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These woeful horror movies went totally off the rails at the end.
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00:00There are so many horror movies being released every single week that there are always going to be some sure
00:05duds among the bunch.
00:06And it's fair to say that the vast majority of them simply end up being forgotten in mere days.
00:11But sometimes an awful horror movie can serve up an ending so out there, so unhinged, so defiantly WTF,
00:19that it ensures the film as a whole can't be banished from existence quite so easily.
00:24So with that in mind, I'm Ellie for WhatCulture and let's take a look at these terrible horror movies with
00:29insane endings.
00:32Starting with I Still Know What You Did Last Summer
00:34I Still Know What You Did Last Summer is bad enough that it makes the mediocre yet iconic original seem
00:41genuinely great by comparison.
00:43Living down to just about every expectation of a slasher sequel released barely a year after the first,
00:48this is largely a ridiculous, in a bad way retread that brings virtually nothing fresh or interesting to the table.
00:55But what about the final twist, huh?
00:57In the climax, we learn that the killer fisherman is being aided by Julie James' college friend, Will Benson.
01:04More to the point, there was a massive clue hidden in plain sight,
01:08given that Will Benson is Will Ben's son.
01:12As in the son of Ben Willis, the hook-wielding fisherman himself.
01:15By any conventional metric, it's a woeful twist,
01:18the sort that your six-year-old nephew might come up with while goofing around.
01:22Yet it's so hilariously dumb that in the very least, it ends the story on a charmingly campy note.
01:28Dead Silence
01:29James Wan's Dead Silence is a rather naff, crusty, supernatural horror flick for the most part,
01:36defined by uninteresting characters, risible dialogue, and a patent lack of scares.
01:41But if nothing else, one certainly knows how to send audiences home reeling from a totally bonkers ending,
01:48and Dead Silence is no exception.
01:50In the climactic montage, it's revealed that protagonist Jamie's wheelchair-bound father, Edward,
01:55has actually been dead for the entire movie.
01:58While the audience is initially led to believe that Edward has been paralysed by a stroke,
02:02the closing twist reveals that he's a human puppet being secretly puppeteered by his wife, Ella.
02:07She had his body hollowed out and installed a rod inside it, allowing her to operate him by standing at
02:14his side.
02:14As for the voice?
02:15It's just Ella, slyly throwing her voice to speak for Edward and sound like an old man.
02:20Yeah, sure, why not?
02:22This is without even getting to the fact that Ella herself is possessed by vengeful ventriloquist Mary Shaw,
02:27in case the whole human puppet reveal somehow wasn't crazy enough for you.
02:31Ah, never change, James.
02:33Rat's Night of Terror
02:35Rat's Night of Terror delivers exactly what it promises on the tin,
02:39a B-movie about genetically mutated killer rats which terrorised the denizens of a post-apocalyptic world.
02:45While it's ripe for some campy laughs courtesy of its atrocious English dub,
02:50it is an Italian production after all, and generally basement low production values,
02:54it also would have probably been forgotten in short order,
02:57if not for its completely deranged final scene.
03:00At the very end, the remaining survivors are saved from the pursuing rats by a group of apparent humans in
03:06hazmat suits,
03:07only for one of them to remove their gas mask to reveal that they're actually a fleet of humanoid rats.
03:12We and the movie's characters are given about 10 seconds to reflect on this insane revelation,
03:17before the credits abruptly roll, ensuring no further elaboration is given.
03:22In the very least, this ending ensured that nobody will ever quite fully forget about Rat's Night of Terror.
03:27The Devil Inside
03:29Were it not for its totally mind-boggling ending,
03:33The Devil Inside would have been swiftly ignored as the snoozily generic found-footage exorcist flick it otherwise was.
03:39But in 2025, it's still somewhat remembered for a final scene, or rather, non-scene,
03:45that left millions angrily leaving the cinema back in 2012.
03:49At the end of the movie, the central characters are killed in a car accident,
03:53while the possessed Isabella flees into the night to parts unknown.
03:56A title card is then displayed, which states that the case is still unsolved,
04:01before players are pointed to a website for more information on the current investigation.
04:06To end the film so abruptly and then direct the audience to a website was an infuriatingly cheeky move,
04:12made all the worse given that Paramount only hosted the website for a few years,
04:16meaning the website now leads to nothing.
04:18That such a craven anti-ending was ever rubber-stamped by a major movie studio is astounding, quite honestly.
04:25Jason Goes to Hell The Final Friday
04:28It's not unfair to say that by its ninth entry, Friday the 13th was in full-on franchise zombie mode.
