Of Terrorist 3 to dawn of the dead to John Carpenter The thingSome of the scariest horror movies ever end on an eerily ambiguous note. A cliffhanger ending can serve some dramatic purposes. In the horror genre, the most common function of a cliffhanger is to leave the audience suitably unsettled as they leave the theater. After discovering that Sarah is still trapped in the cave at the end of The descent o David has changed places with Walter at the end of Foreigner: CovenantThe public is deeply disturbed.
There’s a sense of comfort and closure in a definitive ending like Sally escaping Leatherface at the end of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre o Chris being saved by his best friend at the end of Go out. It’s much more uncomfortable to not get any closure on an ambiguous ending like the glow either the birds. Cliffhanger endings can serve other purposes as well; they can set up a sequel, like Bad Dead IIThe twist of time travel or Terrorist 3The portal to hell. Some of the best horror movies end on a creepy cliffhanger.
10 terrifying 3
The final act of Terrorist 3 sees avenging angel Sienna Shaw taking on Art the Clown and his latest companion, Victoria. Sienna manages to decapitate Victoria, but it has a dire ramification: Victoria’s blood burns the ground and opens a portal to hell. Sienna’s younger cousin, Gabbie, falls into the portal and takes Sienna’s magic sword with her. Before the final credits roll, Sienna vows to find her and save her.
This cliffhanger sets up an incredible story for the next Terrorist 4. Sienna has always been a cross between a final girl and a full-blown superhero, and the cliffhanger ending of Terrorist 3 prepares his most daring adventure to date. Terrorist 4 It will see her fighting Satan’s minions in hell on her way to save the cousin who admires her.
9 Alien: Covenant
Ridley Scott’s second Foreign prequel, Foreigner: Covenantsees a space crew responding to a distress signal and getting more than they bargained for. His benevolent android, Walter, clashes with David, the malicious AI of Prometheus who wants to end humanity. At the end of the film, when the xenomorphs have been killed and David has seemingly been defeated, Walter accompanies the survivors to their cryosleep chambers. But just as they are falling asleep, they realize that it’s not actually Walter, but David. He swapped places with Walter as part of his diabolical plan.
This created a chilling story for a third party. Foreign prequel that, unfortunately, was never made. It’s a disturbing twist on its own, with some truly terrifying implications, but Michael Fassbender really sells it with a creepy smile. Based solely on that smile, the audience figures out the trick just as the surviving crew members do.
8 28 weeks later
28 weeks later covers the zombie apocalypse on a much larger scale than its predecessor, 28 days later. 28 days later showed the apocalypse through the eyes of a survivor, and that survivor wasn’t even present during the initial outbreak. 28 weeks later shows the zombie uprising from multiple different perspectives across an expanding cast. The ending sets an even larger scale for the sequel, as the survivors escape across the English Channel and reach France, only to discover that the virus has spread there as well.
This is an incredibly bleak and depressing ending. After London has been destroyed due to zombie attacks and firebombs, the only hope is that the rest of the world is okay. When they arrive in France and discover that the virus has reached continental Europe, that hope fades. There is no way to escape this virus.
7 follows
David Robert Mitchell Go on is a moving horror metaphor about the dangers of STDs. It revolves around a parasitic entity that relentlessly pursues those it is attached to, without giving them a second to rest, and is transmitted between young people through sexual contact. At the end of the film, Jay’s friend Paul offers to take the parasite by having sex with her, then Paul is seen considering hiring a sex worker. But as Jay and Paul walk through the city holding hands, a mysterious figure is seen approaching behind them.
This could be a totally harmless ending. Maybe Paul gave the parasite to a sex worker, he and Jay became a happy couple, and the person walking behind them is just a person walking behind them. But it’s equally possible that Paul failed to pass the parasite to another innocent soul and is simply accepting his grim fate and allowing the entity to take him.
