8 Horrifying Movie Endings and What Probably Happens Next
Coleman McClung
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We’ve all experienced a movie where the ending came along and gut-punched us so that the film’s title was seared into our memory for a very long time. That feeling is what we hope for every time we sit down in a darkened room and whatever sized screen we’re in front of flickers to life.
The films on this list are more than that; they’re mostly great movies with endings that sneak up on you and leave your mind reeling before smash-cutting to credits. What’s frustrating about that experience is that we immediately want to know how the characters dealt with (or couldn’t deal with) the story-altering revelations that happened right before the cut to black.
I plan on delving into those final moments and then imagining a world where a sequel was created that starts directly after the final scene of each film. My one rule is to ignore the plots of any actual sequels that were eventually released and start completely from scratch. With that in mind, let’s start off with-
Drag Me to Hell
Not often do high-profile directors go back to the low-budget genre work that kicked off their career, and even if they do, it doesn’t usually produce the greatest results. This is not the case for Sam Raimi, who returned to the slapstick horror of his earlier films with 2009’s Drag Me to Hell.
The movie is arguably a modern classic, and the ending shocked everyone who was rooting for the bubbly protagonist to succeed and ride off with Justin Long into the sunset. Soon after the lead character, Christine, believes she has broken the curse placed on her, it is revealed that her boyfriend, Clay, accidentally kept the object she needed to pass on to save herself. As she backs up in horror, she falls onto a set of train tracks just as an engine roars around the corner. Before it reaches her, the ground opens up and numerous nightmarish hands pull her down into the flames of hell, all while her boyfriend looks on frozen in disbelief.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quY0mRlL5FQ]
After grieving over the loss of his future wife, Clay goes back to the fortune teller to learn the rest of the story. In a fit of rage, he tracks down the gypsy’s family and publicly assaults one of the sons in a shopping mall. Beaten and shamed, the gypsy boy curses Clay using the object he still carries on him every day: the engagement ring he was going to propose to Christine with. He has three days…
Pet Sematary
I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have a story about this movie scarring them for life as a kid or keeping their own kids up at night for weeks after watching it. Released in 1989, the film was originally supposed to be directed by horror legend George A. Romero, who bought the rights from author Stephen King in 1984 but became too busy with his film Monkey Shines to direct the undead thriller. It opened big, despite a cold reception from most critics of the time.
Pet Cemetery ends with the main character, Louis, killing his–back from the dead–toddler son, Gage, and dragging his wife’s corpse up to be buried at the forbidden Indian gravesite. He has gone insane with grief, and when his mutilated wife returns to life that night, he embraces her lovingly. She picks up a nearby knife, and as the screen cuts to black, we hear Louis scream in pain and the credits start to roll.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1Dnrd4pvTo]
Rachel has just murdered her husband and is still a disfigured living zombie of evil. What does she do next? Bury her husband in the forbidden Indian gravesite as well, of course. After he rises from the dead, the couple engages in a “Bonny and Clyde” style murder trip back to Chicago so that they can put the family back together by retrieving their daughter, Ellie. The little girl is plagued with more nightmares warning her to run away before they get there, but she doesn’t know what to do. When her parents finally arrive it becomes a Home Alone-esque fight for survival, as Louis and Rachel don’t want a daughter who doesn’t share their undead tendencies.
The Witch
Sitting in a dark theater watching the end of The Witch will tell you everything you need to know about the movie. Look left or right, and you can easily count the number of people who are flat-out refusing to look up at the screen. The 2015 film is unnerving and shocking at times but remains a solid folktale taking us back into the fears and superstitions of a young, Puritan-infested America.
Her entire family dead, Thomasin sits at the dinner table alone in the fading light. Making up her mind, she walks out to the stable–approaches Black Philip the goat–and begins to speak to him. He horrifyingly speaks back, revealing the creature to be Satan himself, in the flesh. He offers her the chance to see the world and have everything she’s ever dreamed of, if only she signs her name in his black book. Thomasin does so and takes her first steps into the abhorrent life of a puritanical-styled witch.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKHnVkAMiyg]
Thomasin lands naked next to the fire she had just been dancing above. The other young witches are gone and the sun is just starting to rise behind the treetops. She returns to her empty home and packs up everything of value. Loading the family cart, she takes off in search of the closest settlement. After days of traveling, she arrives in a small township where she lies about her background and begins a new life–as a witch in hiding. The name of the settlement is obvious: Salem, home of the infamous witch trials.
