Nearly all of us love nice, cheerful, feelgood horror movie endings. The villain has been defeated by the strong-jawed hero with perfect stubble, perhaps the love interest swoons into their arms… Good has triumphed over Evil and all is right with the world. We leave the cinema with a smile on our faces and a song in our hearts. Real life can be a bit more complicated so the escapism offered can be a helpful distraction.
Some horror movies, on the other hand, offer us an ending that seems designed just to make us feel bad. The hero fails — or there are NO winners — and we are left with their bleak, nihilistic reality. Some of these horror movie endings are disturbing for their realism, making the viewer think hard on what they just witnessed. Others are just plain frightening, the kind you replay in your head at 3am, when you’re wondering “just what IS that noise under the bed?”
Today I’m covering 10 of the most disturbing — upsetting, disquieting, or dismaying — horror movie endings that I haven’t been able to shake off over the years. Oh, and THIS WHOLE ARTICLE IS ONE GIANT SPOILER ALERT!
(Editor’s Note: Adam Page carefully selected films that we’ve all had at least 10 years to watch for ourselves, so don’t be afraid of seeing spoilers for brand new horror movies if you wanna have a scroll! -Lauren*)
This post contains affiliate links. If you watch a movie we’ve recommended using our links, you’ll be helping to support HorrorFam.com at no additional cost to you!
10. Carrie (1976)
At its heart, Brian De Palma’s Carrie, based on the novel by Stephen King, deals with how hard, if not impossible, escaping things in our lives really is. We all try to escape what it is that brings us pain, and in the case of Carrie White she is trying to escape schoolyard bullies, an abusive mother, and her own latent psychokinetic powers.
There is a Jungian aspect to this, in that if we try to repress or deny our pain it can come out in stronger and darker ways. Such is the case with Carrie. She tried to escape her tormenters in the most extreme way, by sealing the doors of the high school gym and killing them all. She destroys her mother and herself in the process, and for anyone who survived that fateful night, she becomes a source of trauma and the cycle continues.
The ending features one of De Palma’s trademark ‘pull the rug out from under you’ moves. Carrie’s former schoolmate, Sue Snell, who had tried to make up for her part in Carrie’s torment, walks slowly, almost drifting, to a makeshift memorial at the site of Carrie’s ruined home. The scene is shot like a dream, only adding to its otherworldliness. She kneels and places a wreath, only for Carrie’s bloody hand to tear out of the ground and grab her arm, trying to pull her into the grave. We cut to the reveal that it was only a nightmare, but Sue Snell’s screams prove that even though she is dead, Carrie White has created trauma in Sue Snell, and that pain will live with her forever.
Where to Watch Carrie:
9. The Last House on the Left (1972)
Tales of morality can make for fantastic movies. Like a lot of director Wes Craven’s early work, Last House on the Left is made in a technically amateurish way; and, tonally, it never seems to know quite what to do.
However, this notorious film (banned where I’m based in the UK until 2002 — a full 30 years after its release!) has stayed in the public consciousness due to the nature of its moral center, which can be more disturbing than the actual violence.
The Last House on the Left isn’t a pleasant film to watch, or even write about. The plot centers on Mari Collingwood and her friend Phyllis. They travel to the big city and meet a man named Krug, a recently escaped convict. He and his gang kidnap the girls. They are then raped, murdered, and their bodies are disposed of in the river.
Afterwards, Krug and his gang arrive at a house and ask to stay the night, posing as travelling salesmen. The become aware they are staying at Mari Collingwood’s parents’ home. And when Mari’s parents discover their daughter has been murdered… they decide to take their revenge.
The gang is dispatched in various, bloody means (genitals are bitten off; shotguns and electrocution are employed, etc.). Last House on the Left ends on a freeze frame, with Mr. Collingwood about to kill Krug with a chainsaw, and it’s here that Wes Craven leaves us with questions: Are the Collingwood’s as evil and depraved as the people who raped and killed their daughter and her friend? Was it wrong to plot the revenge? Did they go too far? Craven never answers these questions, and they stay with you long after you’ve shut the film off.
