Horror movies often have trouble sticking the landing.
They’re so focused on eliciting raw, visceral reactions from the audience, that sometimes
it’s easy to get some wires crossed. In order to move the plot forward while sticking
with the same commitment to atmosphere and scares, concessions have to be made.
Obvious solutions are ignored or never noticed by the main cast of characters, which often
means that a few more people are gonna suffer before the 95 minutes are up.
In most cases, this isn’t really a bad thing. If the movie is good enough despite these
plot holes and logical failures, suspension of disbelief will kick in, and the whole thing
doesn’t have to crumble under the weight of a poor decision.
However, there are some cases where nothing can save a movie from it’s own ending.
Hello horror heads, and welcome back to the scariest channel on YouTube: Top5ScaryVideos.
I’m your horror host, Keegan Hughes, and today we’re gonna be counting down the Top
5 Scary Horror Movies Ruined By Their Ending. I’ll do my best to end on a strong note
for this one. Before we get started, make sure to give this
video a big thumbs up, and subscribe for more botched resolutions.
I shouldn’t have to say this, but I will just in case: WE’RE TALKING ABOUT THE ENDINGS
OF ALL OF THE MOVIES MENTIONED: SPOILERS INBOUND. Outstanding, let’s begin.
NUMBER FIVE: THE VILLAGE I’ll start with a divisive one! Just to
keep things interesting. For years, people have thought of The Village
as a classic Shyamalan twist gone too far. An experiment in misdirection gone terribly
wrong. I can only imagine what people were thinking
in theatres when this first came out. The reveal seems so odd, so tonally inconsistent.
After a creepy and meditative opener so heavily leaning on period piece elements, the bomb
is dropped: everything is happening in modern times, they’re in a private nature reserve
oasis, everyone’s grieving, there are no monsters.
This opens the floodgates for all sorts of questions.
What would the so-called monsters do if someone was caught leaving? Would they kill them to
keep the truth secret? How did the folks inside the village convince
the entire world to leave them alone forever? Who has that kind of money? How did multiple
successive governments agree to keep this facade up?
Why was this one person allowed to go out and get medicine? What about literally anyone
else who got sick in the past? Did they just die? Why is our lover boy so special?
There are just so many glaring flaws that open up as soon as this tidbit is revealed,
leaving a lot of people feeling cheated and or incredulous.
All of the tension dissipated upon the reveal as well.
Now, upon further inspection, the movie might not be as bad as we’ve made it out to be
over the last couple decades. A lot of The Village defenders are coming
out of the woodwork these days to praise it’s tone, and atmosphere, and themes incorporating
the Iraq War. All valid points, BUT! The twist ending transforms
the movie into a sad, strange drama when it was billed as a horror-thriller.
Maybe if it wasn’t advertised as such, people might take it a little more seriously.
And maybe if M. Night didn’t have his own cameo where he personally reveals the twist.
At least the twist wasn’t aliens who are weak to water invading earth. That would be
just silly.
NUMBER FOUR: PARANORMAL ACTIVITY (AT LARGE) The first Paranormal Activity was pretty scary,
yeah? It was a fresh idea executed well on a tiny
budget. However, the focus on atmosphere and scares
definitely outweighed the story, which left a lot to be desired.
This became very apparent when the credits rolled.
It caught me off guard when I first saw the demon-filled flick.
Rapid-fire jumpscares, then title cards, then… nothing.
Can the ending of Paranormal Activity even be considered an ending?
It’s just a wide open scenario. Micah dies, and Katie has vanished.
The world is her oyster. But we don’t see any of this happen, and
the final sequence is just a bunch of scuffling and spooky images.
It sort of makes sense, considering the fact that there was no real script.
Director Oren Peli says that they gave the actors situations, and told them to improvise
most of the movie, using a process known as retroscripting.
The whole thing was put together in basically a week, which is impressive and a little bit
mind-boggling. During this time, they came up with multiple
endings, many of which didn’t end up being filmed at all.
So, okay. The weak ending was a product of the movie being largely improvised. It’s
actually pretty incredible that it came together at all.
My beef doesn’t end here though, no sir. After the success of their first flick, Paramount
decided to do a half-dozen more. And each one gets another non-ending.
More people “mysteriously” disappearing, all reported on title cards after the final
chaotic sequence. They found a formula and ran with it, milking
the cash cow as they went. There are always a couple good scares in Paranormal
Activity flicks, but they seemed to get lazier and more far-fetched over time.
Gimmicks came in to replace bits of plot, and stories became even more incoherent.
And every ending always just seemed to be a segue into another sequel.
Instead of making cohesive, semi self-contained movies, they made what almost seems like episodic
entries in an ever-ongoing television series. No closure, no retribution, just people dying
and then disappearing so that the possession can be passed on to the next unlucky contestant.
NUMBER THREE: INVADERS FROM MARS A decade after directing The Texas Chainsaw
Massacre, Tobe Hooper had quite the filmography under his belt.
Eaten Alive, The Salem’s Lot miniseries, Poltergeist, Lifeforce, the list goes on.
So what he was thinking with Invaders From Mars, we may never know.
A remake of the 1953 film of the same name, this extraterrestrial flick is a cheesy, miscast
mess. Don’t get me wrong, I love cheesy muscat
messes, but this one in particular touches upon one of the most childish and overused
tropes in all of creative writing. After the entire movie plays out, with countless
townsfolk assimilated into aliens, with the U.S. Marines being enlisted by a schoolchild
and his nurse pal, with fiendish, slimy special effects being used for middling results, it
turns out it was all a dream. That’s the kind of ending a fourth-grader
slaps on the end of his free-writing assignment for an easy B+.
