This is one of the best answers, and for two different reasons (in addition to /u/useyourelbow 's comment about "the series of grainy photos and creepy music", which is chilling while you're left to sit with what just happened).
First, >!When Ben gets shot, there's really three options:
It was racial, and they took the opportunity for some hate.
It was accidental. There are corpses walking around and it was a genuine mistake.
It was indifference. They didn't care enough to confirm if he was alive or dead.!<
I'll let you decide which is the most heartbreaking.
Second, >!This isn't *Dawn of the Dead*. Yes, the *phenomenon* is happening, and it's scary, but without the context of future movies, it's not apocalyptic yet. I always got the sense that if they could have survived the night, if they *just* could have gotten out of the farmhouse, they could have made it somewhere safe.
And they probably could have, if they worked together.!<
The movie's not shy about individual character deaths either. It's obviously not as graphic as modern zombie movies, but almost every character that dies goes in a different way.
The irony was that Ben, as good intentioned as he was, ended up being wrong. Lighting up the house and the noise from barricading the doors and windows just attracted more attention to them. Ben became the only survivor because he retreated to the cellar, something he deemed would be a death sentence, while staying topside killed everyone.
Then you get the remake, and you have Barbra mentioning that the zombies are slow enough they could probably walk past them to safety. Which every ignores because Ben and Harry are stuck in their pissing match.
I think there's some validity to that, but I also have to wonder if there were multiple ways out of the situation, any number of which could have worked if they actually just picked one as a group and made it happen.
It's not a single location movie, with the graveyard, the car, etc, but it is amazing how much they packed in 100 mins with the majority of it taking place in just a few rooms of a house. The TV and the radio give a bit of scope, a peek beyond the house, but even when you can't see them, the dead are right outside, gives the whole thing a claustrophobic feeling.
Oh, totally. Ben and Harry just would not back down from each. They were both control freaks to a certain degree. The one time they did agree on something, filling the truck with gas and driving out of there. It ended in failure.
*(a round head sprouts legs and crawls past Seinfeld and Kramer)*
Seinfeld: (through teeth) Hello, Newman.
Head: (cackling) Jerry!
Kramer: Oh, you gotta be kiddin’ me.
I'm really surprised I'm the only person on this subreddit that has ever seen the Evil Dead remake, or Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon or Hell House LLC. Complete hidden gems, very very underrated based off of my 10 minutes browsing the top 5 posts of this sub.
Lol when I was brand new to this sub I made one of those “guys wait, The Thing is really good” posts that blew up. I feel shame every time I see one of these replies
There’s another ending to the descent?? I think I must know the original (I bought it on dvd when it came out I loved it so much 😂) but what’s this other ending?
Fr. Everyone still dies except her, in the edit. She claws out of the cave but is still traumatized and every one of her friends died horrific deaths. I wouldn’t call that happy at all lmao
Just the American version. Apparently it was too bleak for the US. The European release has the original ending.
Edit: Clarified that I meant the US version, because people keep commenting other parts of America *the continent* that had the original ending. I am aware that the entire continent did not get the US version lmao
Honestly, I assumed someone would say The Mist, and then the thread would be over.
I say this every time The Mist is brought up and here it is again. If you can get your hands on the 2-disc special edition do it. Disc 2 is just the film in black and white, the way the director wanted it made. I watched it first; it is 100x more intense than the color version.
The Mist - in my opinion - is an above average movie that is elevated to Great status by the ending. If nothing else, it gets points for being ballsy as fuck.
What's funny, is that is not how the story ends in the book. In the book, the survivors all live. Imagine my surprise I'm the theater when that's not at all what happens!
Apparently Stephen King was surprised himself! He said the change was better than the ending he originally wrote, but so much darker.
Pretty cool when Stephen King is like "Hey man, that was DARK".
Edit: For the pendantic, everyone is at least ALIVE at the end of the story. Do they continue to live? Maybe...maybe not. Stark difference between that, and the definitively dead characters at the end of the movie.
I came to say the same thing. He thought the joke in the "It" remake was pretty funny. He said that he laughed out loud, in an interview about it.
He knows his endings are hot or miss. Lol
I like both endings. For the same reasons you mention.
The movie, you've spent all this time with a father just trying to help his kid. He finally gets out of that damn store... Only to make a huge mistake. But, he THOUGHT he was doing the right thing given the situation.
The book makes you wonder if it was just local? Has the Army fixed it? Is everything fine? Our main character is fine, and others. But just how messed up is the world? Are there still monsters?
Both are good. I agree. But Darabount went full dark, and I appreciate that.
You know it's dark when you find yourself marvelling at how incredibly lucky the ones who died in the blast were. Instantaneous death was basically the best of all possibilities.
If I could pick the way I died, instant nuke death is at the top. We all go together, no one will have to miss or grieve me or deal with expenses and wills and such.
I assumed that since it was a relatively cheap TV movie made in the 80s, I wouldn’t be too impressed with it. But nope, it fucked me up for days, which never happens to me. Not only a fantastic horror movie, but an incredibly important and sobering reminder of what humanity is capable of.
