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These 8 Terrible Movies have Unforgettable Endings.
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00:00It's depressingly common for otherwise great movies to fall flat at the last hurdle with a
00:05deeply terrible ending, in turn compromising the entire experience. But the other way around?
00:11Not so common. Now a big prefix before we get into this, this is a mega subjective list and
00:16not every movie here you may think of as actually being terrible. And that's cool, it's all in good
00:21faith and we all have different takes, so I'm Ewan, this is WhatCulture and here are terrible
00:26movies with awesome endings. Meg 2 The Trench
00:30The original Meg wasn't a great movie, but it knew precisely what it was and delivered the goods
00:36accordingly, albeit within the confines of a gore-free PG-13 rating. It performed really well
00:42at the box office, enough for Warner Bros to greenlight a sequel, and when acclaimed horror
00:47filmmaker Ben Wheatley was announced to direct, Curiosity was stoked to see how his unique
00:52sensibilities would translate to a mega budget blockbuster. The truth, sadly, is that the
00:58majority of Meg 2 The Trench is a strangely dull low energy follow-up in which Wheatley gets to
01:06flex barely an ounce of his fierce filmmaking muscle. Even with the eminent charms of lead
01:11Jason Statham, far too much time is spent on snoozy human dramas and not enough on, well,
01:17the Megs. That is, until the third act arrives and we get all the Megs we could hope for,
01:23and the action shifts from the muddy depths of the Mariana Trench to Fun Island, a resort that
01:28becomes overrun with Megs, quasi-dinosaur creatures called Snappers, and, best of all, a giant freaking
01:36squid. Meg 2's third act is basically what the entire movie should have been, once on carnage without
01:42all the tiresome chitchat that bogged down the first hour plus.
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01:59if you sign up today. I'd make that deal. Damn good deal. Dark Phoenix
02:04It wasn't exactly a surprise that Dark Phoenix was a huge bust, but it brought Fox's X-Men franchise
02:11sputtering to a disappointing halt all the same. From a writing and directing perspective,
02:16so much of this movie feels completely flat. It's just the fact we've seen most of it done better
02:23elsewhere, and between a lifeless performance from Sophie Turner as Jean Grey and Jennifer
02:28Lawrence not even pretending to be interested, it felt like an obligation for most of the cast involved.
02:34But the final scene at least delivers something approaching a genuinely affecting sign off for the
02:40entire two decades saga, as a retired Charles Xavier is greeted at a Parisian cafe by Magneto,
02:46before the pair play a friendly game of chess. It's not a scene full of operatic dramatic grandstanding,
02:52but circles back to Charles and Eric's chess games from the earlier films in a slightly affecting way.
02:58It's an ending that deserved a much better film leading up to it.
03:01Staying Alive 1983's Saturday Night Fever sequel Staying Alive is a really bad movie,
03:08and by way of its hilariously awful dialogue and unrelenting poorly staged dance sequences,
03:14it absolutely earned its critical drubbing. Yet director Sylvester Stallone did nevertheless
03:18mash to rustle up one of the most fist pumping endings of all time, when protagonist Tony
03:23Monero's Broadway debut goes down a storm and he reconciles his girlfriend Jackie.
03:28Travolta's Tony then professes to Jackie that he needs to do one more thing in order to celebrate
03:32correctly. Strut. And so the Bee Gees iconic Staying Alive, which was written for Saturday
03:38Night Fever's opening sequence, plays as Tony confidently struts through Times Square.
03:43Capped off by a glorious closing freeze frame, it's a perfect combination of cheesy and triumphant.
03:48Jason Goes to Hell The Final Friday
03:51The 9th Friday the 13th movie gets a lot of justified vitriol, primarily because Jason Voorhees
03:57only appears in his physical form briefly, with his spirit instead possessing various characters for
04:02most of the movie. The set up just didn't really work, with only the film's final 60 seconds doing
04:08much to entice all the Jason heads who stuck with the series through thick and thin. And because it's
04:13Friday the 13th, there's a lot of thin. In the laughable climax, a reborn Jason is dragged to hell
04:18as promised by the title, but the final scene shows Jason's mask being unearthed by a dog. Moments
04:24later, Freddy Krueger's gloved hand bursts out of the dirt and pulls the mask to hell,
04:29all while Freddy's signature demonic cackle can be heard. Coming at the end of a depressingly
04:34awful conclusion to the Friday the 13th franchise, this tease of a future Freddy vs. Jason movie felt
04:41like an oasis in the middle of a desert. A much needed solve that promised greater things to come,
04:46even if it took an additional decade to materialize. Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2022
04:51Not the 1974 Texas Chainsaw Massacre's follow-ups really approach the original in terms of depth,
04:58imagery, or raw adrenaline, with more than one sliding into the downright terrible category.
