Top 20 Most Tragic Movie Endings

A friendship across cultural boundaries culminates in a devastating sacrifice. Walt Kowalski is an embittered and ailing veteran of the Korean War, estranged from his family. When the young Thao tries to steal his Ford Torino for his gang initiation, though, an unlikely friendship is sparked. Protecting Thao from a fierce Hmong gang only leads to more trouble for all involved and it all culminates in Thao seeking to confront the gang. After a harrowing revelation from Walt, he locks the boy up and carries out his plan alone. Walt’s sacrifice is undoubtedly heroic, showing the power of friendship and redemption. It’s also completely gut-wrenching.

Class warfare has never been so literal. This award-winning film follows the Kims, a low-income family in Seoul. When it’s suggested that their son, Ki-woo, present himself as an English language tutor for the rich Park family, the Kims finagle their way into posh jobs with the clueless Parks. The latter family may be oblivious, but they are also snobbish and arrogant, and the Kims struggle to avoid detection. When they find another low-income couple living in the Parks’ basement, however, it sets up a chain of events that lead to tragedy. This comedy-thriller about class and wealth inequality reveals the realities of upstairs and downstairs.

Even superheroes are only mortal. “Logan” follows Hugh Jackman’s iconic Wolverine as he smuggles young Laura out of the country. Laura is a mutant created by Alkali-Transigen with Logan’s own DNA and now sentenced to be destroyed. While Logan does win the fight with Laura’s help, it isn’t without great price. Dying from a mortal wound, Logan tells his daughter not to become their weapon. A genre-defying feat, this movie pulls no punches in killing off its main hero and passing the baton from the old generation to the new through the power of sacrifice.

In this bleak crime thriller, a mother hires two Boston detectives, Patrick and Angie, to find an abducted child, Amanda. But soon the detectives learn the case is much more complex than they could have imagined. The kidnapping was staged by people Patrick and Angie thought they could trust, and Amanda turns up safe and sound in Captain Doyle’s residence. While he – and even Angie – insist the child will be better off with him than with her neglectful and substance-dependent mom, Patrick ultimately returns Amanda home. The very last scene shows Patrick babysitting Amanda, and quickly discovering that Doyle and Angie were right. Ironic and horribly sad, it shows us the line between right and wrong is often a thin and complicated one indeed.

Tales of star-crossed lovers never wear us out with their infinite variety. In this critically-acclaimed period piece, painter Marianne is hired to create a portrait of noblewoman Héloïse, who is about to be married off. As Héloïse refuses to be painted, Marianne acts as her companion, all while having disturbing visions about the noblewoman in her wedding dress. What follows is a growing intimate relationship between the two women. After Marianne finishes her portrait, her reward is the sight of Héloïse in her wedding dress. It was not these lovers’ time, unfortunately. The very ending follows Marianne, as she sees Héloïse again in the future, completely taken by an orchestral piece Marianne had once played for her.

Everyone loves a good fantasy. But even the best fantasy cannot shield you from reality for too long. After Ofelia begins living with her new stepfather, the brutal Captain Vidal, she has a few chance encounters of the mythical kind, in the process discovering she is the reincarnated Princess Moanna, daughter to king of the underworld. She is given three tasks in order to return to her kingdom, but the third task proves the deadliest. She’s asked to bring her newborn brother to a labyrinth built by the king, which she does, but refuses to draw any of her brother’s blood for the task. Vidal, unaware of the bigger picture, shoots her. As Ofelia lies dying, drops of her blood fall, and she is transported to her kingdom at last.

You all already know this one’s a real tearjerker. Based on the bestselling book by John Green, the film follows Hazel, a teen girl with thyroid cancer. Hazel meets a fellow cancer patient, Augustus Waters, and the two strike up a friendship and eventual romance. For their last wish, they go to Amsterdam to meet their favorite writer and consummate their relationship in a hotel room. But soon, Augustus’ cancer takes a turn for the worst, and he ends up passing away. Inspired by a friend of John Green’s who passed away from cancer, this poignant story is yet another promising relationship foiled by the stars.

Stories of man’s best friend are always heartwarming… and often just as heartbreaking. “Hachi” follows the titular dog as Rhode Island professor Parker Wilson adopts him. Named after the Japanese word for “eight,” Hachi follows his master to the railway station every day and waits to greet him upon his return. Even when Parker dies of a stroke and his dog is adopted by another family, Hachi loyally makes the trip to the railway station every day. He eventually dies of old age at his usual spot at the railway station—only this time, Parker comes to greet him and take him to the afterlife. Cue the waterworks.

