called Devil Truck, and it would have won all the awards. All of them. Instead we have yet another forgettable fucking horror show.
