Top 10 Worst Movie Endings
#10: “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” (2008)
Kicking off our list is the Indiana Jones film that went away from the spiritual and straight into sci-fi. While we could stomach a lot, this film nuked the fridge big time when the crystal skull awakened a generic alien who proceeded to melt Cate Blanchett’s brain. Even worse is the image of Indy witnessing a spaceship flying off to not space, but rather, another dimension.
#9: “Sunshine” (2007)
The sun is dying, and the only people that can reignite it are astronauts that hope to do so with a massive nuclear payload. As if this weren’t enough pressure, the first ship to try mysteriously vanished. Now this is a cool setup! Unfortunately, the solitary cabin feverish tone of the film is completely uprooted in the final act when the deranged captain of the missing ship reappears and turns the film into a kind of slasher pick. Imagine how confused you’d be if you stepped out to go to the bathroom when that happened.
#8: “The Forgotten” (2004)
A bad movie ending can be the result of any sort of bad decision. The entire film revolves around the fact that everybody thinks that Julianne Moore kid never existed, even though she believes very strongly that he did. With zero percent of the film having anything to do with aliens, you can bet audiences were pretty upset when it was revealed that extra terrestrials were responsible. Seriously dumb.
#7: “Lady in the Water” (2006)
So the village was bad, but we we’re willing to give Shyamalan the benefit of the doubt and believe that that was an aberration. However, the struggling director proved that failure would be his new norm with this incredibly bizarre tale. Though it has a fair amount of interesting characters, the story never picked up, especially when the entire finale was quite literally wolves, tree monkeys, and waiting for the a nymph to be carried away by a giant eagle J.R.R. Tolkien style, which we don’t even see. Lame!
#6: “The Number 23” (2007)
In this psychological thriller, Jim Carrey's character finds a book entitled "The Number 23". It tells the story of a detective who murdered his own girlfriend. With an increasing amount of things in common with the character and the eponymous number seemingly popping up everywhere in his life, his own sanity begins to unravel as he pulls at each thread of the mystery. As it turns out, he’s written the book himself before giving himself amnesia. Of course.
#5: “I Am Legend” (2007)
Great job Hollywood, altering a your movie’s original ending, despite leaving the support for that ending throughout the picture! The twist is supposed to be that the darkstaklers were thinking and compassionate, and were merely out to rescue their own. Instead Smith goes out with a bang and his friends find a safe haven to have a happily ever after style ending. Not only does make for a disappointing end to a disappointing movie, but it completely undermines the message of the source material.
#4: “War of the Worlds” (2005)
Okay, so now let’s take the same problem in the other direction. Arguably, Steven Spielberg was set up to disappoint from the start by choosing to remain stringently loyal to the original source material. This means that germs defeat the aliens, not humans. So they’ve mastered interplanetary travel, but Purell is beyond them? I guess “War of the Flu Season” or “Common Cold of the Worlds” weren’t catchy titles.
#3: “Superman” (1978)
When Superman failed to save Lois Lane, they decided to cheat instead of showing some Spiderman sized cahones. This involved Superman nonsensically using his super speed to reverse the rotation of the globe and turn back time, cause that’s how it works. We’re pretty sure that would just kill everything, rather than save the one life, but what can we expect from a continuity that has to invent a new substance in order to give the hero a weakness.
#2: “Planet of the Apes” (2001)
Rebooting a classic and toying with it’s use of a twist ending? That’s just bananas! Maybe that would have worked, had Tim Burton’s final scene not went for shock value over logic. Returning Mark Wahlberg to Earth, out of nowhere, and for no reason, humans have been replaced with monkeys, and even the statue of Abe Lincoln had been turned into a monument of his defeated foe! Sheesh. That called for another reboot.
Before we unveil our top pick, here are a few honorable mentions.
#1: “The Devil Inside” (2012)
Taking the top spot is this found footage horror flick centered on demonic possession. Here, signs bring the realization that Isabella isn’t quite herself. When the priest realizes that the hospital cannot help her, he decides to get her an exorcism. A scuffle in the car leads to the driver getting possessed and veer into oncoming traffic. Then everyone’s rolling around in the car and its horrible and bam, movie’s over and you’re lift with…a website link? Wow I hope you pirated this.
Agree with our list? Which movie ending pissed you off the most? For more entertaining top 10s published daily, be sure to subscribe to WatchMojo.com.