Failing to stick the landing: five incredible movies ruined by their final scene
The final scene of a movie is the first thing that’s going to be on everybody’s mind when the credits come up, which is why it’s so important to stick to the landing.
Even terrible movies have proven capable of ending on a high note, but the inverse can also be true. Certain films have an infuriating way of flirting with greatness from the first scene right up until the penultimate sequence, only for the grand finale to fail to get the job done.
It’s not even restricted solely to twists, either, although they tend to be the most regular offenders. It’s all well and good for a single scene to try to recontextualise everything that came before, but when it doesn’t make any sense or fails to come off as the filmmakers intended, it has the potential for disaster.
The following five movies are all worth watching without a doubt, although mileage will drastically vary on whether that still rings true once the screen fades to black.
Five great movies with terrible final scenes:
5. Come True (Anthony Scott Burns, 2020)
Writer and director Anthony Scott Burns has been marked out as one of the brightest emerging talents in horror for a while, and his second full-length feature was overflowing with effective atmosphere, eye-catching visuals, and committed performances.
Julia Sarah Stone’s teenage runaway signs up for a research study on the power of sleep, blurring the lines between reality and subconscious as she gradually struggles to identify where one world ends and the other begins, plunging her deeper into an existential malaise that raises two questions for every one that it answers and keeps the viewer on tenterhooks throughout.
Or at least it does for the entirety of its running time until the final scene, where she receives a text message revealing that she’s been in a coma for the last two decades. Few things eradicate goodwill in a movie quicker than the ‘it was all a dream trope’, undoing Come True‘s effectiveness in an instant.
4. A Nightmare on Elm Street (Wes Craven, 1984)
Admittedly, the finger of blame can’t be pointed at Wes Craven when it was the studio who insisted on ending A Nightmare on Elm Street on a note that kept the door open for sequels, which had the unwanted effect of turning a classic slasher into a laughing stock right before the credits rolled.
The director wanted to retain a sense of ambiguity that would leave people questioning just how much of the story unfolded in the dream world and how much happened for real, only for New Line Cinema chief Robert Shaye to foist one of the most laughable conclusions in the genre’s history upon Craven.
It might have worked had the effect of Nancy’s mother being yanked through a door been anything other than wholly unconvincing and unintentionally hilarious, reducing an eerie chiller that introduced the iconic Freddie Krueger into a sight gag that sucked all the wind out of the film’s sails at the last second.
3. Identity (James Mangold, 2003)
Nobody’s going to go out on a limb and call James Mangold’s psychological thriller a masterpiece, but it delivers plenty of pulpy thrills by putting a rain-soaked and perpetually suspicious riff on Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None.
The easiest way to sell an inherently silly high-concept story is to populate the ensemble with talented character actors: something Mangold managed with aplomb by recruiting John Cusack, Ray Liotta, Amanda Peet, Alfred Molina, John Hawkes, and more to tell the story of ten strangers seeking refuge in a motel who start being picked off one by one.
Identity already orchestrated a rug-pulling twist by revealing the entire story had happened within the mind of Pruit Taylor Vance’s convicted murderer Malcolm Rivers, which is fine. However, tacking on a second twist that it was actually the personality of the nine-year-old boy who lives within him that was responsible for the murders is so stupid it borders on comical.
2. High Tension (Alexandre Aja, 2008)
Alexandre Aja’s bloodthirsty breakthrough movie was an unflinching and suspenseful combination of torture porn and a genuinely arresting thriller that decided the best way to round out its story was with one of the laziest and most uninspired cop-outs imaginable.
The reveal that Cecile de France’s Marie is the killer all along isn’t just lazy: it doesn’t make a lick of sense either. What’s supposed to be a jaw-dropping revelation instead crumbles immediately under the weight of the movie’s logic, given everything the audience has already witnessed.
Had she been stalking herself? Who is the guy who winked at her at the gas station winking at if she wasn’t really there? Who’s driving when she takes off after the ‘killer’ in a high-speed car chase? In the end, the closing moment makes it clear it’s about one person’s unrequited and unreciprocated love, which is perfectly OK, apart from the fact it bulldozes the previous 90 minutes to make that point.
1. The Florida Project (Sean Baker, 2017)
Sean Baker is one of the most gifted and consistent independent filmmakers in the business, but even he felt compelled to weigh in on the discourse surrounding the last scene of The Florida Project.
The final shot of Jancey and Mooney taking each other’s hands and running into Walt Disney World comes out of nowhere and feels incredibly abrupt, with the music and cinematography jarring when compared to the tone and aesthetic that had been established up until then. The film is good enough that it doesn’t sink the whole thing, even if Baker knew he was going to split opinion.
“It’s left up to interpretation, but it’s not supposed to be literal,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. “This is me saying to the audience, ‘If you want a happy ending, you’re gonna have to go that headspace of a kid because, here, that’s the only way to achieve it.” That doesn’t explain or answer it, but he’s the director, so his word is law by default.
Maybe it’s a complete lack of whimsy on this writer’s part, but introducing fantasy at the very last second without offering any resolution and then telling the viewer it’s up to them to decide how it ends reeks of trying to make a point without actually having to make one at all.
