Horror movies have to really stick the landing to last.
Whether that means coming in with a surprise twist, or an explosive event, or even a maddening
cliffhanger, the final moments of any good thriller should bring together all the jump
scares and eerie elements that have defined the rest of the movie.
For these modern flicks, the third acts were so good that they'll easily stand the test
of time.
Let's take a look at the best horror movie endings of the century so far.
And don't be scared, but there are huge spoilers ahead.
The Others
This atmospheric period film follows the Stewart family, a mom and her two kids, who start
to notice that their house is haunted.
There's a couple roaming the hallways, a ghost boy hiding behind the curtains, and even a
freaky blind lady lurking in the shadows.
But when Grace and her children stumble upon a séance in the attic, they suddenly realize
they're the ones who are deceased.
Her daughter had been right the whole time about her mother's maniacal ways.
"She won't stop!
She won't stop until she
hurts us."
As Grace remembers that she did away with her children and then herself after temporarily
going insane, she realizes she's damned her whole family to an eternity inside their creaky
mansion.
It's a gut-punch of a twist and also changes the entire film when you realize the so-called
ghosts that have been scaring the Stewarts are actually living people who've moved into
Grace's old home.
And they're the ones being haunted.
Saw
These days, Jigsaw is one of the most famous bad guys to ever torture someone on the big
screen, but in 2004, when the first Saw film hit theaters, audiences had no idea what the
infamous serial killer actually looked like.
In fact, for most of the movie, everybody suspected that Zep was the psycho who abducted
and chained up poor Adam in that bathroom dungeon.
But after our hero bashes Zep to bits, he discovers a cassette that reveals the hospital
orderly was just another victim in Jigsaw's game.
And as Adam begins to process this new bit of info, we watch in horror as a body—which
has been lying on the bathroom floor for the whole movie—crawls up off the floor.
Yep, this corpse is the killer himself, John Kramer, and when Jigsaw walks out of the bathroom,
he leaves his latest victim chained to a pipe, parting with his trademark line:
"Game over"
With a doozy like that, it's no wonder the movie has spawned seven sequels and counting.
The Mist
The ending of The Mist is so notorious now that it really needs no introduction.
But it's still pretty brilliant and terrible all the same.
Director Frank Darabont took a major liberty with the Stephen King novella to end it the
way he did, but even King had to compliment the decision, saying,
"I loved [it].
It is the most shocking ending ever."
The story surrounds a supermarket full of people who've been trapped inside by an otherworldly
mist full of monsters.
But they're not exactly safe from harm there either.
As the threat outside continues to dwarf any escape options, religious zealotry begins
to overtake some of the survivors, who threaten to sacrifice our hero David's son.
So he and the others who reject the apocalyptic overtures make a break for it after an intense
stand-off in the checkout aisle.
Unfortunately, they don't get far before they run out of gas, and, faced with certain death
by tentacled terrors, David executes his own and son and friends with a pistol, but runs
out of bullets before he can off himself, too.
Overcome with instant grief, he goes into the mist to accept his fate but finds that
the military has arrived to eradicate the beasts.
If only David had waited just a few seconds, his son would've been okay, and we all could've
been spared that emotional devastation.
The Cabin in the Woods
Possibly the most meta horror movie ever made, The Cabin in the Woods follows a bunch of
college students who foolishly spend a weekend in a creepy forest.
Naturally, their little getaway doesn't go as planned, and they quickly discover they're
meant to be sacrifices in an elaborate ritual to please some angry ancient entities.
With a family of undead rednecks hot on their trail, the two remaining survivors find themselves
trapped in an underground bunker, surrounded by a bunch of goons with machine guns.
Without any other choice, our heroes unleash an army of monsters, resulting in one of the
wildest, you-won't-believe-it-until-you-see-it sequences in horror cinema.
Pretty much every creature you can imagine shows up, ready to do some damage.
We've got a knock off Pennywise, an imitation Pinhead, and masked murderers straight out
of The Strangers.
There's a merman, an enormous bat, and one unfriendly unicorn.
By the time the zombies, ghosts, and werewolves are finished slaughtering everyone in sight,
the walls are caked with blood, the earth is doomed, and audiences have had a gory good
time.
It Follows
It's hard to come up with a completely original movie monster nowadays, but It Follows combined
the common societal fear of communicable diseases with traditional terror tropes to create something
entirely new.
Basically an STD on two legs, the titular "It" is spread via contact, and if you contract
the curse, this enigmatic monster will mercilessly hunt you down.
And if it gets you, it then goes after the person who gave you the curse…and so on
and so on forever.
Sure, the creature moves pretty slowly, but this thing can take any form necessary to
get close enough to end your life.
And no matter what, it never stops following.
Our heroine Jay does her best to fry the monster with every electronic device she can get her
hands on.
And just to play it safe, she gets down with her friend Paul, who then passes the curse
on to a prostitute, just in case the thing comes back.
And that leads us to the final eerie image of Jay and Paul walking down a neighborhood
street, with a man behind them in the distance.
Maybe it's just a guy walking or maybe it's the creature that can never die, coming back
for round two.
Open endings are often too frustrating to withstand, but this one fits the theme of
the film like a glove, if you catch our drift.
Get Out
A modern-day masterpiece, Jordan Peele's Get Out almost had a radically different ending.
Originally, Peele planned on having his main character, Chris Washington, arrested after
escaping the clutches of the mind-controlling family.
Fortunately, the writer-director had a change of heart and crafted a new ending that left
audiences cheering instead of crying.
To set the scene, Chris has just narrowly avoided the lobotomy to end all lobotomies,
and during his getaway, he dispatches every evil white person who steps into his path.
This eventually ends with Chris standing above his psycho ex-girlfriend as she's bleeding
out on a country road.
Suddenly, flashing lights appear in the distance, and we assume the worst is about to happen.
"No""No""No""No""No""No""No""No""No""No""No""No"
But instead of the law showing up to cart Chris away, who should step out of the car
but Chris's best friend, TSA Officer Rod Williams.
As Rod takes Chris back to safety, everyone in the audience breathes a sigh of relief,
knowing full-well this kind of upbeat ending rarely happens in real life.
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