Where to Watch The Last House on the Left:
8. Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
Every major religion has the concept of the Apocalypse, that the world will be ended in a spectacular way. The Book of Revelation still has the power to chill with its depiction of seas boiling and stars falling from the sky.
Rosemary’s Baby does have scenes of outright horror, but it’s in the quieter moments, when we start to realise that the Apocalypse is just around the corner, that the film really scares.
It’s when Rosemary finds her kidnapped son, being cared for by a group of elderly witches, that the tension really ramps up. She looks into his cot for the first time and gasps. Director Roman Polanski doesn’t show us the baby, but focuses on the terror in Rosemary’s face.
“What have you done to him? What have you done to his eyes?” she shrieks.
The witches tell us they have finally succeeded in creating the birth of the Antichrist with their reply: “He has his father’s eyes.”
Later, Rosemary is exhausted and defeated, sitting in a corner while one of the Satanists tries to comfort the child. Rosemary takes over, rocking the cradle as a lullaby plays. Like Wes Craven, Roman Polanski is leaving us with a moral dilemma: Has Rosemary given up, or is she simply being a mother? Should there be a limit to a mother’s love? We never see the child, OR the Apocalypse! Those terrors are left to what we can imagine for ourselves.
Where to Watch Rosemary’s Baby (1968):
7. The Fly (1958)
By now, we should all know that when a mad scientist tries to play God with nature, it never works out well. Director Kurt Neumann gave us a film that was downright shocking for 1958, and even now, nearly 70 years later, The Fly has an ending that’s pure nightmare fuel.
While experimenting with a matter transporter, scientist Andre Delambre’s atoms are mixed with those of a house fly. He had the head and left arm of a fly, while the fly has Delambre’s head and arm. It becomes a race against time as the family try to locate the fly to reverse the process, and before the fly’s instincts fully take over Delambre’s mind.
Time runs out and while he’s still able to think clearly, he leads his wife Helene to a hydraulic press and places his head under it, motioning for her to press the button. As the police are investigating, the fly, with Delambre’s head is discovered. Trapped in a spider’s web in the back garden.
Kurt Newmann spares us nothing as we see Delambre, covered in web, screaming for help in a tiny, high-pitched voice as a huge spider edges ever closer. Police Inspector Charas, revolted, crushes them both with a rock as a final act of mercy.
This final scene of The Fly is very uncomfortable to watch, and arachnophobes should definitely give this one a miss. We all have a primal fear of being eaten alive, and the image of a huge spider walking slowly towards you still has the power to make us shudder. After watching, anytime you see a fly caught in a web, it’s hard not to think of the terror-filled cry “HELP MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”
Where to Watch The Fly (1958):
6. The Thing (1982)
Movies featuring evil aliens on the loose, killing all and sundry are dime-a-dozen. What makes John Carpenter’s classic reimagining of 1951’s The Thing from Another World (or the original 1938 novella, Who Goes There?, for my fellow book-loving horror fans!) work so well is he centres it on a small group of men, trapped together in the Arctic. When a shapeshifting extraterrestrial is added — utilizing some of the best, and most revolting practical effects used in a film — along with the claustrophobia and tension that comes with being surrounded by hundreds of miles of ice, you’re left with something that still holds up even on repeated viewings.
While Rob Bottin’s special effects work is second-to-none, a lot of the horror comes from the uncertainty. Just who is The Thing? Nobody knows who to trust. Is the man sitting next to you really the guy you’ve known for years, or just a clever copy?
E.T. The Extraterrestrial was also released in 1982 and gave audiences a sunny and optimistic picture of visitations by aliens. The Thing, on the other hand, gave us one of the darkest, most nihilistic horror movie endings that’s STILL up for debate regarding “what REALLY happened!”
MacReady and Childs have (maybe) defeated The Thing, and they sit together in the ice. Just waiting. And we’re all left wondering: Are they both The Thing? Is it just one of them? Neither of them? John Carpenter’s ending removes all hope. If it’s neither of them, they will die. If it’s one of them, The Thing can hibernate in the ice. No matter what happens, humanity loses.
