10 Most Tragic Horror Movie Endings

10 Most Tragic Horror Movie Endings

Horror movies often end on a shock twist or a terrifying final jump scare. However, some horror movies close with bleak and tragic endings.

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It has become almost an expectation for horror movies to close with a shock or twist ending. By their very nature, horror movies are designed to shock and scare the audience.

Many of these movies see good overcoming evil, sometimes through the iconic final girl trope or through a heroic or devastating act of self sacrifice. That being said, some horror movies are determined keep the scares going right until the credits roll which often means leaving the main characters in tragic and traumatic circumstances.

The Skeleton Key

While the tone of The Skeleton Key is unsettling and mysterious, its scares are much more subtle and low key than some other horror movies. There are several hints throughout that some kind of witchcraft or Voodoo is taking place in the house where Caroline is working but the movies’s shocking ending confirms it.

After a body swapping reveal, Caroline is forced to fight for her life and while it certainly feels like she’s going to get away, she suffers a fate arguably worse than death. The elderly Violet forcefully swaps bodies with Christine, with the latter left paralyzed and unable to do anything about her newfound situation. The tragic and dark twist at the end of this movie leaves its “final girl” alive but trapped and helpless which is what makes this one so memorable.

Hereditary

Unlike some of the other movies on this list, Hereditary hits a level of tragedy in the middle and never really lets up from there on out. The main theme of the movie is grief and its effects on the Graham family.

While Charlie’s death mid-way through certainly sets things on a downward spiral for the characters, the final act is steeped in tragedy with all three of the remaining Graham family members succumbing to grief and the demonic forces closing in on them. Steve is brutally burned alive, Annie is viciously decapitated and Peter is possessed by the demon king, Paimon. Watching the remaining family members quickly picked off one by one is devastating and secures this as one of the best horror movies of the 2010s.

The Strangers

The Strangers sees a trio of masked assailants break into the home of a young couple and cruelly terrorize them. A cat-and-mouse game ensues between the couple and the home invaders, with things escalating from bad to worse as the movie progresses.

The audience are fully expecting at least one of the victims to make it out alive but in a cruel twist, the couple are captured and killed. Seeing the couple callously stabbed to death is a brutal and hopeless way to end the movie. However, what makes this ending so tragic is the complete meaninglessness of it; the masked intruders have no motive, are calm and collected when carrying out the murders and after, continue on their day as if nothing happened at all.

Drag Me To Hell

Drag Me To Hell is more of a dark comedy than a strict horror with a lot of the movie being intentionally outrageous and over the top while still remaining terrifying. The overall tone of the movie though is what makes the ending all the more shocking and disturbing. After ridiculously fighting the old woman who cursed her with a stapler, the audience cannot prepare themselves for Christine’s eventual fate.

Just as she thinks she is free of the curse and gets ready to make a fresh start, Christine falls back onto the train tracks and the ground opens up with devilish hands dragging her down below. Christine’s cries for help and her boyfriend’s confused and grief-stricken reaction leave the audience completely taken aback by the deliciously miserable ending to this otherwise fun movie.

Sinister

In Sinister, Ellison moves his unwitting family into the site of a grisly family murder in order to get inspired for a new book he’s working on. It soon becomes apparent that these murders are the latest in a chain and a more supernatural force is that play. In supernatural horror movies, the viewer is often left wondering why the victims don’t just simply move but in a clever twist, this actually works against this family and secures their gruesome fates.

The movie ends with Ellison’s daughter killing the rest of her family and then being taken off by the demon Bagul who is one of the scariest horror movie entities of all time. The ending is particularly upsetting as Ellison put his work above his family and ultimately inadvertently causes their deaths; while the majority of the slaughter takes place off screen, the young girl killing her own family is chilling.

Funny Games

One of the most well known subgenres of horror is home invasion which is exactly what Funny Games presents itself as at first. A couple and their young son are cruelly tormented by two deranged man; however, in one of the best horror movie twists, one of the intruders is able to use a remote to rewind time in one scene and stop the other being killed. This moment leaves the viewer shaken as it is clear the family stand no chance of survival as their tormentors have this peculiar advantage over them.

After killing the whole family, there is a knock at the door and one of the men smirks at the camera, suggesting they’re about to do it all over again. The movie ends on a bleak note leaving the audience wondering whether the characters ever stood a chance when the antagonists were at such an advantage and were able to defy usual movie logic.

Would You Rather?

Iris attends a mysterious dinner party with the hope of winning money to treat her sick brother in Would You Rather?. Nothing can prepare her for what she’ll need to do to win the money though. After several deadly rounds of “Would you rather?” Iris is the last person standing and although she is traumatized by what she has been forced to witness and take part in, she is relieved to be able to walk away with her life and the money to pay for her brother’s treatment.

When she returns home, excited to tell her brother about her new windfall, she is traumatized to find he has passed away while she was gone. Iris is forced to go to extreme lengths and participate in horrible acts to secure the money so this ending is particularly cruel as it was all for nothing.

The Descent (UK Ending)

Although The Descent is a monster-movie, it places a clear focus on trauma and psychological torment and has one of the best horror movie premises from the 2000s. After a brutal fight for survival, the movie comes to an end with an unbalanced Sarah leaving her friend, Juno to the mercy of the vicious Crawlers.

Sarah then crawls out of the cave and makes a triumphant escape; however, the UK ending reveals that this is a hallucination and she is actually stilled trapped. She sits silently imagining her deceased daughter while the savage monsters close in around her. The ending of The Descent is chilling and hopeless; all of the other characters have died by this point and Sarah has clearly given up and is sure to be next (at least in the UK version of the movie).

Eden Lake

What starts off as a disagreement between a young couple and a group of teenagers soon descends into a nightmare in Eden Lake. The audience are left on the edge of their seats throughout as the couple are relentlessly pursued across the woods. Steve’s harrowing death and Jenny’s heartbreaking reaction kicks off the high octane finale of the movie.

Perhaps the most tragic element of this ending is the false hope that Jenny is given as she thinks her ordeal is finally over after stumbling into a garden party. However, it is soon revealed that this is a very tight-knit community and many of the party-goers are the families of the teens who’ve terrorized her (some of whom she had to kill in self defense). Jenny locks herself in the bathroom but several of the party-goers burst in, branding her a murderer; horrifyingly, the movie ends with the bathroom door closing and Jenny crying out in terror.

The Mist

Unlike with Hereditary which is pretty tragic throughout, The Mist lulls the audience into believing it’s an action-packed monster movie for much of its run time. A father and son become trapped in a local grocery store when a heavy mist carrying monstrous creatures descends on their town.

Although there are some upsetting deaths throughout the movie, it’s in the final act that it delivers its suckerpunch. Feeling that there’s no way out of their situation, David resolves to kill his friends and young son in order to spare from a worse fate. However, after going through with the heartbreaking act, the army arrive to clear the Mist and David is left sobbing as he realizes his son and friends died for nothing.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/10-most-tragic-horror-movie-endings/

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