The Mist
This is not the first or last time Frank Darabont’s The Mist will show up on a list of movies with shocking endings, and that’s because no one expected it to go as far as it did at the end of the film. What starts out as a classic tale of men and woman turning on each other when backed into a corner becomes a bleak reminder that most stories don’t have a happy ending.
After driving for what could have been days, David, his son, and the two other survivors finally run out of gas. Instead of dying a painful and horrific death, they decide to have David shoot them–one by one–to save them from an even worse fate. He does this, including his young son in the traumatizing mercy killing. Out of bullets, he leaves the car and prepares to die at the tentacles of one of the otherworldly creatures. Instead, the mist recedes and a military caravan arrives along with some familiar faces from earlier in the film. Realizing that his son and the others were moments away from rescue, David breaks down in horror.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktqNNsVJhUE]
The Army takes David away, and he ends up in a retrofitted high school gym acting as a refugee camp. Grief-stricken, he tries to end his life multiple times, but he’s not the first one to try it and the military is prepared, watching everyone carefully. Anything that could be used to harm themselves or others is removed, and the survivors begin to cope with the guilt of still being alive. Unfortunately, the Army doesn’t have quite the advantage we thought they did, and The Mist pushes back, engulfing the gymnasium housing the survivors and the personnel treating them. Before long, people begin to turn on each other as the creatures attempt to get inside and David relives the nightmare all over again.
The Omen (1976)
The Omen is a film that sticks with you, even though the movie itself doesn’t have a lot of the normal horror trappings audiences are used to. Just like Rosemary’s Baby, it’s the concept that pumps the movie full of life and forces you to watch every scene looking for new information. It set the bar for creepy children and asks you to sympathize with a parent’s decision to kill their only child–for a good reason, of course.
The ending is fairly straightforward compared others in this article. After his wife is killed, Robert Thorne discovers that his child is the Antichrist and takes Damien, along with seven holy daggers, off to a church to kill him. On the way, he drives like a madman trying to keep hold of the unruly kid, which attracts the attention of the local police who give chase. As he raises the first knife in the church, the police enter and shoot him cold after he refuses to comply with their orders to drop the weapon. The final shot of the film shows Damien standing next to his adopted parents’ graves with his new caretaker, the President of the United States.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2V0x9plJF8]
After the President leaves office and Damien is a bit older, I think the young Antichrist will use his new father’s influence to meet the greatest political minds on the planet. He’ll win them over with his genius and charms and will be heralded as a diplomatic prodigy. Once he enters the political arena proper, Damien will broker peace between Israel and Palestine, talk China into freeing Taiwan, etc. By his late-twenties, he’ll be world renowned for his charismatic speeches and strong religious views. Religions will be unified under his direction and twisted into easily controlled denominations that bicker with each other constantly.
With his young mastery of economics and constitutional law, he will spearhead the most successful bipartisan agreement to amend the Constitution in U.S. history, an amendment that removes the age limit for Presidential nominees. The next election, no one is surprised when the incredibly young, well-spoken son of a former President carries 90% of the vote.
Damien climbs the steps to Air Force One for the first time as President, and an unearthly trumpet blast echoes from the heavens.
The Shining (1980)
So much has been written about Stanley Kubrick’s horror masterpiece that it’s almost redundant to discuss it in-depth at all anymore. It’s a timeless classic that always offers something new on every re-watch. While much has also been said of the differences between Kubrick’s vision and Stephen King’s original thriller, the key point I’d like to focus on is how a major change made to the ending of the film actually leads to much more terrifying possibilities after the final reveal.
Jack Torrence’s violent rampage has ended and his son, Danny, makes it safely into his mother’s snow-covered arms. They leap into an off-road vehicle and race through the blizzard away from the hotel and its grim, grisly inhabitants. The next morning, Jack is frozen solid and we’re taken back into the Overlook one last time. Revealed during multiple slow-moving shots, we close in on a photograph taken during a party in 1921. In the picture, hundreds of people are posing for the photograph in the Overlook hotel’s ballroom. Front and center is Jack Torrence, who is proven to have “always been the caretaker.”
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fN-Xjpd-qE]
Jack Torrence wakes up in a seedy hotel room. He’s confused and has no memory of how he got there, or even who he is beyond a name and an idle feeling that a bottle of whisky solves most problems in life. Jack starts looking for answers but quickly settles into a life of odd jobs and traveling across the country wandering aimlessly. At one of the many bars he frequents while on the road, he meets a young, naïve woman and immediately feels drawn to her. Her name is Caroline, and after six months of flirting followed by wild nights of passion, they settle down and get married. As the honeymoon comes to an end, Caroline finds out she’s pregnant and in a show of his commitment to her, Jack gives up drinking. She’s thrilled and couldn’t be happier with her burgeoning new family.