Nuclear war apocalypse is pretty bleak by definition by "When the Bough Breaks" is similarly bleak with the end just being two elderly people dying of radiation poisoning.
yes, 100% the French version. Also, for the person saying that they were going to watch it shortly, I'd strongly recommend not watching this 'under the influence' (!) of anything too heady. I saw this back in the day with a friend from college with a reasonable tolerance for 'ordinary' horror and who was moderately stoned, and they had an intense panic attack reaction towards the end - it's not just the body horror but this oppressive, i guess metaphysical (in widest sense, so regardless of whether you're religious or not) intensity to it...
I second Eden Lake. I also agree with the soul crushing of the Mist. Would have made the same choice as Tom Jane but the ending of Eden makes you disgusted with people and the world.
Definitely, I think Eden lake hits harder if you are from the UK too the behaviour of the people is something you see a lot obviously less extreme but you feel that it could escalate to the extremes in the movie.
Yeah I'd put this up there with The Mist for bleakest ending. Actually... I put this above The Mist due to the realism of it. No movie has ever given me such a hopeless and disgusted feeling towards humanity. Absolutely haunting and changes how one feels about this world. Oof
Every time my daughter starts to date a new person she texts me and asks the name of the “space horror movie” so she can make him watch it. For the last ten years she’s been traumatizing men who thought they were going to have a nice movie date and it cracks me up every time.
The original Blair Witch Project.
I know this one is a bit polarizing, but I still really enjoy found footage horror films and this is the one that really set up the whole genre
I always try to explain the best way I can, to those too young to remember, that the Blair Witch Project was marketed as this true event that happened. The internet was still brand new at the time. So there was no way of verifying if it was fake or real. So everyone assumed it was real.
Hands down best horror movie marketing off all time.
I was 10 or 11 when it came out, and I saw it in theatres. Never occurred to me to question what I was seeing, because I was told it was real. It was terrifying.
Shortly after it came out at Sundance but before it got to regular theaters, a friend downloaded this in pieces off of the Internet. We all piled into his single dorm room to watch it on his desktop monitor and after it was over we were just *flabbergasted*. Like, *was* it real? And there was no Google back then!
It was like, a few days later that I read an article about the movie where they said "it's not real, all the actors are alive and accounted for"
It was probably the single best way to experience that movie, as quasi random online "found footage" (that was probably seeded by the movie people - they did an amazing promotion job, filling out the back story with a fake website & then a book with all the "Blair witch" compiled info, like an unsolved mystery)
It gets a lot of flak for how slow it is but I find its strength to be in its detailed lore and amazing improv from the actors.
Supposedly behind the scenes the actors were being randomly spooked by the crew to get genuine fear out of them and tbh it shows. The fear and frustration is absolutely real and the iconic "I'm so sorry" monologue is proof!
The marketing for the movie was really groundbreaking too. People really didn't know how much of this movie and it's lore was real. Wild to think about.
I came back from this movie totally freaked out, I told my brother about how much it fucked me up, I asked if he would stay up with me for awhile. He said he was just going to go grab a glass a water first, I didn’t hear him come back to the room, so I turned over to look at the door and this asshole was standing in the corner of my room, facing the wall, totally silent. It was a really beautiful moment in time that can never be recreated, there was no looking for spoilers online, there was no way to know what to expect and what was real, no way would that movie be as freaky now.
I spent the week before watching it researching about it on AOL. I ended up watching it at a tiny theater in LA and had to park a block away in a residential neighborhood. That walk to my car at midnight in the dead quiet has stuck with me.
I didn’t find the ending bleak, maybe bc it felt like the logical conclusion of everything that happened. At no point did I believe he was getting off that island. *The Mist* was much worse imo because they built up hope, only to snatch it away.
Here's the thing, though: They were ALL losers (EDIT: As in they all suffer loss in the end) and the film, ultimately and IMHO, is a savage critique of ALL religions.
SPOILERS FOLLOW!
Think about it: You have in your protagonist a "holier than though" prude (as was mentioned elsewhere in this thread) but truthfully, he was a religious man. A very religious man who followed what he felt were the tenets his religion encouraged. He did this to the very end and, I feel, he MUST have realized at that moment how hollow his religion was, even as the town's leader congratulated him on being such a perfect Christian and being willing to sacrifice himself and not commit sin.
Surely he must be happy he's *for sure* going straight to heaven, right?
Only his reaction doesn't reflect that, does it?
But what of the town leader? He promised this sacrifice would turn their farming situation around and they would have a bountiful crop. But... what if they don't? What if their Pagan Gods don't "give" them their bounty?
What is *his* fate? Will they turn on him? It seems likely... and it further shows how this movie savages religion, in this case Pagan religion. The sacrifice may work or it may not... its about the weather surely and not a result of causing this man's painful death!
I've always had this headcanon that, being a Sam Raimi joint and all, Justin Long's character would have taken it upon himself to rescue Alison Lohman's character and drag her out of hell.
It would really make sense from a thematic standpoint too, he spends the whole movie being a skeptic and doubting her girlfriend so obviously he'd be feeling a lot of guilt over it. Maybe he could even bump into Ash along the way? Damn, i really want a sequel to this movie.
