Editorials
The 10 Most Depressing Endings in Horror Movie History
Horror movies put their characters through the wringer. Protagonists face their greatest fears and tend to come out alive but profoundly transformed by the trauma they endured. That’s not always the case, though. If there’s any genre that serves as a stark reminder of life’s fragility, it’s horror. The good guys don’t always win, let alone survive.
Sure, the genre aims to scare, shock, and repulse you, but it also often leaves you utterly devastated. These ten movies present horror’s bleakest and most depressing endings.
Burnt Offerings
Beware bargain-priced housing or vacation rentals; there’s often a grim string attached. For the Rolf family, they’re afforded a rare opportunity to spend their summer in a mansion thanks to its obscenely low rental fee. The only catch is that they’ll have to provide the owner’s mother, an attic recluse, meals during their stay. It’s an easy trade-off, or so the Rolf’s assume. The longer they stay, the more tragedy befalls them. More bizarrely, the mansion seems to repair and refresh itself. When young Davey Rolf (Lee H. Montgomery) nearly drowns, parents Marion (Karen Black) and Ben (Oliver Reed) agree it’s finally time to bid their summer home goodbye. Only it’s far too late. Marion is transformed into the attic woman while her husband and son meet grisly ends- the house rejuvenates to its former glory after claiming its latest victims. There’s no fleeing this haunted house, even though the Rolf family was so close.
Race with the Devil
Two couples embark on a road trip from Texas to Colorado in their RV. They don’t get very far when the men unwittingly stumble upon a Satanic sacrifice in the woods late one night. The Satanists are determined to cover their tracks, and Race with the Devil becomes an intense chase thriller with the couples desperate to escape the enclosing cultists. With Peter Fonda and Warren Oates as the lead protagonists, playing the heroes with a take-charge attitude, you’d expect them to best the Satanists. Especially when the couples seek aid from the authorities, and a harrowing encounter results in the heroes victorious over a Satanic attack. Their victory celebration turns into a gut-punch loss when they hear Satanic chanting outside their RV. The cult members, including their ally the Sheriff, found them and closed in. It ends the film with a grim realization that this foursome is destined for sacrifice after all.
Night of the Living Dead
George A. Romero set the blueprint for the modern zombie film. That includes the inescapable dread of death’s inevitability. For the eclectic bunch that found themselves fighting for their lives in a nearby farmhouse against the undead, none seem more suited for survival than Ben (Duane Jones). His leadership amidst the chaos instilled confidence that those with level-heads could prevail. That proved true for a period until infighting and panic caused the living to perish one by one until only Ben remained. Like the resourceful guy that he was, Ben hid in the basement, only roused from safety by the welcome sounds of sirens. Elation evaporated with a single gunshot; Ben’s potential rescuers mistake him for the undead and shoot him. Cue the depression.
Witchfinder General
Vincent Price plays his most ruthless villain of all as the witchfinder general Matthew Hopkins. While the English Civil War rages on, Hopkins takes advantage of the war-torn country. He travels village to village, inflicting brutal torture upon villagers to obtain confessions of witchcraft. The witchfinder general revels in his abuse of power, leaving shocking devastation in his wake. When Hopkins targets the fiancée of a young soldier, it sparks a vicious quest for revenge. Revenge, as horror teaches, comes with an extensive toll on the soul. While the soldier does eventually achieve his vengeance, it completely breaks him. Hopkins’s reign of terror comes to a close by the film’s end, but there’s no happy ending for the young lovers that began the movie full of hope for their future. It’s their mental break and anguished cries that cue the end credits, with the soldier’s court-martial and subsequent death sentence a foregone conclusion.
