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Often, a solid ending can change an audience's opinion of any film. With horror, that's even more true. What's more exciting than an unexpected twist, or an exciting final-girl showdown?
Sometimes, though, a horror movie caps its story off with a depressing, bleak, or heartbreaking twist - one that's just as shocking as it is emotionally affecting. In that spirit, here's a list of horror movies with the most heartbreaking twists.
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Frank Darabont’s 2007 film The Mist has developed something of a reputation as both an unsung gem and an emotional bummer in equal measure.
When a mysterious storm enshrouds a town in a chilling and enigmatic mist, David Drayton and his son find themselves trapped in the supermarket alongside a number of wide-ranging and volatile townsfolk. They eventually discover creatures hiding in the mist that ferociously attack anyone who ventures outside - but the people inside the grocery store-turned-fortress are revealed to be equally as dangerous.
David and a few others eventually manage to escape, only to be faced with certain doom. David mercy-kills his son and accompanying escapees, only for the mist to dissipate, revealing the army has saved most townspeople from the creatures.
As if the slow dissolution of a town’s moral fiber wasn’t sad enough, David’s personal grief over the needless death of his family is all he has left.
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'Fall' Leaves Its Hero All Alone On Top Of The World
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The 2022 high-concept horror Fall, like its spiritual predecessors The Shallows and 40 Meters Down (both of which are shark-attack flicks), preys upon a couple of common fears: relative isolation and extreme heights.
Two adventurous pals, Becky and Hunter, decide to scale a 2,000-foot abandoned radio tower in order to overcome the massive grief Becky has lived with ever since her husband's unfortunate death, which occurred while he was rock-climbing.
Unfortunately, the pair get stuck at the top of the spire with no way down. They seemingly exhaust all possible resources to get down or contact help.
At least the friends can face the terrifying situation together, right? Wrong. Like Mandy Moore in 40 Meters Down, Becky has been hallucinating her interactions with Hunter, who fell to her death onto one of the communication dishes below, due to starvation and dehydration.
In a rather grim bit of resourcefulness, Becky stuffs a cell phone into Hunter’s corpse, hits send on an S.O.S. text, and pushes the body off the tower. The corpse cushions the fall and successfully saves the traumatized Becky. Sure, Becky gets out alive, but at what cost?
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The Others, Nicole Kidman’s 2001 horror smash, follows Kidman as an exceptionally religious mother of two children in WWII-afflicted England. The children have an affliction of their own, a rare photosensitivity that prevents them from seeing or going out in the sun.
When the family moves into a remote countryside home, they start collectively contending with yet another terrifying affliction - a possible supernatural haunting.
Or at least, that’s what the movie wants you to think. In a Shyamalan-esque twist (albeit with an uncharacteristically heartbreaking bent), the audience learns Kidman’s character took her own life after murdering her children in a fit of despair. The haunting? The very-much-alive family who's moved into her home.
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Anyone who’s ever been a teenager is familiar with the old party game “Would you rather.” In the 2012 horror film of the same name, the classic game is twisted into a terrifying gauntlet of deliberately awful dilemmas orchestrated by a super-rich sadist named Shepard.
With the promise of a large financial payout for the winner, Iris participates in the hopes of winning enough money to afford a life-saving surgery for her brother, who has leukemia.
Despite the film's release just at the end of “torture p*rn's” heyday, Would You Rather fits firmly into that Saw mold. Staying true to that nihilistic spirit, the movie ends with Iris winning and finally being able to afford her brother’s surgery - only for her to find out that he took his own life in order to free his family of the financial burden, making the litany of morally degrading acts Iris committed all for naught.
It’s truly a brutal end to a brutal flick.
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The horror community widely recognizes Neil Marshall’s 2005 film The Descent as one of the genre's best entries in the past couple of decades.
One year after a heartbreaking car accident kills her husband and daughter, a woman named Sarah accompanies her friends on a spelunking adventure in an effort to move past her debilitating grief. Things don't go according to plan, however, and the group of women gets stuck in the cave - only to discover they're not alone.
Inside the cave with them are albino, humanoid creatures hell-bent on devouring the spelunking pals. The women are killed one by one, until Sarah, against all odds, climbs up a hill littered with bones before finally seeing the sun once more and escaping the cave - at least, for a moment.
In the originally released UK ending (which was edited in America due to its depressing nature), Sarah realizes her escape was a hallucination, confirmed when she sees her daughter beside her in the cave with a birthday cake, as the camera reveals the creatures closing in around her.
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Released in 2007 and now considered something of a modern horror classic, J.A. Bayona’s The Orphanage follows a woman named Laura who buys her old childhood orphanage and converts it into a home for sickly children.
When her own son, who is HIV positive, disappears for an extensive period of time, Laura begins contending with communication from childlike spirits of the old orphanage, believing them to hold the key to her son’s possible location.
In a heartbreaking turn of events, the film reveals Laura is responsible for her son's accidental death, a fact unknown to anyone but her subconscious until that point. As if that wasn’t depressing enough, Laura purposefully overdoses in order to reunite with her son in the spirit realm.
While the ending is certainly bleak, there's a glimmer of emotional catharsis in the knowledge that Laura is able to be with her beloved child once again.
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In Scott Derrickson’s terrifying 2012 horror film Sinister, washed-up true-crime author Ellison (played by Ethan Hawke) is desperate for another hit, despite having no real leads or potential ideas. That is, until Ellison discovers a shocking bit of Super-8 footage depicting a family's mysterious death.