Years later, Jack has not lived up to his promise exceedingly well. He’s slipped up more than a few times when it’s come to alcohol, and whenever Caroline has tried to help, he’s become angry and even violent at times. He’s sick of her nagging, and their two young children are caught in the crossfire of their constant fighting. Adding to the stress of it all, Jack has been out of work for months and they were never well off to begin with. Struggling with his choices in life, Jack decides to turn over a new leaf and be the husband and father he’s always wanted to be. He might have even found a job: watching over a closed down ski resort in the mountains of Colorado. The whole family could grow closer than ever, and he’d finally have the peace and quiet to finish writing his novel.
The Purge
When trailers for The Purge came out, audiences were immediately on board with the premise, a society that “purged” its need for aggression and violence once a year, and the underlying plot of the film, where a government can weed out the homeless and poverty-stricken portion of the population that doesn’t pay taxes. It was morally reprehensible and a satire on how many Americans actually think–hopefully–to a lesser degree. Exactly what a lot of horror films strive to be, but unfortunately, confining the plot to a single household disappointed a lot of fans who wanted to see the full chaos of this universe.
The ending has the Sandins wounded, but alive, thanks to the mysterious stranger they almost turned over to the intruders from the beginning of the film. Mary sits with their murderous neighbors held captive until the sirens signal the end of this year’s Purge. Everyone (alive) goes home, and the Sandins are left to deal with the night’s traumatizing events and what they had to do to survive. The morning news declares this the most successful Purge yet.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEfbID-2TlQ]
If the night has taught James Sandin anything, it’s that being at the top isn’t always the healthiest endeavor when you live in a country that lets everyone target each other once a year and get away with murder. So, he quits his job and moves his family out to a small town in the Midwest. Getting a new job with a security firm that caters to businesses allows him to work from home, and he’s become the family man he’s always wanted to be. His kids are making new friends, he actually likes his daughter’s new boyfriend, and his wife is beginning to get over her trust issues and return to the woman he married.
One year later, the family settles in to wait out another Purge. They’ve been told that it’s different in rural parts of the country. Minor squabbles are worked out occasionally, but for the most part it stays quiet. Unfortunately, kids will be kids, and unbeknownst to the rest of the family, young Charlie has been getting bullied at school. The high school upperclassmen come for him that night, and even though the Sandins have a much better security system than before, setting the entire house on fire sends them fleeing onto the back roads of the countryside with a hoard of sociopathic teenagers in modified pickup trucks following close behind. Eventually ditching the family SUV, the Sandins escape into the woods. Surviving the night will depend on whether they can outrun and out-think a group of kids who’ve been hunting since they were in elementary school.
The Thing (1982)
John Carpenter’s remake of The Thing from Another World scared the hell out of audiences in the early 80’s. Using state-of-the-art special effects, and thorough understanding of how plot structure can build tension and dread, Carpenter made a film that still plays on our worst nightmares. Trusting the person next to you is no longer the safest option, no matter how well you know them.
At the end of the film, MacReady has just blown up the monstrous Blair–along with the base–and is sitting in a snow bank nearby among the wreckage. Out of the blizzard Childs, who hasn’t been seen since the generator was sabotaged, reappears and is questioned about his whereabouts. He sits across from MacReady. and the two discuss their distrust of one another before sharing a drink and deciding to “see what happens.”
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GA4Ozqt7338]
This is one of those movie endings that begs to be discussed as the credits roll. Was Childs the Thing? Maybe a safety net the creature created so that it could survive the explosive final confrontation? Was MacReady switched out somehow after the explosion? I can’t give an answer to any of those questions, but no matter which one turns out to be the alien, it does survive and manage to kill the last crew member. Sorry, Kurt Russell.
Abandoning its plan to hibernate, the Thing travels across the Arctic wasteland, barely alive. It survives long enough to reach the coast and immediately starts devouring any animal it finds, multiplying into a “pack” of creatures. Unable to leave the continent, but feeling much stronger than before, it finally goes into hibernation. After years of sleep, a huge ocean liner landing on the coast finally awakens the alien. The Thing(s) wait until the cargo, a new scientific expedition, departs the boat and heads inland. Using the flurry of activity to hide its boarding of the vessel, the creatures begin infiltrating the hundred-plus crew, desperately trying to remain hidden until the boat sails back out to sea and docks at a larger port where the real invasion can begin.