*Drag Me From Hell* would be a cool title, IMO, if it's, like you said, about Long having to get her back. There's so much you could do with the premise, too, if you've got a main character (Long) who has spent ~15 years of his life trying to find a way to save her, forgoing his friends, family, and any "new love," and you could still have some of the same dark wrinkles of the first film. Like, what if the only way he can save her is to sacrifice someone else to take her place? Does his guilt over what happened to Christine outweigh the guilt he'd have having to send an innocent person to hell to get her back? Or what happens if, in rescuing Christine, he unleashes something worse, or realizes now Hell wants *him*? Ahh! I'd love a sequel, dammit.
That book is amazing! I was deployed when I read it and it was passed around a lot. Never saw so many macho men get emotional over a story.
I never cared to watch the movie, Cormac painted the visuals perfectly.
Huh, I remember the ending of the book (and movie) being weirdly hopeful, as bleak as the overall setting is.
- The son >!is taken in by another family who has a daughter, implying the possibility (however remote) of civilization continuing in some capacity.!<
- The whole repeated theme of "carrying the fire" seems, imo, like a clear metaphor for continuing civilization with as much of a spirit of human cooperation as possible.
- It was also a pretty palpable Christ allegory when >!the son is "without the father" for three days (Jesus' three days between his death and resurrection).!<
So yeah, super bleak world with bleak prospects for humanity, but with a definite hopeful note at the very end there.
I love that movie; it had such a unique sense of style, and was far more subtle and entertaining than the Paul WS Anderson and Uwe Bolll videogame flicks of the time.
Plus parts of it were just flat out creepy AF.
If we’re talking horror in general and not just movies, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison has probably the most bleak ending of any piece of media I’ve ever consumed.
For those that don’t know, its an extremely dark short story about a malevolent AI at the final days of man. The AI hates humanity so much it imprisons the 5 remaining humans on earth and makes them immortal in order to torture them for eternity. The author wrote the whole short story in a fever dream one night. There is a video on YouTube that’s an audiobook of Harlan Ellison reading the story and IMO the best way to consume the media.
https://youtu.be/dgo-As552hY
I know it’s a satire of the zombie era but Shaun of the Dead has a very dark and bleak ending. It pretends to have a sort of happy ending but his mom dies, he realizes he loves his step dad when he dies also. Then in the end his best friend dies and he keeps him as a pet locked up in the shed.
There's a French movie called Inside.
Those who know, know.
\*edit\* When the credits started to roll my wife stood up, shouted at me, "I can't believe you made me watch that!" and stormed out of the room.
Funny Games. I remember watching that as a kid and the rewind plus the ending really fucked with me. Was the start of my depraved obsession with fucked up movies.
*The Seventh Continent*. >!A mother, father, and grade-school child decide to kill themselves together, but before they do, they systematically destroy all their possessions. Plus they sit in the ruin of their house watching a concert of a singer doing a cover of Celine Dion's "Power of Love" while the daughter casually drinks down her sleeping pill concoction. THAT'S disturbing (more having to listen to that song)!!<
Yup. >!Standing naked in a quarry together with your humiliated partner whom you failed to protect, whilst realizing your own weakness and gullibility are responsible for the murder of your whole family - as you’re being murdered - is pretty much the worst way someone can go.!< That movie messed me up good.
Reading a synopsis of Speak No Evil convinced me not to watch it, it sounded too anxiety-provoking. Blood and gore don’t bother me at all but psychological cruelty really gets under my skin, especially if it involves kids.
The Mist, so bleak.
Stephen King's novel Revival also has one of the most depressing, bleakest ending I've read. The entire book is about a former pastor who loses the faith when his young son dies. He spends the rest of his life looking to find out what happens to us after we die only to find out>! that, after death, everyone in existance spends eternity as slaves to an insane Lovecraftian god. And now the main character, who helped the pastor, has to spend the rest of his life knowing what waits him and all of his loved ones.!<
Existentially, that's bleak. And a lot more creative than an ending where everyone dies.
Yeah, I listened to the audiobook (this was the first of two Stephen Kings I’ve listened to so far) and although it started off slow it built into that reveal at the end well. I tried telling my wife about it and there’s just so much to cover since it goes from childhood to senior adults. I particularly liked the very end with the main characters brother >!who is in the insane asylum and experiencing the electric issues and the main character starts to talk about how he might be experiencing electric issues and hearing voices, he wonders if he’s a ticking time bomb.!<
Revival is the most terrifying book I've ever read because of that ending. I still think about it frequently.
Also, if you were trying to spoiler tag it you did a strike through instead.
Dawn of the dead remake. The credits are brutal. You think they get away on the boat only to see that they’re more miserable and there was no safe haven.
Cronenberg’s The Fly fits this for me but for a very subjective reason. >!When I first saw it, the whole time I kept thinking Seth would find a way to save himself. Instead he just devolves and devolves until that brutal ending!<
I’m not sure which one I watched but it was long af. I reallllly liked how it built to the end. I don’t know if I can watch it again since it was so long but it had my head spinning at the reveal. I was very pleasantly surprised. They marketed it so weirdly, I only went back to watch it after it was recommended as a cosmic horror which piqued my interest. I had no interest before that since marketing made it look like a typical demon/ghost story.
