5. The Descent (2005)
Neil Marshall‘s absolute masterpiece of subterranean terror and claustrophobic thrills ends with a shock in the US version, but UK audiences experienced a far more effective finale that lands it on our list of downer endings. After surviving a car accident that killed her husband and child, Sarah’s spelunking adventure with friends has also ended with her as the sole survivor. Seemingly trapped with nasty humanoid creatures encroaching all around her, she escapes upwards into the sunlight and hits the road to freedom in her car.
But her escape was only a dream. She awakes back in the underground chamber, the vision of her dead daughter smiling before her, and she’s finally at peace as the monsters move towards her. Having overcome the loss of her family and fighting her way through an unlikely nightmare that took the lives of all her friends, her reward is a temporary respite of welcome madness before being eaten alive by blind and drooling albinos. Glorious. (Rob Hunter)
4. Session 9 (2001)
The ending of Session 9 is open to interpretation. Is it all in the mind? Is the killer possessed? Either way, the reality is that it’s about a man who doesn’t have an optimistic future ahead of him. His family is dead, and he killed them. Even the dog got slaughtered, which is more distressing than infants. Regardless of your interpretation, the scene of Gordon staring at family photos and recalling the horror story is soul-crushingly brutal. And that’s why Session 9 is a fine horror flick. (Kieran Fisher)
3. Se7en (1995)
First off, yes, David Fincher‘s Seven is absolutely a horror movie. A vicious serial killer executing his victims in grisly and brutal ways? That’s already horror, but Fincher and writer Andrew Kevin Walker have far greater terror in mind, and it all comes to a head in the film’s final minutes with one of the most unforgettable downer endings. Detective Mills and Detective Somerset have captured their prey — after he gave himself up, covered in blood and absolutely full of himself — and are being led out to a remote area for one final reveal.
As the sun shines bright for the first time in the movie, as the killer taunts Mills with mention of the detective’s wife, a package arrives containing a devastating truth. The box holds Mills’ wife’s severed head, and as the traumatized, rage-driven detective tries to comprehend this the madman also reveals that she had been pregnant and begged to spare her and the unborn child. This last nugget of truth tips Mills over the edge. And most of the viewers are right there with him. (Rob Hunter)
2. The Fly (1986)
There was never a hope in hell that Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) was going to get out of this blunderfly in one piece. Not after all recognizably human features slough off. Not after cheeks tear open, jaws rip, and flesh melts away. This doesn’t really feel like Seth anymore. Only it is Seth. And that makes it all so much worse. In what was (no joke) the first moment in a horror film to make me cry, Veronica stands over Seth (who has now been merged with his own teleportation machine), brandishing a gun. And she can’t bring herself to kill this goopy, mangled creature she knows, and still recognizes, as the man she loves.
And then, because David Cronenberg be like that sometimes, Seth reaches out to her, not in violence but in a plea for mercy, nudging the barrel to his temple. Veronica, sobbing, obliges. One of the reasons The Fly registers as more than just a body horror gross ’em out is because all these moments of decay, warped identity, and corporeal disintegration are known to us: it is a horrible thing to watch the people you care about grow old, get sick, and fall apart in front of you. If that weren’t enough of a bummer, there’s Veronica’s unborn child, whose genetic disposition is left ambiguous…until the sequel, of course. (Meg Shields)
1. Night of the Living Dead (1968)
All of the films on this list are bummers; they all center on characters who get a raw deal and feature stories drenched in gloom on their way towards downer endings. What makes George Romero’s classic stand out from the great and depressing company it’s in is that it’s just so goddamn unfair. It’s so unfair that Ben almost made it. It’s so unfair that he survived the burgeoning zombie plague just to be taken out at the exact moment he should have been rescued by the encroaching police force.
Whether his death is more a result of unbridled hatred or cavalier ignorance doesn’t ultimately matter. It’s enough to make it clear that while the zombies rage, there’s a whole other infection gripping America. This finale is both shocking and, on reflection, inevitable. Of course, it had to end this way. If Night of the Living Dead is a film about how quickly humanity can descend into savagery when things turn apocalyptic, its ending is a brutal final note that affirms we’re already hanging by a thread, zombies or not. (Anna Swanson)
Related Topics: 31 Days of Horror Lists, Horror