Where to Watch The Thing:
5. Don’t Look Now (1973)
This may be a little controversial, as Don’t Look Now is sometimes considered not “technically” a horror movie. It’s more a study of grief and loss. It does have eerie moments, though, and the reason it can be classed as a horror is due to how strong and frightening the ending is. The feeling of dread builds up throughout the film until it’s released in a final shocking, visceral moment.
Laura and John’s young daughter Christine drowns; and Laura meets Heather, an old blind woman in Venice who says she can communicate with Christine. Heather knows a lot about Laura and convinces her. John is sceptical of anything supernatural, even after the woman tells him he too has second sight, and his disbelief starts to drive a wedge between him and Laura.
John starts seeing a small figure wearing a red raincoat. The same coat his daughter drowned in. He also sees visions of his wife and Heather standing on a boat dressed in black, miles from where he knows they are. Is Heather right – does he have second sight? Or is his trauma causing hallucinations? The worry about a killer roaming the area certainly doesn’t help!
Heather tells Laura that John is in grave danger, but she can’t reach him. He’s followed and cornered the small figure in red. Ripping their hood down, we see it is a disfigured female dwarf, who is also the local killer. She pulls a meat cleaver and cuts John’s throat. As he dies, he realizes the vision he saw was his wife and Heather at his own funeral.
Is the supernatural real in this movie? There was nothing other worldly about the killer. However, Heather knew details about Christine and knew John was in danger. He failed to realize his own visions were real. Director Nicolas Roeg gives us a horrific self-fulfilling prophecy in John. His own visions set him on the path to his death. But in the world of Don’t Look Now, nothing is as it seems.
Where to Watch Don’t Look Now:
4. It Follows (2014)
In a majority of horror movies, as we all know, sex is the enemy. And typically this fear of sex takes one of two forms: Either the killer’s violence has a sexual component, like Silence of the Lambs. Or, like in Halloween or A Nightmare on Elm Street, the teens are too souped up with hormones that they fail to notice the masked man with the big knife following them.
With It Follows, sex itself is the enemy. Sleep with the wrong person and a shapeshifting monster will slowly follow and kill you. But it’s no hideously disfigured monster that comes. No man in a boilersuit and a William Shatner mask. This monster takes on the form of a regular person. It could be anyone.
What makes It Follows so scary is it does what good horror is supposed to do. It takes the most ordinary things, like sex and normal people on the street, and twists them into something terrifying. And this is shown in the movie’s ending.
Jay and Paul think they’ve killed the creature, and have celebrated with a bit of rumpy-pumpy. They walk hand-in-hand down the street as behind them a man approaches. He walks slowly and with purpose, just like the monster. Is it the creature? If so, they cannot escape. If it’s not, they’ll be living with that paranoia for the rest of their lives. Director David Robert Mitchell explains, “…they’re in a nightmare, and when you’re in a nightmare, there’s no solving the nightmare.” True and chilling words.
Where to Watch It Follows:
3. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
Like The Thing, with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre we see horror working best in isolation. The sadism and realism of the violence changed the way horror was portrayed on the big screen. Although it’s now a staple, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was one of the first horror films to feature a Final Girl — the female heroine who survives whatever finished off all her friends.
Sally, played by Marilyn Burns, has escaped Leatherface and his family, getting dragged and driven to safety by a passing truck driver. Leatherface dances and twirls, his chainsaw squealing, mingling with the blood-soaked Sally’s screams. Her scream turns slightly into a crazed laugh and we sense it will lead back to screams and tears. Sally has escaped, but what is the cost to her? Her brother and friends have been butchered, literally. In the back of that pickup, racing into the setting Texas sun, we watch and are happy she has survived. But even then we know the truth: For all intents and purposes, she died back at that house.
Filmed on a miniscule budget of around $100,000, director Tobe Hooper gave us one of the only horror movie endings that shows the effect — mentally — of escaping something like that. Sally’s little laugh shows us a woman teetering on the edge of the abyss, and makes for a truly horrifying ending. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre defined a new subgenre of horror, and moments like this show how.