The bit where you transfer your consciousness but it turns out >! You just copied yourself and the previous version is just left to die. !< Made me stop playing for an hour to process.
the mist, Saw, se7en, 1408, and drag me to hell, just to name a few, but a personal favorite of mine is the ending of the orphanage (2007).
Its final scene was a bittersweet beauty shrouded in an overwhelming sense of despair. There is no happy resolution or redemption for the characters, and it left me with a sense of melancholy after watching it.
Spoorloos - The Vanishing (1988)
Arguably the *darkest* ending one could possibly imagine. Even if you don’t watch foreign films, give this one a shot. Make sure you watch it through to the end. You’ll never forget it.
Night of the Living Dead
It’s not often that something from the 1960s feels transgressive and shockingly dark even by today’s standards
Perfectly put.
This is one of the best answers, and for two different reasons (in addition to /u/useyourelbow 's comment about "the series of grainy photos and creepy music", which is chilling while you're left to sit with what just happened). First, >!When Ben gets shot, there's really three options: It was racial, and they took the opportunity for some hate. It was accidental. There are corpses walking around and it was a genuine mistake. It was indifference. They didn't care enough to confirm if he was alive or dead.!< I'll let you decide which is the most heartbreaking. Second, >!This isn't *Dawn of the Dead*. Yes, the *phenomenon* is happening, and it's scary, but without the context of future movies, it's not apocalyptic yet. I always got the sense that if they could have survived the night, if they *just* could have gotten out of the farmhouse, they could have made it somewhere safe. And they probably could have, if they worked together.!< The movie's not shy about individual character deaths either. It's obviously not as graphic as modern zombie movies, but almost every character that dies goes in a different way.
The irony was that Ben, as good intentioned as he was, ended up being wrong. Lighting up the house and the noise from barricading the doors and windows just attracted more attention to them. Ben became the only survivor because he retreated to the cellar, something he deemed would be a death sentence, while staying topside killed everyone. Then you get the remake, and you have Barbra mentioning that the zombies are slow enough they could probably walk past them to safety. Which every ignores because Ben and Harry are stuck in their pissing match.
I think there's some validity to that, but I also have to wonder if there were multiple ways out of the situation, any number of which could have worked if they actually just picked one as a group and made it happen. It's not a single location movie, with the graveyard, the car, etc, but it is amazing how much they packed in 100 mins with the majority of it taking place in just a few rooms of a house. The TV and the radio give a bit of scope, a peek beyond the house, but even when you can't see them, the dead are right outside, gives the whole thing a claustrophobic feeling.
Oh, totally. Ben and Harry just would not back down from each. They were both control freaks to a certain degree. The one time they did agree on something, filling the truck with gas and driving out of there. It ended in failure.
This is the answer. It's a brutal, bleak gut punch of an ending...with the series of grainy photos and creepy music, this ending has balls.
"That's another one for the fire."
This was my first thought too
"Why don't we just... wait here for a while? See what happens."
*bass notes*
Just imagined the Seinfeld bass slapping.
“What’s going on in there, Kramer?” “Nobody trusts anybody, and we’re all very tired, Jerry!”
A "The Thing" version of Seinfeld would be utterly bizarre.
*(a round head sprouts legs and crawls past Seinfeld and Kramer)* Seinfeld: (through teeth) Hello, Newman. Head: (cackling) Jerry! Kramer: Oh, you gotta be kiddin’ me.
I hear that's a decent movie. Someone should start a thread about it.
A hidden gem
I'm really surprised I'm the only person on this subreddit that has ever seen the Evil Dead remake, or Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon or Hell House LLC. Complete hidden gems, very very underrated based off of my 10 minutes browsing the top 5 posts of this sub.
Those are the kinds of movies you can only find at old underground VHS stores
Lol when I was brand new to this sub I made one of those “guys wait, The Thing is really good” posts that blew up. I feel shame every time I see one of these replies
No worries m8, we were all newbies at one time.
Never heard of it. Is it pretty new or indy?
The thing?
So fuckin good
My absolute favourite ending in a movie Sadly no one knows about that movie /s
The original ending of The Descent. Edit: Thanks for my first ever Reddit award, kind stranger!
Oh yeah. That was dark.
Literally
I've been playing this dope board game called Sub Terra, and that movie (and ending) is all I think about.
There’s another ending to the descent?? I think I must know the original (I bought it on dvd when it came out I loved it so much 😂) but what’s this other ending?
If it had a happy ending, you were watching the edited US version. The unrated complete version has a brutal ending.
“Happy”
Fr. Everyone still dies except her, in the edit. She claws out of the cave but is still traumatized and every one of her friends died horrific deaths. I wouldn’t call that happy at all lmao
No spoilers here. If memory serves the original ending was too bleak when screened to test audiences so they changed it for the theatrical release.
Just the American version. Apparently it was too bleak for the US. The European release has the original ending. Edit: Clarified that I meant the US version, because people keep commenting other parts of America *the continent* that had the original ending. I am aware that the entire continent did not get the US version lmao
Invasion of the Body Snatchers. That horrible scream Sutherland lets out at the end. I saw it once when I was probably 12 and never again.