The author becomes obsessed with the mystery, going so far as to move his own family into the house where the victims were killed. Reels of film containing further clips of violence and death begin supernaturally surfacing within the home, and Ellison only doubles down on his obsession, despite the potentially demonic force residing within his family’s new house.
Unfortunately for the author, that obsession leads to not just his own, but his entire family's demise. The film ultimately reveals his daughter is possessed by the murderous presence in question, and she kills each of her family members in turn.
Sinister depicts the most horrifying result of choosing professional success over familial success, to heartbreaking effect.
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The 2014 Austrian horror film Goodnight Mommy has developed an excellent reputation among horror fans in the years following its release, even prompting a 2022 American remake.
The original film focuses on two strange twin boys who do absolutely everything together, attached at the proverbial hip. When their mother arrives home from a reconstructive surgery with her face completely bandaged and her demeanor very different than normal, the boys begin to doubt her identity.
What follows is a disturbing series of responses to the mystery of the mother’s identity until the bleak truth is revealed: The woman is, in fact, the twins’ mother, but one of the twins (Elias) has been hallucinating the other, who died in an accident before the start of the film. Poor Elias can’t handle the truth of his twin’s death and promptly burns the house down, killing himself and his mother in the process.
While the level of grief on display in the film is perfectly disturbing in its own right, the notion that that same grief might, in and of itself, be fatal is both heartbreaking and terrifying.
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The 2019 film The Lodge sees stepmom-to-be and religious-cult survivor Grace trapped inside the titular homestead with her less-than-friendly stepchildren in the middle of a brutal blizzard. The kids’ father is stuck at work, leaving Grace alone to contend with the children, whose mother took her own life after learning of her estranged husband's intention to marry Grace.
Naturally, the dynamic isn’t a pleasant one. Over the course of a few days, Grace mentally deteriorates, convinced by increasingly unnerving - and potentially supernatural - occurrences that the trio is stuck in purgatory.
When Grace’s mind is almost totally obliterated by fear and anxiety, the children reveal they've been vengefully tricking her the whole time. Unfortunately, Grace is too far gone and reverts to her long-forgotten cult belief systems. She ultimately kills the children’s father in order to prove they're in purgatory.
Even more shocking and upsetting? The film's final shot shows Grace prepping herself and the two children for the same mass-suicide ritual she survived in her former cult.
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Karyn Kusama’s excellent 2015 film The Invitation centers on a couple, Will and Kira, who attend a dinner party at Will’s ex-wife’s home, along with her new husband and a few other guests. Over the course of the night, uncomfortable confrontations occur, strange proposals are enacted, and old wounds are reopened, with increasing volatility - until everything erupts into violence.
The film reveals Will’s ex-wife, Eden, and her new husband are members of a death cult determined to commit ritualistic murder-suicides. Will and Kira fight their way to freedom, only to discover that every single house for miles is lit with a red lantern, indicating their participation in the death cult’s final activity.
What could possibly be more disheartening than to risk life and limb escaping a deadly cult, only to find out that help is nowhere nearby?
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Netflix's well-crafted 2020 horror film His House follows two refugees from the violent war permeating South Sudan who, along with their daughter, arrive in Britain in search of a better life. The family is subject to strict immigration rules, nationalism, and casual racism, and are forced to live in a nearly dilapidated tenement during the course of their probationary period as resident aliens.
The family begins suffering a haunting from a “night witch,” who steals away the daughter, Nyagak. The only solution is for her parents, Bol and Rial, to pay the night witch a mysterious debt.
In a shocking turn, that debt is revealed to be the admittance of a terrible act. While the couple was attempting to escape a gun battle in Sudan, they discovered the boats leaving port were only accepting families with children. Desperate, the couple kidnapped Nyagak and claimed her as their own.
In the subsequent trip across the water, Nyagak drowned. The night witch, it seems, is the inescapable guilt of their transgression.
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The 2015 film Circle, which became a belated hit for Netflix, centers on a circle of 50 strangers facing imminent death in a game of Darwinian survival. Every two minutes, a member of the circle is killed, and the participating group can vote for the next to die.
The forced community naturally starts to fracture and makes their moralistic - or anti-moralistic - arguments as to who each victim should be and why they should be the next to die.
As if that wasn’t bleak enough, Circle ends with the leader of one determined survivalist group tricking the only other remaining members of the circle, a young girl and a pregnant woman, into sacrificing themselves, guaranteeing his continued life.
Once again, humanity proves itself capable of abhorrent, selfish behavior, even in the most dire circumstances.
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The 2019 film Ready or Not certainly seems like a horror classic in the making, seeing as its filmmaking collective has since produced the rejuvenated Scream franchise.
The movie centers on Grace, a bride-to-be who couldn’t be more thrilled about her upcoming wedding to Alex - at least, until she discovers that in order to join her super-rich fiancé’s family, she must participate in a sadistic game of hide-and-seek. The necessity of the game comes from a familial curse that requires a ritualistic sacrifice to guarantee the family’s survival.
Grace, as almost anyone would, assumes the love of her life is on her side and is just as committed to her survival as she is. Unfortunately for poor Grace, that’s not the case. Alex betrays her at the last minute and attempts to kill her to complete the ritual sacrifice.
Grace manages to reverse the course of her fate and get revenge on Alex and his family, but what’s more depressing than a ruined wedding?
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