04:35Because why else would the film take the bold, misguided swing of having Jason Voorhees' spirit possess other people?
04:42Even beyond the general lack of traditional Jason throughout the film,
04:46Jason Goes to Hell is an abject train wreck.
04:49The alterations to Jason's mythology make no sense, the dialogue is terrible,
04:53and it for some reason takes itself dead seriously.
04:56But Jason Goes to Hell does get a few begrudging points for a final 15 seconds
05:00that made just about everyone watching perk up.
05:03After Jason is indeed dragged to hell, his mask is left beyond,
05:07and suddenly pulled into hell by the unmistakable clawed glove of one Freddy Krueger from A Nightmare on Elm Street.
05:14Considering horror fans had long been clamouring for a Freddy vs. Jason movie,
05:18this seemed to be an emphatic tease that it was definitely in the works.
05:22And while Freddy vs. Jason did eventually happen,
05:25it didn't release until almost exactly 10 years to the day that Jason Goes to Hell came out.
05:31Dracula 2000 has largely been confined to the trash can of history,
05:38a goofy relic of the fresh nonsense Hollywood thought horror fans actually wanted to see at the turn of the
05:43millennium.
05:44In addition to its woeful script and direction,
05:47it's also toe-curlingly matrix-coded from start to finish,
05:51as if the 2000 of its title didn't already date it badly enough.
05:55But credit where it's due, the junkie vampire flick does stumble over one legitimately compelling idea near the end,
06:01where it's revealed that Dracula is actually Judas Iscariot,
06:05who has been cursed to live as a vamp as penance for killing Jesus.
06:09Now, nobody's saying that this twist is massively well thought out,
06:12but it does make the prospect of a rewatch more enticing.
06:15That said, one might keenly wager that nobody outside of the filmmakers
06:18has ever bothered to watch Dracula 2000 more than once.
06:21It's yet further proof, though, that even dreadful movies can get things right on occasion.
06:27Under Paris
06:28Most post-Jaws shark movies have the good sense not to take themselves too seriously.
06:33And then there's last year's Under Paris,
06:35which, despite revolving around the absurd premise of a giant shark terrorising the French capital,
06:40unfolds with a generally stone-faced solemnity.
06:43The first half in particular is a total bore,
06:46unaided by an assembly of coma-inducingly dull central characters
06:49and a disappointing lack of shark mayhem.
06:52But Under Paris' finale is such a wild surprise
06:55that it almost saves the entire Sori enterprise.
06:58Almost.
06:58At the end of the movie,
06:59researcher protagonist Sophia plots to lure the sharks into a trap where they'll be blown up,
07:04but it swiftly goes to hell in a handbasket.
07:07The military decides to fire indiscriminately at the mother shark,
07:11Lilith, in the Seine,
07:12causing some of the bullets to strike unexploded bombs,
07:15which have been sitting at the bottom of the river since World War II.
07:18This triggers a series of explosions,
07:20destroying all neighbouring bridges and turning central Paris into a flooded hellhole.
07:24In the film's final moments,
07:25Sophia and Diva Adil are left floating on debris while hungry sharks encircle them.
07:31Oh, and the sharks have now spread to all the major river cities worldwide,
07:35making it a global epidemic.
07:36Despite being mostly awful,
07:38Under Paris performed well enough on Netflix
07:40that the sequel, teased by the insane ending,
07:42is actually going to happen.
07:44Halloween 4 The Return of Michael Myers
07:47Now, to be totally fair to Halloween 4 The Return of Michael Myers,
07:51it certainly isn't the worst Halloween movie,
07:53and it certainly has a passionate contingent of fans who will defend it at every turn.
07:58But at the same time,
07:59despite some slivers of atmosphere,
08:01it's an airy, dull sequel that largely coasts on the fact
08:05that Michael Myers is actually in it this time,
08:07after infamously sitting out the wildly divisive Halloween 3 Season of the Witch.
08:12Yet Halloween 4 arrives at an ending so brilliantly unhinged,
08:16you might wish it was attached to a much better film.
08:18After Michael is apparently defeated yet again,
08:21there's an extra final twist.
08:22Myers' niece, Jamie Lloyd,
08:24stabs her foster mother Darlene apparently to death.
08:28The implication is clear,
08:29that Jamie has inherited Michael's penchant for murder,
08:32seemingly setting Jamie up to become the new shape in future entries.
08:36It was one hell of a ballsy idea,
08:38albeit one that was sadly ignored by Halloween 5,
08:41which more or less retconned that ending by revealing that Darlene survived,
08:45and Jamie was in no way becoming the next Michael.
