While horror movies don’t always have brutally bleak endings, some of the genre’s cruelest twists have been so dark and shocking that they left viewers utterly devastated. While horror movies often have killer opening scenes, it is infamously tough for the genre to stick the landing. If a horror movie ends on a hopeful note, this is likely to be satisfying for mainstream audiences but will also sap the preceding story of its intensity. Meanwhile, if a horror movie offers viewers no hope, it stays true to the genre’s dark heart but risks alienating its audience and making the entire enterprise seem pointless.
Luckily, this hasn’t stopped some filmmakers from pulling off endings that make the entire movie feel like a waste of time. These horror movies feature twist endings that aren’t just nasty but are so ingeniously bleak that they cast a dark shadow over the entire preceding plot. Some of them are played for darkly comic laughs while others are deathly serious, but all of them leave the viewer feeling like they have just been punched in the stomach.
11 Funny Games (2007)
Micheal Haneke’s Funny Games, a remake of his own 1997 film of the same name, garnered a lot of acclaim upon release, despite its smug provocations. Funny Games is a home invasion horror story wherein a pair of preppie thugs slowly murder a family, occasionally breaking the fourth wall to utter didactic talking points about the perils of screen violence. However, the movie's jaw-dropping ending still packs a punch. After slowly psychologically and physically torturing the heroes, the villains successfully kill everyone and move on to another family.
10 The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016)
While The Autopsy of Jane Doe isn’t perfect, the horror chamber piece is another great example of a able movie with an awesome twist. Two coroners examine a mysterious unidentified body and soon find themselves plagued by all manner of paranormal phenomena in what becomes the longest night of their lives. It also ends up becoming their last as The Autopsy of Jane Doe’s ending shockingly kills off its only two cast .
9 Midsommar (2019)
Director Ari Aster shocked audiences with 2018’s Hereditary, which also had a hopeless dénouement. However, Midsommar’s ending is punchier, even meaner, and in its own twisted way, funnier. After her fellow travelers are all killed and her thoughtless boyfriend Christian is drugged, assaulted, and burned alive, Midsommar’s heroine smiles to herself as crazed cult dance around her.
8 Speak No Evil (2022)
While Speak No Evil was praised upon release, the psychological horror movie struggled with many of the same problems as Funny Games. Viewers with a low tolerance for pseudo-intellectual Euro horror will want to avoid this story of a Danish family visiting a Dutch family they met on vacation and slowly realizing the couple is more unhinged than they seemed. While Speak No Evil’s slow story is predictable, the final scene where the hero and heroine are slowly stoned to death still stuns.
7 Sinister (2012)
For much of its runtime, Sinister is a pretty standard haunted house story. Ethan Hawke’s washed-up true crime author attempts to regain fame and success — and get a handle on his drinking problem — by moving his family into a home where numerous grisly murders occurred. He is stalked by a demonic presence, seemingly destroys the artifacts that it inhabits, and moves out of the house. However, Hawke’s antihero and his family are then drugged and ax-murdered by his nine-year-old daughter in a legitimately shocking ending.
6 Drag Me To Hell (2009)
Drag Me To Hell saw Evil Dead franchise creator Sam Raimi return to the horror genre with the story of Christine, a loan officer who refuses to extend the of an elderly woman’s loan. This kick-starts a nightmarish weekend of trials that only end when Christine successfully buries the cursed button that the crone used to curse her. Then, in Drag Me to Hell’s impressively mean-spirited twist, Christine finds out she didn't actually bury the button after all as she is dragged into hell by grasping demon arms.
5 The Mist (2007)
The Mist arrived years before horror dominated the box office, resulting in disappointing returns for director Frank Darabont’s Stephen King adaptation. This was a shame since The Mist got a lot of tension, terror, and tears from its story of the titular weather phenomenon trapping a small town’s citizens in a supermarket. However, it was its infamous ending that made The Mist a standout success. After escaping the supermarket and finding no civilization for miles, the hero mercy-killed his love interest and child with his last bullets — a few seconds before the army came through to save the day.
4 Night Of The Living Dead (1968)
George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead is a seminal zombie classic, but its killer ending is rooted in a more quotidian form of horror. When Night of the Living Dead’s lone survivor, Ben, emerges from his stronghold, he is unceremoniously shot and killed by a ing gang. Whether the gang even thought he was a zombie is unclear as Romero’s damning commentary on American racism provides the movie with an unforgettably devastating ending.
3 Eden Lake (2008)
While the brutal death traps of the Saw franchise are the most infamous trend in 2000s horror, the genre offered an even nastier short-lived tradition during this era. The “hoodie horror” boom of the decade saw British directors treat hooded youths as if they were Michael Myers in movies like Eden Lake. A grim, nihilistic slog, Eden Lake sees a young couple’s idyllic lakeside getaway ruined by murderous kids. After the heroine successfully escapes her attackers, she finds refuge in a nearby suburban house, only to inevitably discover that the parents of the gang’s ringleader are its inhabitants.
2 The Descent (2005)
The Descent sent a group of inexperienced cavers into a deep, dark chasm and pitted them against some sightless humanoid monsters with a penchant for tearing out jugulars. Only one of the movie’s heroines made it out alive, and even she killed one of her fellow cavers while escaping the monstrous hordes. Only it turns out that she didn’t, since The Descent’s tricky ending reveals that her escape was all a delusional fantasy, and she is actually left underground, alone, surrounded by toothy, ravenous cave monsters.