Wolf Creek
Greg McLean’s feature debut is a sobering one. Set in 1999, backpackers Liz Hunter (Cassandra Macgrath), Kristy Earl (Kestie Morassi), and Ben Mitchell (Nathan Phillips) travel together in Western Australia. McLean bides his time, letting viewers get deeply acquainted with the trio as they bond, flirt, and possibly fall in love. Then he has them cross paths with Mick Taylor (John Jarratt), a helpful local that promises to help with their car troubles. Except Mick doesn’t. He drugs them, separates them, then begins sadistic torture with the intent to murder. Liz and Kristy manage to break free, only to meet grisly ends at Mick’s hands. Ben, left to die slowly in a mine shaft, escapes to a nearby road, where a kind soul takes him to the hospital. Still, it’s a melancholy finale as Ben’s lady love and travel companions are never found, and it takes months for the authorities to clear him of suspicion. Meanwhile, Mick Taylor remains undetected.
I Saw the Devil
If Witchfinder General taught us that revenge might not be worth the emotional price to pay, I Saw the Devil smashes you over the head with it in the best possible way. National Intelligence Officer Kim Soo-hyun embarks on a quest for vengeance when serial rapist and murderer Jang Kyung-chul kills his pregnant fiancée. Soo-hyun wants to stretch out his revenge, ensuring he can inflict as much pain and suffering as possible. So he catches the serial killer, tortures him, then releases to repeat the process all over again. With every visceral encounter, more of Soo-hyun’s humanity slips away until the line between good and evil no longer exists. The emotional, harrowing journey concludes when Kyung-chul finally meets a deserving end, and Soo-hyun breaks down in the middle of the street. It’s soul-crushing.
The Fly
David Cronenberg’s operatic masterpiece follows the romantic journey between quirky scientist and tough reporter from its meet-cute until its gruesome, bitter end. Boy, is it a doozy. Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) meets Ronnie Quaife (Geena Davis) at a press event, where Brundle lures the curious reporter back to his loft to show off the teleportation device he’s been inventing. They quickly fall in love, but the honeymoon phase gets cut short when Brundle’s DNA splices with a housefly’s, kickstarting a long, tortuous transformation into an inhuman fly creature. Ronnie is forced to watch scared and helpless as the man she fell for slowly loses himself, like a slow decay from a grotesque disease. Cronenberg ends their tragic tale on the most somber note, with Ronnie left sobbing over the unrecognizable corpse of Seth, having just put him out of his misery.
Lake Mungo
This documentary-style horror film follows a family still in the throes of grief, looking for answers in the drowning of sixteen-year-old Alice Palmer. Her teen brother sets up cameras around the house, convinced Alice is haunting them. His eerie findings lead them to enlist the aid of a psychic. Their search for answers leads to multiple painful discoveries, both of Alice’s secret past and her brother’s faked camera footage. The Palmers eventually find closure over Alice’s death and decide to move away to start anew. It’s the film’s final shot and the subsequent photos over the end credits that deliver the emotional damage. Alice was indeed haunting the home, lurking nearby in hopes her family would see her. The realization that her family, unaware, left her behind to haunt their former home forever alone is a gut punch.
The Mist
Frank Darabont rewrote the ending of Stephen King’s novella to deliver a far bleaker conclusion that leaves your jaw and your heart on the floor. For David Drayton (Thomas Jane), nothing means more to him than his young son Billy (Nathan Gamble). They’re trapped in a grocery store, thanks to a mysterious mist harboring no shortage of Lovecraftian beasts; David’s sole purpose is to keep Billy safe. Between the creatures and the growing evils of man within the store, that’s no small feat. He finally mounts an escape, along with a handful of allies, and eventually drives away from the damned place in search of safety. All hope diminishes when the car runs out of gas, leaving the protagonists stranded with no way out. All resigned to their fate, David uses the remaining bullets to shoot the survivors, his precious son included, before exiting the car to let the creatures take him. That’s precisely when the mist dissipates, and the Army arrives with a rescue caravan. Nothing hits as hard as David’s realization that he killed his son for nothing.