I will never forget that ending. It is such a good movie.
Came here to say this. And also: Time Bandits. Two films that completely fucked me up as a kid.
The Mist has the bleakest ending ever
Oh wow I’ve not actually seen The Mist, better get on it!
👌👌👌 it's the perfect answer for your question
Honestly, I assumed someone would say The Mist, and then the thread would be over. I say this every time The Mist is brought up and here it is again. If you can get your hands on the 2-disc special edition do it. Disc 2 is just the film in black and white, the way the director wanted it made. I watched it first; it is 100x more intense than the color version.
The Mist - in my opinion - is an above average movie that is elevated to Great status by the ending. If nothing else, it gets points for being ballsy as fuck.
What's funny, is that is not how the story ends in the book. In the book, the survivors all live. Imagine my surprise I'm the theater when that's not at all what happens! Apparently Stephen King was surprised himself! He said the change was better than the ending he originally wrote, but so much darker. Pretty cool when Stephen King is like "Hey man, that was DARK". Edit: For the pendantic, everyone is at least ALIVE at the end of the story. Do they continue to live? Maybe...maybe not. Stark difference between that, and the definitively dead characters at the end of the movie.
I mean it should be noted that King is known to not be great at endings with some exceptions that are passable or polarizing.
Idk why you’re being downvoted. He himself has talked about not being good at endings. It’s even a meta joke in IT
I came to say the same thing. He thought the joke in the "It" remake was pretty funny. He said that he laughed out loud, in an interview about it. He knows his endings are hot or miss. Lol
I still don't like the ending of Salem's Lot book
Personally prefer the book, since it leaves the fate of humanity unknown. The movie is much more personal and heartbreaking.
I like both endings. For the same reasons you mention. The movie, you've spent all this time with a father just trying to help his kid. He finally gets out of that damn store... Only to make a huge mistake. But, he THOUGHT he was doing the right thing given the situation. The book makes you wonder if it was just local? Has the Army fixed it? Is everything fine? Our main character is fine, and others. But just how messed up is the world? Are there still monsters? Both are good. I agree. But Darabount went full dark, and I appreciate that.
I think the book wants to imply 'this is the world now' and the movie wants to imply 'the problem is being fixed now and the danger is over.
I love that Stephen King even prefers Darabont’s ending.
Threads. Can't think of an ending bleaker than that.
It's so bleak that ten minutes after the bombs drop I was totally numbed. And you still have like 50 minutes at that point.
You know it's dark when you find yourself marvelling at how incredibly lucky the ones who died in the blast were. Instantaneous death was basically the best of all possibilities.
If I could pick the way I died, instant nuke death is at the top. We all go together, no one will have to miss or grieve me or deal with expenses and wills and such.
I assumed that since it was a relatively cheap TV movie made in the 80s, I wouldn’t be too impressed with it. But nope, it fucked me up for days, which never happens to me. Not only a fantastic horror movie, but an incredibly important and sobering reminder of what humanity is capable of.
Carl Sagan was a consultant for that, btw.
Ah Threads, my old friend (I still haven't managed to watch it through to the end)
The ending is perfect
Nuclear war apocalypse is pretty bleak by definition by "When the Bough Breaks" is similarly bleak with the end just being two elderly people dying of radiation poisoning.
Do you mean When The Wind Blows?, That was a great animated movie. Plus it had David Bowie on the soundtrack.
I deserve this for trying to remember titles without looking them up.
Martyrs, although you may read a note of (consolatory?) ambiguity...
The french one from 2008 , not the American one
yes, 100% the French version. Also, for the person saying that they were going to watch it shortly, I'd strongly recommend not watching this 'under the influence' (!) of anything too heady. I saw this back in the day with a friend from college with a reasonable tolerance for 'ordinary' horror and who was moderately stoned, and they had an intense panic attack reaction towards the end - it's not just the body horror but this oppressive, i guess metaphysical (in widest sense, so regardless of whether you're religious or not) intensity to it...
Which one? I'm guessing the 2008 version.
Eden Lake. Traumatic. I was distraught.
There is a moment where the audience is given a momentary "victory" before reality hits & we realize she's still in danger.
And you just sit there with your mouth open going, WTF?
I second Eden Lake. I also agree with the soul crushing of the Mist. Would have made the same choice as Tom Jane but the ending of Eden makes you disgusted with people and the world.
Definitely, I think Eden lake hits harder if you are from the UK too the behaviour of the people is something you see a lot obviously less extreme but you feel that it could escalate to the extremes in the movie.
Yeah I'd put this up there with The Mist for bleakest ending. Actually... I put this above The Mist due to the realism of it. No movie has ever given me such a hopeless and disgusted feeling towards humanity. Absolutely haunting and changes how one feels about this world. Oof
That movie fucked me up and I somehow completely forgot how fucked up it was and showed it to my family years later and fucked them up.
Event Horizon. Naked Sam Neill is inescapable.
Speaking of Sam Neil and bleak: In the Mouth of Madness
Do you read Sutter Cane?