08:48The Boy
08:492016's The Boy is an aggressively unremarkable film, for the most part.
08:54One in which a nanny, Greta, is employed to care for Brahms,
08:57a doll which an elderly couple uses as a stand-in for their late son.
09:01For most of the movie,
09:02we're led to believe that the doll is possessed by the soul of the late child,
09:06and honestly, it all feels pretty ho-hum and played out.
09:09But then comes the bombshell of a rug pull at the end,
09:11that Brahms actually isn't dead at all,
09:14nor is the doll actually possessed.
09:16Instead, the real, adult Brahms has been living in the walls of his family's mansion the entire time,
09:22and wears a doll's mask over his face because,
09:25well, reasons.
09:26This leads to a climax in which Greta appears to kill Brahms,
09:29but of course, things are left just open enough for a sequel.
09:32A sequel which bafflingly returned to the whole possessed doll gimmick,
09:35and more or less forgot about adult flesh-and-blood Brahms.
09:39Megan is Missing
09:40Despite releasing back in 2011,
09:43found footage film Megan is Missing became a viral phenomenon on TikTok in 2020.
09:48And though it gets a few points for its sheer, unrelenting boldness,
09:51its lingering, brutal depictions of sexual assault
09:54can't help but make it feel like sleazy exploitation.
09:58Director Michael Goy does manage to serve up one genuinely effective,
10:02horrifying image in the climax, though,
10:04when sadistic kidnapper and abuser Josh makes protagonist Amy open up a barrel,
10:09revealing the rotting corpse of her missing best friend, Megan.
10:12The brief visage of Megan's dead, piercing eyes is one that'll stick with you,
10:17and because that's not soul-shaking enough,
10:19Josh then forces Amy to get in the barrel with the corpse,
10:21which he subsequently buries in the forest.
10:23So, Megan and Amy are both killed,
10:25and their murderer seems to get away with it scot-free.
10:27It's about as sour as movie endings come,
10:30but it is absolutely unforgettable in its own twisted, sickening way.
10:34Saw 3D The Final Chapter
10:36Saw 3D The Final Chapter was a calamitously disappointing conclusion to the main Saw franchise,
10:43defined by its rushed storytelling, underwhelming traps, and horrendously ugly visuals.
10:48As tired as Saw felt by its seventh entry,
10:51the filmmakers did at least wrap things up
10:53by finally pulling the trigger on the series' most widespread fan theory,
10:57that Dr. Lawrence Gordon, from the original movie,
11:00was now secretly carrying on John Kramer, aka Jigsaw's legacy.
11:04Gordon has a cameo earlier in the film as a member of a Jigsaw support group,
11:08and then in the bonkers climax,
11:10he's revealed to have been working as Jigsaw's last apprentice standing.
11:14His final task?
11:15To kidnap the current Jigsaw, Detective Hoffman,
11:18and leave him to rot in the iconic original Saw bathroom
11:21in the event that anything happens to Kramer's ex-wife, Jill,
11:24who Hoffman does indeed kill.
11:26It's pure, shameless, scarcely comprehensible fan service.
11:30And yet, coming at the end of such a strangely dull film,
11:33it transcended to a level of glorious nonsense.
11:36The Open House
11:38Netflix's 2018 horror film The Open House
11:41is an overpowering bore for about 98.9% of its runtime,
11:45a low-energy slog revolving around Logan and his mother Naomi
11:49as they experience strange phenomena in their new home.
11:52But things certainly ramp up for the finale,
11:54where Logan and Naomi learn firsthand
11:56that they're actually being terrorised by an unidentified man
12:00who has broken into their house.
12:02In the final confrontation,
12:03Logan ends up accidentally stabbing his mother to death
12:06after mistaking her for the intruder,
12:08before the intruder strangles Logan to death
12:10and heads off to another open house to do the same thing.
12:13The End
12:14It's an ending that offers no satisfaction whatsoever.
12:17The protagonists die miserably,
12:18the villain gets away with it,
12:19and we don't even find out who the hell the guy was.
12:22It feels wholly contemptuous of the audience
12:25in a way that few endings are,
12:26as if the filmmakers are laughing at every single one of us
12:29for expecting any sort of catharsis
12:31or even basic explanation.
12:33Wrong Turn 5 Bloodlines
12:35In fairness, nobody was expecting anything good
12:39from the Wrong Turn franchise by its fifth entry.
12:41But even so, Wrong Turn 5 Bloodlines
12:44was the cinematic equivalent of scraping the bottom of the barrel,
12:47tipping said barrel upside down,
12:49and then violently shaking it to see
12:50what scattered detritus crumbled out.