Then, after David falls back asleep, it's implied that the aliens are back.
But he was also just sleeping, leading me to think he’s just dreaming again.
And the same events will play out for a second time.
Great. A silly, half-baked flick from the legendary
Mr. Hooper. It’s fine to slip up every once in a while!
NUMBER TWO: THE DESCENT (US ENDING) I’ve talked about The Descent before. It’s
a great, tense, claustrophobic horror film. It touches on themes of friendship, adultery,
loss, grief, and madness. It’s well-acted, well-shot, and well-edited.
Honestly, it’s hard to find many faults in the movie at all.
I know some folks aren’t big fans of the crawlers showing up halfway, but the tonal
shift is well worth the implications it introduces. Is Sarah, overwhelmed with grief and terror,
hallucinating the monsters? Does anyone else fully understand what is
going on? Or are they too invested in their fight for survival to eke anything out?
To top it all off, the original cut of the flick had a bleak, dark, and depressing ending.
Just how I like it. This finale topped off the movie perfectly,
with little bits of revenge, relief, regret, and then realization that doom was not in
fact avoided. However, this ending was deemed too hopeless
for American audiences, so about a minute of footage was trimmed from the back end.
Where the original ending features a sort of dream sequence where Sarah is knocked unconscious,
escapes, sees the ghost of Juno, and then wakes up with a crowd of crawlers closing
in, the American ending just has her escape. Sure, she still sees the ghost of Juno, but
it’s also implied that she gets away just fine.
Well, as fine as one can be after going through an underground ordeal like that.
But it also gets rid of the emotional vision of Sarah’s daughter’s birthday cake, along
with little Jessica herself. Snipping the moment in which Sarah resigns
herself to fate dampens the blow a little, making for a much less impactful ending.
Come on America, we’ve had enough of shameless positivity. Let’s be honest with ourselves
here and look death in the eye.
NUMBER ONE: THE DEVIL INSIDE Oh man. This one was bad enough to elicit
boos from the general moviegoing public. You might get a boo or two at a film festival
from time to time, but in a public theatre on opening weekend? Yikes.
The ending of The Devil Inside is lazy. Like, LAZY lazy.
And even so, it cleaned up at the box office on opening weekend.
It did see substantial drops afterwards, though, reflective of the reviews it was getting.
This found-footage flick is decent! Nothing special, a little rough around the edges,
but still has some merits. We follow Isabella, a documentary filmmaker,
who visits her triple-homicidal mother at the asylum where she’s being held.
It becomes increasingly apparent that this woman is possessed, and that the demons are
possible transferrable. In the last act, we know for sure that the
mother had four demons possessing her, and that they’ve more than likely been passed
on to Isabella and her colleagues. This leads to some general messiness, including
a self-inflicted gunshot wound and the assault of some nurses.
The surviving human duo escape in a car, a possessed Isabella in tow, and are driving
to have her exorcised. All of the sudden, Michael schwips the whip
into oncoming traffic, sending the vehicle careening and flipping off of the road.
The two men are dead, and Isabella is missing. Guess what?
That’s the end. A title card pops up letting the audience
know that the investigation is still ongoing, with Isabella’s case remaining unresolved.
It also provides a link to a website, prompting viewers to keep up with new developments.
Booooooo. Just as an interesting element is introduced,
they cut it off. This is something you do to hype up a movie
ahead of release, not to leave your audience wanting more through a premature ending.
Oh and the website was largely useless: no clues, no additional details, just marketing
stuff. It doesn’t even exist anymore, and following
the link will bring you to a domain registration page.
Great. OUTRO
*INSERT TITLE CARD* -Keegan disappeared from the studio that day,
after exhibiting feelings of distress and exasperation. The investigation is still ongoing.
Keep up with new updates at www.ruinedendings.com/why_would_you_do_this -
Just kidding! Sort of. What did you think of the list?
What is the worst horror movie ending you can think of?
Did you see any of these while they were still in theatres? What was that like?
Make sure you let me know down in the comments! Speaking of comments, let’s take a look
at some of your more disheartening ones from The Top 5 SCP Monsters That Can NEver Escape
- PART 14: Nebulous Cat says “Scariest SCP on this
list… RAID SHADOW LEGENDS” Glad you could get that out of your system.
Now look at how many likes your comment got when i screengrabbed it. Nice.
Takemiya Shin says “That swamp lady looks like a good wife material, care to join me
meeting her, Keegan?” Are you asking me to be the donkey to your
Shrek? Because if so: ABSOLUTELY. Can’t wait to seduce a dragon.
Cat-boy 999 says “Hi and how are you doing? I hope you are having a great day.”
Hello and I am doing quite well! Could be a little more caffeinated, but I’ll make
do. I hope you’re having a great day, too! Lancelot’s Words says “If you could be
your own SCP monster, what would you be? Just wondering.”
Probably 507. It would just be a blast shifting in and out of random dimensions. Terrifying,
sure, and inconvenient, definitely, but definitely worth it.
Roe-zee Cheeks says “quack” Hey, I resent that. I may be a snake-oil salesman
and an unlicensed medical practitioner, but I’m no quack!”
And that’s all the time we have for today! Before I sell both my kidneys and most of
my liver, make sure to give this video a big thumbs up, and subscribe for more maniacal
movies!