Eden Lake
Jenny (Kelly Reilly) and Steve (Michael Fassbender) plan a romantic camping trip away in the countryside. Relaxation and passion quickly give way to violence instead, when a group of vicious teens encroaches. Mean spirited pranks escalate, spurning a deadly game in which Jenny and Steve must fight for their lives. It’s a non-stop barrage of stomach-churning dread and tension. After multiple rounds with the teens that result in mortal injuries for Steve, Jenny discovers an engagement ring, prompting Steve to propose while dying. That alone would earn Eden Lake a spot on this list, but writer/director James Watkins is far from done creating wrath-inducing trauma for Jenny. She finally escapes and finds a backyard party where she seeks aid. The group comforts her until one of the teens comes home and convinces them she’s responsible for one of their children’s deaths. Men drag her into a bathroom, where her screams are heard while the teen deletes video evidence of his wrongdoings. No other ending in horror draws as much ire or desolation as this one.
Twice a month Joe Lipsett will dissect a new Amityville Horror film to explore how the “franchise” has evolved in increasingly ludicrous directions. This is “The Amityville IP.”
A bizarre recurring issue with the Amityville “franchise” is that the films tend to be needlessly complicated. Back in the day, the first sequels moved away from the original film’s religious-themed haunted house storyline in favor of streamlined, easily digestible concepts such as “haunted lamp” or “haunted mirror.”
As the budgets plummeted and indie filmmakers capitalized on the brand’s notoriety, it seems the wrong lessons were learned. Runtimes have ballooned past the 90-minute mark and the narratives are often saggy and unfocused.
Both issues are clearly on display in Amityville Karen (2022), a film that starts off rough, but promising, and ends with a confused whimper.
The promise is embodied by the tinge of self-awareness in Julie Anne Prescott (The Amityville Harvest)’s screenplay, namely the nods to John Waters’ classic 1994 satire, Serial Mom. In that film, Beverly Sutphin (an iconic Kathleen Turner) is a bored, white suburban woman who punished individuals who didn’t adhere to her rigid definition of social norms. What is “Karen” but a contemporary equivalent?
In director/actor Shawn C. Phillips’ film, Karen (Lauren Francesca) is perpetually outraged. In her introductory scenes, she makes derogatory comments about immigrants, calls a female neighbor a whore, and nearly runs over a family blocking her driveway. She’s a broad, albeit familiar persona; in many ways, she’s less of a character than a caricature (the living embodiment of the name/meme).
These early scenes also establish a fairly straightforward plot. Karen is a code enforcement officer with plans to shut down a local winery she has deemed disgusting. They’re preparing for a big wine tasting event, which Karen plans to ruin, but when she steals a bottle of cursed Amityville wine, it activates her murderous rage and goes on a killing spree.
Simple enough, right?
Unfortunately, Amityville Karen spins out of control almost immediately. At nearly every opportunity, Prescott’s screenplay eschews narrative cohesion and simplicity in favour of overly complicated developments and extraneous characters.
Take, for example, the wine tasting event. The film spends an entire day at the winery: first during the day as a band plays, then at a beer tasting (???) that night. Neither of these events are the much touted wine-tasting, however; that is actually a private party happening later at server Troy (James Duval)’s house.
Weirdly though, following Troy’s death, the party’s location is inexplicably moved to Karen’s house for the climax of the film, but the whole event plays like an afterthought and features a litany of characters we have never met before.
This is a recurring issue throughout Amityville Karen, which frequently introduces random characters for a scene or two. Karen is typically absent from these scenes, which makes them feel superfluous and unimportant. When the actress is on screen, the film has an anchor and a narrative drive. The scenes without her, on the other hand, feel bloated and directionless (blame editor Will Collazo Jr., who allows these moments to play out interminably).
Compounding the issue is that the majority of the actors are non-professionals and these scenes play like poorly performed improv. The result is long, dull stretches that features bad actors talking over each other, repeating the same dialogue, and generally doing nothing to advance the narrative or develop the characters.