Where to Watch The Texas Chainsaw Massacre:
2. Martyrs (2008)
Martyrs, directed by Pascal Laugier, is the only one I struggled to finish. It came out of the extreme torture genre that was prominent in France for a while.
Lucie and Anna, who were both kidnapped and tortured as young girls and escaped, and reunite years later to take revenge on their tormentors.
We discover Lucie was actually held by a secret society who are obsessed with discovering the secrets of the afterlife by creating ‘martyrs.’ Young women are captured and tortured systematically in the belief that their suffering will create a transcendental insight into the next life. They want victims who will accept their suffering and tell their visions of the afterlife.
Through the friends’ attempt at revenge, Anna is captured and by the society and then becomes their newest subject. We’re told she has lasted longer than anyone else. At Martyrs’ close, she is skinned alive on a rack, leaving only her face.
Anna whispers to Mademoiselle, the society’s leader, what she has seen of the afterlife. Mademoiselle then tells the others to “keep doubting” what comes after death (rather than knowing for sure) right before she abruptly shoots herself.
This film lingers in your mind for a long time afterwards. Aside from some of the most realistic scenes of torture I’ve ever seen, it took me a while to process just why it disturbed me so much. Because Martyrs does have a meaning. The legendary film critic Mark Kermode hit the nail on the head: “It is about the absolute nothingness of everything.” The level of nihilism is something I found very difficult and it’s one of the horror movie endings (and film as a whole) I will never watch again. If you do watch, stay to the end. But be prepared.
Where to Watch Martyrs:
1. The Vanishing AKA Spoorloos (1988)
So, what could be more disturbing than Martyrs? Well, The Vanishing can still cause me to become short of breath if I think too deeply about it.
Directed by George Sluizer, we focus on a young couple, Rex and Saskia, on a vacation. This is cut short when Saskia disappears without trace after buying drinks at a gas station. Rex is still looking for her three years later when he’s contacted by Raymond, a wealthy family man who claims to know where Saskia is.
This is more of a slow burn thriller, but there is a coldness to The Vanishing — along with an ever-increasing sense of dread — that keeps the viewer on edge throughout. The horror is inevitable, it’s just a matter of how and when it’s revealed to us.
Raymond, we learn, knows he has no conscience and has planned to commit one truly evil deed. He posed as a travelling salesman and enticed Saskia into his car. When he contacts Rex, we know Saskia is dead. All Raymond is offering is the chance to find out what happened to her. Can we fault Rex for agreeing to this? Either find out the truth no matter how awful or live his life with constant uncertainty?
Rex’s obsession with discovering the truth leads to the fateful decision to meet Raymond and find out what happened. He willingly drinks coffee laced with sleeping pills, as he cannot take the burden of not knowing what happened. When he awakes, he’s buried alive in a box with only a lighter. Screaming as his air slowly runs out while Raymond goes back to his family.
Raymond portrays evil as something that requires patience and is an inevitable part of human nature. He’s one of the most disturbing villains ever portrayed as there’s no passion or rage in what he does. He calmly and rationally plans every detail. He’s truly evil and the fact he regards his tendencies as necessary and normal help make The Vanishing end with a darkness you will never forget.
Where to Watch The Vanishing AKA Spoorloos:
What Horror Movie Endings Have Disturbed YOU…?
Well, I wrote about ten horror movie endings — all very different (something for everyone?). Some were scary, some disturbing, some great for making you jump out of your seat. Ultimately, each of the horror movie endings I chose deals in pure, raw emotion.
After all, isn’t that what horror is really designed for?
Do you agree, disagree? Have I missed any of the horror movie endings that deeply affected YOU? What’s the most frightening ending you’ve ever seen? Let me know!
Images for this review were purchased via MovieStillsDB. The featured image of a dark mysterious tunnel is a free stock photo from Pixabay that I added the words “Spoilers Ahead” to within the light of the end of the tunnel. Side note: The font I use on all of our images isn’t available anywhere because I turned my own handwriting into a font, so that’s why it only appears on my own sites (one person asked so I thought there might be others who were curious haha).