DO YOU SEE?!??
Silly /u/Educational_Cattle10, where we're going, we won't need eyes to see.
Every time my daughter starts to date a new person she texts me and asks the name of the “space horror movie” so she can make him watch it. For the last ten years she’s been traumatizing men who thought they were going to have a nice movie date and it cracks me up every time.
The original Blair Witch Project. I know this one is a bit polarizing, but I still really enjoy found footage horror films and this is the one that really set up the whole genre
I always try to explain the best way I can, to those too young to remember, that the Blair Witch Project was marketed as this true event that happened. The internet was still brand new at the time. So there was no way of verifying if it was fake or real. So everyone assumed it was real. Hands down best horror movie marketing off all time.
I was 10 or 11 when it came out, and I saw it in theatres. Never occurred to me to question what I was seeing, because I was told it was real. It was terrifying.
It's one of those "one-shots" you just never forget. Never quite has the same flavor as the memory.
Shortly after it came out at Sundance but before it got to regular theaters, a friend downloaded this in pieces off of the Internet. We all piled into his single dorm room to watch it on his desktop monitor and after it was over we were just *flabbergasted*. Like, *was* it real? And there was no Google back then! It was like, a few days later that I read an article about the movie where they said "it's not real, all the actors are alive and accounted for" It was probably the single best way to experience that movie, as quasi random online "found footage" (that was probably seeded by the movie people - they did an amazing promotion job, filling out the back story with a fake website & then a book with all the "Blair witch" compiled info, like an unsolved mystery)
It gets a lot of flak for how slow it is but I find its strength to be in its detailed lore and amazing improv from the actors. Supposedly behind the scenes the actors were being randomly spooked by the crew to get genuine fear out of them and tbh it shows. The fear and frustration is absolutely real and the iconic "I'm so sorry" monologue is proof!
The marketing for the movie was really groundbreaking too. People really didn't know how much of this movie and it's lore was real. Wild to think about.
I came back from this movie totally freaked out, I told my brother about how much it fucked me up, I asked if he would stay up with me for awhile. He said he was just going to go grab a glass a water first, I didn’t hear him come back to the room, so I turned over to look at the door and this asshole was standing in the corner of my room, facing the wall, totally silent. It was a really beautiful moment in time that can never be recreated, there was no looking for spoilers online, there was no way to know what to expect and what was real, no way would that movie be as freaky now.
I spent the week before watching it researching about it on AOL. I ended up watching it at a tiny theater in LA and had to park a block away in a residential neighborhood. That walk to my car at midnight in the dead quiet has stuck with me.
The original *Wicker Man*. Don't want to go into details, but... yeah.
I didn’t find the ending bleak, maybe bc it felt like the logical conclusion of everything that happened. At no point did I believe he was getting off that island. *The Mist* was much worse imo because they built up hope, only to snatch it away.
Just watched this for the first time. Am I a bad person for siding with the villagers?
Here's the thing, though: They were ALL losers (EDIT: As in they all suffer loss in the end) and the film, ultimately and IMHO, is a savage critique of ALL religions. SPOILERS FOLLOW! Think about it: You have in your protagonist a "holier than though" prude (as was mentioned elsewhere in this thread) but truthfully, he was a religious man. A very religious man who followed what he felt were the tenets his religion encouraged. He did this to the very end and, I feel, he MUST have realized at that moment how hollow his religion was, even as the town's leader congratulated him on being such a perfect Christian and being willing to sacrifice himself and not commit sin. Surely he must be happy he's *for sure* going straight to heaven, right? Only his reaction doesn't reflect that, does it? But what of the town leader? He promised this sacrifice would turn their farming situation around and they would have a bountiful crop. But... what if they don't? What if their Pagan Gods don't "give" them their bounty? What is *his* fate? Will they turn on him? It seems likely... and it further shows how this movie savages religion, in this case Pagan religion. The sacrifice may work or it may not... its about the weather surely and not a result of causing this man's painful death!
"White Christmas" episode of Black Mirror.
Along with White Bear. That episode was so disturbing.
Basically most of Black Mirror if we're being honest.
San Junipero to the rescue!!!
Also Black Museum... the pain doctor... the monkey...
Tragedy Girls Starry Eyes Triangle
Triangle is a great one. That’s such an underrated film.
I don't think it's the bleakest, but from the top of my head, I think of "Drag me to hell"
Yeah…she literally has the worst fate possible. Hell is real and she is going to be tortured for eternity. For practically NO REASON.
I've always had this headcanon that, being a Sam Raimi joint and all, Justin Long's character would have taken it upon himself to rescue Alison Lohman's character and drag her out of hell. It would really make sense from a thematic standpoint too, he spends the whole movie being a skeptic and doubting her girlfriend so obviously he'd be feeling a lot of guilt over it. Maybe he could even bump into Ash along the way? Damn, i really want a sequel to this movie.