While Karen is one-note and histrionic throughout the film, at least there’s a game willingness to Francesca’s performance. It feels appropriately campy, though as the film progresses, it becomes less and less clear if Amityville Karen is actually in on the joke.
Like Amityville Cop before it, there are legit moments of self-awareness (the Serial Mom references), but it’s never certain how much of this is intentional. Take, for example, Karen’s glaringly obvious wig: it unconvincingly fails to conceal Francesca’s dark hair in the back, but is that on purpose or is it a technical error?
Ultimately there’s very little to recommend about Amityville Karen. Despite the game performance by its lead and the gentle homages to Serial Mom’s prank call and white shoes after Labor Day jokes, the never-ending improv scenes by non-professional actors, the bloated screenplay, and the jittery direction by Phillips doom the production.
Clocking in at an insufferable 100 minutes, Amityville Karen ranks among the worst of the “franchise,” coming in just above Phillips’ other entry, Amityville Hex.
The Amityville IP Awards go to…
- Favorite Subplot: In the afternoon event, there’s a self-proclaimed “hot boy summer” band consisting of burly, bare-chested men who play instruments that don’t make sound (for real, there’s no audio of their music). There’s also a scheming manager who is skimming money off the top, but that’s not as funny.
- Least Favorite Subplot: For reasons that don’t make any sense, the winery is also hosting a beer tasting which means there are multiple scenes of bartender Alex (Phillips) hoping to bring in women, mistakenly conflating a pint of beer with a “flight,” and goading never before seen characters to chug. One of them describes the beer as such: “It looks like a vampire menstruating in a cup” (it’s a gold-colored IPA for the record, so…no).
- Amityville Connection: The rationale for Karen’s killing spree is attributed to Amityville wine, whose crop was planted on cursed land. This is explained by vino groupie Annie (Jennifer Nangle) to band groupie Bianca (Lilith Stabs). It’s a lot of nonsense, but it is kind of fun when Annie claims to “taste the damnation in every sip.”
- Neverending Story: The film ends with an exhaustive FIVE MINUTE montage of Phillips’ friends posing as reporters in front of terrible green screen discussing the “killer Karen” story. My kingdom for Amityville’s regular reporter Peter Sommers (John R. Walker) to return!
- Best Line 1: Winery owner Dallas (Derek K. Long), describing Karen: “She’s like a walking constipation with a hemorrhoid”
- Best Line 2: Karen, when a half-naked, bleeding woman emerges from her closet: “Is this a dream? This dream is offensive! Stop being naked!”
- Best Line 3: Troy, upset that Karen may cancel the wine tasting at his house: “I sanded that deck for days. You don’t just sand a deck for days and then let someone shit on it!”
- Worst Death: Karen kills a Pool Boy (Dustin Clingan) after pushing his head under water for literally 1 second, then screeches “This is for putting leaves on my plants!”
- Least Clear Death(s): The bodies of a phone salesman and a barista are seen in Karen’s closet and bathroom, though how she killed them are completely unclear
- Best Death: Troy is stabbed in the back of the neck with a bottle opener, which Karen proceeds to crank
- Wannabe Lynch: After drinking the wine, Karen is confronted in her home by Barnaby (Carl Solomon) who makes her sign a crude, hand drawn blood contract and informs her that her belly is “pregnant from the juices of his grapes.” Phillips films Barnaby like a cross between the unhoused man in Mulholland Drive and the Mystery Man in Lost Highway. It’s interesting, even if the character makes absolutely no sense.
- Single Image Summary: At one point, a random man emerges from the shower in a towel and excitedly poops himself. This sequence perfectly encapsulates the experience of watching Amityville Karen.
- Pray for Joe: Many of these folks will be back in Amityville Shark House and Amityville Webcam, so we’re not out of the woods yet…
Next time: let’s hope Christmas comes early with 2022’s Amityville Christmas Vacation. It was the winner of Fangoria’s Best Amityville award, after all!
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