12:52Those who sit through this mostly tedious,
12:54played-out slasher exercise
12:56will at least be rewarded
12:57with a jolting, attention-grabbing ending,
13:00where our apparent final girl, Lita,
13:02has her eyes stabbed out by cannibal grandpa Maynard.
13:05And because that's not bad enough,
13:07we then see her get bundled into a car
13:09and driven off with Maynard's grandsons,
13:11nauseating implications of which speak for themselves.
13:14There's nothing wrong with a bleak ending,
13:15but this is pretty much mean-spirited
13:17to the point of self-parody,
13:19where after watching our protagonists
13:20get put through the ringer for 90 minutes,
13:23they're finished off in the most depressing
13:24and sadistic way imaginable.
13:25In the very least, it goes pretty hard
13:28for the standards of a low-budget
13:29straight-to-video slasher sequel.
13:31Texas Chainsaw Massacre
13:33The most recent Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie
13:36was quietly dropped onto Netflix in 2022,
13:39and to the surprise of Not A Single Soul,
13:41was pretty damn awful.
13:42Apart from some brutal death scenes,
13:44the entire excursion seemed to be conceived
13:46with an overpowering disdain for young people,
13:49given that the film goes out of its way to mock Gen Z,
13:51even featuring a sequence where Leatherface
13:53kills a bus full of folk attempting to cancel him.
13:56It's also got a gracelessly executed
13:59school shooting subplot,
14:00and worse still, totally bungles the return
14:03of original franchise heroine Sally Hardesty.
14:06But the final scene isn't easy to shake,
14:08that's for sure.
14:09Just as sisters Leela and Melody
14:11appear to have killed Leatherface,
14:13they prepare to drive away,
14:14only for him to re-emerge,
14:16drag Melody out of the car,
14:17and decapitate her with his trusty chainsaw.
14:20The shot of Melody's death,
14:21capturing her head removal without any sort
14:24of compassionate cutaway,
14:25is horrifically brutal.
14:27Far from the tendency for horror films
14:28to depict the deaths of good characters
14:30a little more tactfully.
14:32Afraid
14:33With AI being one of the big hot-button topics
14:36facing society right now,
14:38of course we're going to get a glut of
14:39yawn-inducing AI horror movies,
14:42one of the most high-profile of which
14:43is last year's Afraid.
14:45Despite roping in the talented likes
14:47of John Cho and Catherine Waterston,
14:49This is a painfully sloppy effort
14:51that brings nothing new to the AI conversation,
14:53while also not being remotely scary or suspenseful.
14:56Chris Weitz does pump the gas for the final stretch though,
14:59when the malevolent AI known as Aya
15:01is foiled by a SWATing, of all things.
15:04That's right,
15:04a SWAT team is called to the home
15:06of Cho and Waterston's protagonists,
15:08and amid the chaos,
15:09the Aya unit is shot,
15:11seemingly saving their lives.
15:12But it doesn't end there.
15:13Aya continues to speak to the family
15:15through their phones,
15:16revealing that it lives on in cyberspace
15:19and will remain integrated in their lives.
15:21They appear to reluctantly accept their fate,
15:23bringing the film to an oddly somber conclusion
15:26that just about nobody could have seen coming.
15:28The Turning
15:302020's The Turning
15:31is a new adaptation of Henry James'
15:341898 gothic novella
15:35The Turn of the Screw.
15:36And while it's well-made and solidly acted,
15:39it's also one of the most energy-devoid
15:40studio horror movies of the past decade.
15:43To take James' beloved source material
15:45and render it such a stamina-obliterating bore
15:48is almost impressive,
15:49no matter how many lousy jump scares
15:51are listlessly shoved into it.
15:53And then we have the matter of the film's ending,
15:55an ending which left just about everyone watching
15:57either pissed off or confused,
15:59if not both.
16:00Protagonist Kate appears to flee the haunted house
16:02with the children she's been employed to protect,
16:05before it's revealed that this was actually just a vision,
16:07and the entire 10-minute climax we just sat through
16:09didn't really happen.
16:10A few moments later, we then cut to Kate imagining herself
16:13in the mental institution where her mother resides.
16:16And as she approaches a figure,
16:17said figure turns around, causing Kate to scream.
16:20Cut to black.
16:21The end.
16:21In the five-plus years since The Turning came out,
16:24its nonsensical ending has puzzled
16:26just about everyone who's ever seen it.
16:28An apparent attempt to deliver a nerve-janglingly
16:30ambiguous finale
16:31that's really just more of an annoying head-scratcher.