6 Evil Dead II
Sam Raimi Bad Dead II It’s essentially a crazier remake of its predecessor with a lot more slapstick humor, but its cliffhanger ending introduced a more serialized element to the franchise. After attaching a chainsaw to his severed arm and cutting off the barrel of his shotgun, Ash Williams manages to defeat the dead in the cabin. And then he and his Oldsmobile Delta 88 are sucked into a time vortex and transported to the Middle Ages.
Like the suspense endings of Terrorist 3 and Foreigner: Covenantthis was intended to create a sequel. led to army of darknessthe third sequel in which Ash fights demons in 1300 AD while trying to return to his own time. Bad Dead IIThe time travel twist provided a suitably crazy ending to one of the craziest movies ever made.
5 The birds
After surviving the night, the characters in Alfred Hitchcock’s timeless gem the birds They decide to leave the city and try their luck elsewhere. They have heard on the radio that the birds have attacked other nearby communities and that the army is considering an intervention. As they silently walk to their car and drive away, the birds, who have been mindlessly attacking people all day and night, quietly congregate around the property, staring at them ominously.
The lack of any kind of explanation in this cliffhanger ending makes it even more disturbing. Somehow, birds that don’t attack anyone but seem like they could do so at any moment are much scarier than birds that just attack people at random. It is not clear why the birds are so still; perhaps they are establishing their dominance over humanity while humans cower in fear around them.
4 Dawn of the Dead
George A. Romero’s second zombie film, dawn of the deadis a biting satire of consumerism about a group of survivors hiding in an abandoned shopping center. At the end of the film, the remaining survivors make their way to the roof of the mall, board a helicopter, and take off. They managed to get out of the zombie-infested shopping center, but their fuel is low and their destination is uncertain.
The beauty of this cliffhanger ending is that whether it is bleak or hopeful is in the eye of the beholder. Maybe they’ll run out of fuel and crash, or land somewhere equally overrun with the undead and quickly be devoured. But it is very likely that they will find a safe haven away from the zombie threat and start a new life.
3 The descent
American audiences had a much happier ending to Neil Marshall’s film The descentin which Sarah escapes the cave and gets away from the bloodthirsty mutants that inhabit it. The original ending is much more sinister. Sarah leaves the cave, gets back in her car, and runs out of the woods. But it turns out that this was all a prolonged hallucination. In reality, she did not escape from the cave; she’s still trapped there, surrounded by the terrifying sounds of mutants trying to sniff her out.
This ending is similar to that of “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” in which a character on the gallows is shocked to realize that he imagined his escape and trip home in the seconds before the noose broke his neck. In both cases, the happy ending was in the protagonist’s head as he tried to mentally escape his grim reality. Suffice to say, it’s not easy to sleep after watching this movie.
2 The Shining
There is an apparent sense of closure at the end of Stanley Kubrick’s film. the glow. Wendy and Danny manage to avoid Jack’s wrath and escape in the snowplow. As Jack flails around in the blizzard, he finally tires, falls to the ground, and freezes to death. It seems like a happy ending where the heroes escape and the villain is punished. And then Kubrick zooms in on an old black-and-white photo of a 1921 Fourth of July dance, with Jack standing at the front of a crowd of partygoers.
This calls the entire movie into question. The story of a frustrated suburban father who loses his mind in extreme isolation and tries to murder his wife and son suddenly becomes much more complicated. Was Jack a reincarnation or was he hanging around this hotel the whole time? the glow It leaves viewers with so many unanswered questions that it leaves them deeply disturbed.
1 The thing
At the end of John Carpenter The thingMacReady and Childs manage to kill the pesky alien entity by blowing up the station. But as they calm down, they realize the futility of their situation. They have no way of knowing if any of them have already been assimilated by the entity. And even if neither of them were assimilated, they would probably freeze to death before being rescued. So, they decide to just split a bottle of scotch and wait to die.
The thing is an essentially nihilistic film about how quickly humanity could be completely doomed. This cliffhanger ending emphasizes nihilism as, even after triumphing over the alien, the characters still have no hope of surviving. As dawn of the deadthe end of The thing leaves it up to the audience to decide whether to be optimistic (but it takes a lot of mental gymnastics to be optimistic about this ending).