05:04David Blue Garcia's 2022 effort, which ignores all other sequels Halloween 2018 style,
05:11may not rest squarely at the bottom, but it is a garbled mess of a film that leans into slasher
05:17convention,
05:17undermining any salient commentary it may have to say on gun violence or political division in the
05:24process. However, the film does have a ripper of an ending, a real rug pull moment that, while in the
05:30vein of a Friday the 13th final jump scare, is brutally effective in how unrelentingly cruel it is.
05:38After dueling with and seemingly defeating Leatherface, protagonist Melody and Lila prepare to leave
05:44Harlow in a self driving car, quite literally letting their guard down for an easy journey back
05:48home. And then Leatherface suddenly emerges, drags Melody out the window and decapitates her,
05:55all while Lila screams as the car drives away. Leatherface dances in the street with the head,
06:00getting the last laugh on those pesky gentrifiers, and leaving the film on an appropriately gutting note.
06:06Star Wars Episode 2, Attack of the Clones
06:09My relationship with Attack of the Clones has taken a curious evaluation in recent years. To be blunt,
06:15this was the first time I faced disappointment in a movie as a child. I loved, and still love,
06:21The Phantom Menace, but Clones at the time felt like a turgid, awkwardly romantic follow up filled
06:27with lots of iffy effects. As I've grown older, I still think that much of that remains the case,
06:33but I do at least see and appreciate what George Lucas was going for. Clones is meant to be Star
06:38Wars ran through the filter of a 70s political thriller. Like the parallax view, but instead of
06:43Warren Beatty unearthing a global cabal of assassins, you have Ewan McGregor going to Camino
06:47to look at sea otters. The film is politically prescient, an indictment of the lure of conflict
06:57and the terrible freedoms it gobbles up, and despite some wooden dialogue, I think Hayden Christensen
07:03was dealt a harsh deck. Anakin is meant to be annoying in this story. The main issues here
07:08really are a mix of half-baked characters, thank god Dooku was saved by the expanded canon,
07:14and technical ogliness that slugifies Lucas' once ornate cosmic tapestry. And despite all of this,
07:21the film still has a hauntingly beautiful ending. John Williams' Imperial March has never been more
07:27menacing, with the Republic having ushered in its own means of destruction through the creation of a
07:31standing army. Accompany that with Yoda's BEGUN THE CLONE WAR HAS, and you're left with one of the best
07:37mic drop moments in the entire franchise. Thor The Dark World
07:41There's plenty of fan debate about precisely how bad Thor The Dark World is, but it's near
07:47universally accepted to be one of the weakest MCU movies. From its forgettable villain to its
07:53cringeworthy comic relief, flat visuals and anonymous direction, it's an also-ran superhero
07:58movie sequel that's basically the summation of every complaint that's ever been levelled against the
08:03MCU. But that ending? Ooh, that's a good one. Given that Tom Hiddleston's Loki was the sure
08:08highlight of the original Thor and proved himself to be a terrifically entertaining villain in the
08:12first Avengers, seeing him die at the end of this movie's second act hit hard. But what a relief it
08:18was when the final scene saw Thor have a heartfelt reunion with his father Odin in Asgard. Oh, so it
08:24seemed. Until Thor leaves and it's revealed that Loki, ever the trickster, is still alive and was
08:29impersonating Odin all along. It's a scene that forced audiences to perk up at the end of an
08:34otherwise deeply forgettable film, and relished the fact that the MCU didn't just jettison one of
08:39its best characters after a mere two movies. Dracula 2000
08:43It's always a bad sign when a movie plasters the name of someone tangentially associated with it
08:49all over the marketing. And so, when Dracula 2000 billed itself with executive producer Wes Craven's
08:55name as a prefix, it felt like a calculated admission that the film couldn't rest on its own merits.
09:00And yeah, Dracula 2000 sucks. It's an aggressively early 2000s riff on Dracula,
09:06which with its edgy nu metal soundtrack and painfully dated wardrobe choices,
09:11is a comically stodgy product of its era. Like the horror movie Daredevil, I guess. For the record,
09:16I love that vibe, but yeah, it's not great. Dracula 2000 is, for 90% of its runtime,
09:21a thoroughly uninteresting reimagining of Dracula lore. Until it finally trips and stumbles over
09:28its one truly great idea in a closing scene. Here, it's revealed that Gerard Butler's Dracula
09:34is actually Judas Iscariot, who was cursed by God to live forever as a vampire due to his portrayal
09:40of Jesus Christ. It's one of those revelations that genuinely forces you to reconsider everything
09:46you've just seen. And though Dracula 2000 is still a fundamentally stinky bad movie,
09:52it's final rug pull does provide some wildly unexpected food for thought.
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