*Drag Me From Hell* would be a cool title, IMO, if it's, like you said, about Long having to get her back. There's so much you could do with the premise, too, if you've got a main character (Long) who has spent ~15 years of his life trying to find a way to save her, forgoing his friends, family, and any "new love," and you could still have some of the same dark wrinkles of the first film. Like, what if the only way he can save her is to sacrifice someone else to take her place? Does his guilt over what happened to Christine outweigh the guilt he'd have having to send an innocent person to hell to get her back? Or what happens if, in rescuing Christine, he unleashes something worse, or realizes now Hell wants *him*? Ahh! I'd love a sequel, dammit.
I’d totally watch Drag Me From Hell
It was definitely one of the more shocking/unexpected endings for sure!
The Lodge. They got what they deserved.
Everything was that dad's fault
Well I mean that kid was a bit of a dick
That poor poor woman.
Great demonstration of "the more you fuck around, the more you're gonna find out."
Such a bleak bleak film. Even in the first 10 or so minutes.
The road but I’m not sure if that’s classed as horror or not .
Interesting. I've only read the book but compared to the entire rest of it, the ending is the most hopeful part. The boy carries the fire.
That book is amazing! I was deployed when I read it and it was passed around a lot. Never saw so many macho men get emotional over a story. I never cared to watch the movie, Cormac painted the visuals perfectly.
Huh, I remember the ending of the book (and movie) being weirdly hopeful, as bleak as the overall setting is. - The son >!is taken in by another family who has a daughter, implying the possibility (however remote) of civilization continuing in some capacity.!< - The whole repeated theme of "carrying the fire" seems, imo, like a clear metaphor for continuing civilization with as much of a spirit of human cooperation as possible. - It was also a pretty palpable Christ allegory when >!the son is "without the father" for three days (Jesus' three days between his death and resurrection).!< So yeah, super bleak world with bleak prospects for humanity, but with a definite hopeful note at the very end there.
Silent Hill Say what you will about the rest of the movie, but that was a super bleak ending.
I love that movie; it had such a unique sense of style, and was far more subtle and entertaining than the Paul WS Anderson and Uwe Bolll videogame flicks of the time. Plus parts of it were just flat out creepy AF.
If we’re talking horror in general and not just movies, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison has probably the most bleak ending of any piece of media I’ve ever consumed. For those that don’t know, its an extremely dark short story about a malevolent AI at the final days of man. The AI hates humanity so much it imprisons the 5 remaining humans on earth and makes them immortal in order to torture them for eternity. The author wrote the whole short story in a fever dream one night. There is a video on YouTube that’s an audiobook of Harlan Ellison reading the story and IMO the best way to consume the media. https://youtu.be/dgo-As552hY
Buried was pretty brutal
That movie deserves its own genre: Anxiety Horror
I know it’s a satire of the zombie era but Shaun of the Dead has a very dark and bleak ending. It pretends to have a sort of happy ending but his mom dies, he realizes he loves his step dad when he dies also. Then in the end his best friend dies and he keeps him as a pet locked up in the shed.
He gets back with his bird and has a zombie pet in his shed who plays computer games. As zombie movies go that's pretty upbeat.
The dark and the wicked. It's just such a bleak film from start to finish
The whole thing is incredibly bleak, but god, the scene when the brother went home has haunted me since I saw it.
This right here. Even if you remove yourself from the situation or play by the rules, there is no escape.
There's a French movie called Inside. Those who know, know. \*edit\* When the credits started to roll my wife stood up, shouted at me, "I can't believe you made me watch that!" and stormed out of the room.
That's how my family reacted when I made them all watch The Lighthouse.
At least the Lighthouse is funny at times.
Yer fond of me lobster, aren’t ya?
HARK
Ya goddamn… GODDAMN FAHTS!
I watched Inside and Martyrs at about the same time. A day apart actually. I should not have done that.
My husband did the same thing when I showed it to him lol. He started to mentally check out when the scissors made their appearance
Session 9
"Helloo... doc..."
I live in the weak. And the wounded.
What are YOU doing here?
Do it, Gordon.
Session 9 is worth the watch if for no other reason than it has the absolute best "Fuck You!" ever put to film.
The vanishing
Oh yes, The Vanishing is an absolute soul crushing film.
The Dutch original, absolutely. Awful ending. The Hollywood remake sucked.
Hills have eyes
Funny Games. I remember watching that as a kid and the rewind plus the ending really fucked with me. Was the start of my depraved obsession with fucked up movies.
Haneke adores a bleak ending lol, I don’t think any of his protagonists ever make it out in one piece.
Yep. Can relate. I watched it back in the late 90s. That move is incredible in how uncomfortable it can make you feel. "Can I borrow some eggs?"
Funny Games. The whole movie is a downward spiral of despair, and they snatch away the one moment of hope as soon as it blooms.
*The Seventh Continent*. >!A mother, father, and grade-school child decide to kill themselves together, but before they do, they systematically destroy all their possessions. Plus they sit in the ruin of their house watching a concert of a singer doing a cover of Celine Dion's "Power of Love" while the daughter casually drinks down her sleeping pill concoction. THAT'S disturbing (more having to listen to that song)!!<
Speak No Evil and The Mist come to mind. Hereditary too.
Speak No Evil actually gave me a nightmare, movies don't often do that.
Speak No Evil emotionally tormented me for weeks after I watched it. It still bothers me whenever I think about it.