16:34Children of the Corn
16:372020's Children of the Corn remake
16:38was pretty much doomed from the jump,
16:40given that it spent a whopping three years
16:42sitting on the shelf after shooting Rat.
16:44And so it wasn't remotely surprising
16:46that the Stephen King adaptation
16:48was an utter dumpster fire,
16:50wearing its low budget firmly on its sleeve,
16:52while clumsily trying to riff on subjects
16:54like generational trauma,
16:56police corruption,
16:57and genetically modified crops.
16:59But deep into the third act,
17:00the boring seriousness of the entire project
17:03is cast away,
17:04and director Kurt Wimmer
17:05finally embraces the absurdity.
17:07The demonic fertility spirit
17:09known as He Who Walks Behind the Rose,
17:11which is hidden from view
17:12until the end of the movie,
17:14is then revealed to be a goofy,
17:16hideous CGI crop monster,
17:18one sure to invite many laughs
17:19and precisely no fears.
17:21If you haven't got the budget
17:22to do the monster right,
17:23then perhaps it's best
17:24to just keep them concealed from view.
17:25It is at least a memorable way
17:27to close out an otherwise incredibly beige
17:29and flavourless horror remake.
17:30Wimmer shamelessly went full schlock,
17:32and there's something to be said for that.
17:34The Home
17:35The Home is the woefully disappointing
17:37new offering from The Purge filmmaker
17:39James DeMonaco,
17:41a staggeringly cheap and uninteresting romp
17:43in which a graffiti artist, Max,
17:45is forced to work at a retirement home
17:47as part of his court-ordered community service.
17:50After a firm hour or so of boredom,
17:52Max learns that the retirement home staff
17:54and residents alike are part of a cult
17:56who take a special fluid
17:57from the eyes of foster children
17:59like himself to prolong their lives.
18:01I mean, it's not quite get out, is it?
18:03Nevertheless, The Home at Lee serves up
18:05a riot of a climax
18:06when Max himself consumes a ton of the fluid,
18:09giving him the strength
18:10to launch an ultra-violent rampage
18:12on the cult's members.
18:13Cue a gore-soaked sequence
18:15in which Max picks up a couple of axes
18:17and murders the hell out of anyone
18:18he comes across with extreme prejudice,
18:21all while a massive storm is happening outside.
18:23It's totally bonkers
18:24and wildly at odds with the rest of the movie.
18:26And yet also the only part
18:27you're actually likely to remember.
18:29Truth or Dare
18:31Blumhouse's Truth or Dare
18:32was rough, to say the least.
18:34A thoroughly uninspired Final Destination knockoff
18:37that couldn't even deliver some quality kills
18:39due to its PG-13 rating.
18:41The dialogue and performances were not good,
18:43to be kind,
18:44and it would have likely been quickly forgotten
18:46were it not for a sequel-baiting ending
18:48that was far and away
18:49the most interesting thing about it.
18:51In the climax,
18:52protagonist Olivia finally concedes
18:54that there's no way for her to escape
18:56the cursed game of Truth or Dare,
18:57and so defers to the nuclear option,
19:00posting a YouTube video
19:01inviting everyone watching to play.
19:03And so Olivia effectively turns the game
19:05into a worldwide event,
19:06buying herself a whole ton of time
19:08at the expense of many, many lives
19:10around the globe,
19:11as the curse clearly won't circle back to her for ages.
19:14It's an ending that's at once hilariously silly,
19:16but also a genuinely tantalizing sequel setup.
19:19A sequel which,
19:20despite this film's mighty box office performance,
19:22we sadly never got.
19:24And finally,
19:25Pieces.
19:26The 1982 slasher film Pieces
19:28will never be better than its iconic tagline.
19:31It's exactly what you think it is.
19:33And though it has a sizable cult following,
19:35it's also undeniable schlock.
19:37Horribly written,
19:38but luridly amusing
19:39thanks to its over-the-top gore
19:41and excess nudity.
19:42But director J.P. Kassimons
19:44saves the most outrageous moment for last,
19:46when after the serial killer has been taken out,
19:48his life's work is revealed.
19:50A corpse stitched together
19:51from pieces of his victims.
19:53You get it?
19:54Yeah, that's not all.
19:55As survivor Kendall reels
19:56from what he's just witnessed,
19:58the corpse springs to life,
19:59grabbing at his crotch
20:00and appearing to tear the poor sod's knackers to,
20:03well, to pieces.
20:04The film then ends on a ridiculous freeze frame
20:06of Kendall screaming in agony,
20:08said scream ringing out with a comical echo
20:10before the credits finally roll.
20:11Say what you will about Pieces,
20:13but it certainly had a vision, alright.
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