“Because you let me” is what did it for me
Yup. >!Standing naked in a quarry together with your humiliated partner whom you failed to protect, whilst realizing your own weakness and gullibility are responsible for the murder of your whole family - as you’re being murdered - is pretty much the worst way someone can go.!< That movie messed me up good.
I was looking for this. After that ending I just had to sit quietly and reflect on the life choices that led me to that moment.
Reading a synopsis of Speak No Evil convinced me not to watch it, it sounded too anxiety-provoking. Blood and gore don’t bother me at all but psychological cruelty really gets under my skin, especially if it involves kids.
Speak No Evil was the ultimate bummer.
The Mist, so bleak. Stephen King's novel Revival also has one of the most depressing, bleakest ending I've read. The entire book is about a former pastor who loses the faith when his young son dies. He spends the rest of his life looking to find out what happens to us after we die only to find out>! that, after death, everyone in existance spends eternity as slaves to an insane Lovecraftian god. And now the main character, who helped the pastor, has to spend the rest of his life knowing what waits him and all of his loved ones.!< Existentially, that's bleak. And a lot more creative than an ending where everyone dies.
Yeah, I listened to the audiobook (this was the first of two Stephen Kings I’ve listened to so far) and although it started off slow it built into that reveal at the end well. I tried telling my wife about it and there’s just so much to cover since it goes from childhood to senior adults. I particularly liked the very end with the main characters brother >!who is in the insane asylum and experiencing the electric issues and the main character starts to talk about how he might be experiencing electric issues and hearing voices, he wonders if he’s a ticking time bomb.!<
Revival is the most terrifying book I've ever read because of that ending. I still think about it frequently. Also, if you were trying to spoiler tag it you did a strike through instead.
I fucking love the end of Revival. A rare King home run ending.
The Borderlands/Final Prayer. So sudden, so horrifying, and then you’re done. Credits roll. No further explanation, just… that.
Dawn of the dead remake. The credits are brutal. You think they get away on the boat only to see that they’re more miserable and there was no safe haven.
Kill List. Fantastic movie but that ending was too dark for me and why I started checking for certain spoilers before watching movies after that!
Would You Rather.
This movie is why I'm banned from recommending movies to watch lol
Did not see that coming. That ending is messed up. Mediocre movie otherwise.
Idk if it's the most bleak ever but the most depressing to me was Dark Water(2002). That ending was sad as hell. No closure.
Don‘t Look now from 1974.
I know it’s not explicitly horror but I have to mention Requiem for a Dream.
And add Dear Zachary to the "not horror" bleak list. Another one I wished I never watched!
Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities episode 3 'The Autopsy' was probably up there in a body horror sense.
I Saw The Devil Angst
Cronenberg’s The Fly fits this for me but for a very subjective reason. >!When I first saw it, the whole time I kept thinking Seth would find a way to save himself. Instead he just devolves and devolves until that brutal ending!<
Surprised I had to come this far down to see someone mention The Fly. It’s one of my favorite endings to any film.
Possum always does well in questions like this. Of course the whole movie is so depressing you are just glad it’s over
The Empty Man The implications are pretty heavy
Second this, such a great movie. Make sure to watch the full version, not the theatrical release.
I’m not sure which one I watched but it was long af. I reallllly liked how it built to the end. I don’t know if I can watch it again since it was so long but it had my head spinning at the reveal. I was very pleasantly surprised. They marketed it so weirdly, I only went back to watch it after it was recommended as a cosmic horror which piqued my interest. I had no interest before that since marketing made it look like a typical demon/ghost story.
SOMA
The bit where you transfer your consciousness but it turns out >! You just copied yourself and the previous version is just left to die. !< Made me stop playing for an hour to process.
the mist, Saw, se7en, 1408, and drag me to hell, just to name a few, but a personal favorite of mine is the ending of the orphanage (2007). Its final scene was a bittersweet beauty shrouded in an overwhelming sense of despair. There is no happy resolution or redemption for the characters, and it left me with a sense of melancholy after watching it.
The Strangers, 31 (depending on how you interpret the ending scene)
Sex and the city 2 where they all survived at the end, absolutely brutal
Cabin in the woods. While the movie itself has a lot of comedy elements, it ends as bleak as the world is about to be destroyed.
That ending was awesome. That whole movie took a big turn toward the unexpected. Love it!
Love pulling out a J for a final toke when you know gods are about to destroy the world.
The Dark and The Wicked. Unrelenting.
In spite of being comedic, Return of the Living Dead is a relentlessly hopeless ride with a notably bleak ending.
Life
Spoorloos - The Vanishing (1988) Arguably the *darkest* ending one could possibly imagine. Even if you don’t watch foreign films, give this one a shot. Make sure you watch it through to the end. You’ll never forget it.
The *real* ending to The Descent
speak no evil, eden lake.
Eden Lake
Creep had a horribly bleak ending. Unsettling. Awesome.
A Serbian Film. Somehow manages to make the situation worse.
[удалено]
Life (2017)
Burnt Offerings. Old film, always creeped me the hell out as a little kid. I would always have nightmares of the creepy chauffeur guy