Another affecting tale of friendship, “End of Watch” follows two police detectives in Los Angeles and their bond as partners in law-enforcement and close friends. Brian Taylor and Mike Zavala work on tough cases together, which include gang activity and human trafficking. But when they anger the Sinaloa Cartel, the two men are targeted for assassination. Both officers are ambushed and shot at. While Brian pulls through, Mike is mortally wounded in shielding his friend. At Mike’s funeral, Brian can hardly make a coherent speech in his grief. He can only manage one simple phrase that makes all of us weep: “He was my brother.”

Based on a short story of the same name, this iconic horror film about metamorphosis is indeed Kafka-esque. Scientist Seth Brundle is working on an invention that can transport an object from one of its pods to the other. While they transport inanimate objects perfectly, living objects arrive mutilated. In a mistake that costs him dearly, Seth goes into the pod, unaware that a fly ventured in with him. While he emerges seemingly intact, the reality is much grimmer. The machine has merged Seth’s human DNA with the fly’s, and eventually Seth transforms into a gruesome insect. It’s his love interest, Ronnie, who has to put him out of his misery.

One of the most romantically tragic films, “Brokeback Mountain” is a now-iconic entry in queer cinema. Two cowboys, Ennis and Jack, are hired by foreman Joe Aguirre to herd his sheep to Brokeback Mountain. After a night together, the hired men develop a passionate but secret relationship, though fear and self-denial prevents them from being together. Instead, the two enter marriages doomed to fail. After years together and apart, Ennis learns of Jack’s death. In his bedroom, he finds Jack’s and his shirts, one inside the other, and breaks down in tears. Ennis keeps the shirts, and the final scene makes deeply palpable all that was lost.

It’s pretty obvious that a movie about substance use disorder is likely going to subject viewers to harsh realities about the negative impact of dependency. However, moviegoers are usually offered a reprieve by the end of such films – for example, with a protagonist that’s turned the corner and changed his or her life for the better. But in “Requiem for a Dream,” not so much. By the end of Darren Aronofsky’s psychological drama, each of the four central characters has been consumed by their vices; you get a true sense of how destructive their addictions have become.

Take a film starring both Denzel Washington and Tom Hanks and you already have a pretty good idea that your emotions are going to be brutally manipulated for the next two hours. In “Philadelphia,” Hanks plays a lawyer that’s fired after his employer discovers he has AIDS and is gay. As Andrew Beckett grows increasingly ill over the course of the film, audiences may have been privy to his impending fate, but that still doesn’t dull the blow when he finally succumbs. His court victory ends up being bittersweet, as he dies and is remembered by his family and friends in a gut-wrenching closing funeral.

This well-constructed and hard-to-watch thriller is chock-full of surprises, mainly of the horribly gruesome variety. In spite of all the horrific ways victims died, audiences still weren’t expecting the horrible twist director David Fincher saved for us at the end. The premise is certainly interesting, and it’s clear the killer is sending a message with his deadly sins theme – a theme that continues right to the end of the film where Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman’s detectives have finally captured the elusive serial killer. Unfortunately, this end makes it harrowingly clear he’s still one step a-head of them.

The words “Holocaust” and “heartwarming” don’t exactly go together, and yet, for a moment, audiences were charmed by the story of a man who was trying to protect his son from the horrors of a concentration camp. In this tragicomedy-drama, writer-director-star Roberto Benigni plays a Jewish-Italian bookshop owner whose family has been placed in one such camp. He attempts to convince his son that it’s all an elaborate game with a prize at the end. So after the Allied forces arrive to shut down the camp, we’re given hope that they’ll all be reunited and escape the ordeal together. But Guido’s encounter with a guard cut that dream brutally short.

In this ‘70s classic, Jack Nicholson plays an inmate at a mental institution named Randle ‘Mac’ McMurphy who manages to inject a sense of life and spirit of rebellion into a group of his fellow patients. Throughout the course of the film, he butts heads with the remarkably unlikeable Nurse Ratched on multiple occasions, undermining her authority whenever he gets the opportunity. One night of hard partying is followed by a violent confrontation between Mac and Ratched, and ultimately leads to Mac being lobotomized. He’s then euthanized by one of the inmates he’d inspired to seek his own freedom.

This is another one of those films where you hoped for the best in spite of your better instincts. Michael Clarke Duncan plays John Coffey, a man wrongfully convicted of the sexual assault and murder of two girls and facing execution. The guards of the jail soon come to realize that Duncan’s character is actually a gentle soul with an immense gift, and that he will likely die for someone else’s crimes. When Coffey finally meets his fate – at his own request – we see how the destruction of his potential due to the world’s evil and prejudices is truly the greatest tragedy.

While this Stephen King horror adaptation may be a complete deviation from “The Green Mile,” and King’s original ending, it definitely doesn’t skimp in the tragedy department. When a dangerous mist traps a group of townspeople in a local grocery store, they are beset by unearthly creatures and forced to fight for their lives. After lasting the night, a small number of survivors, including the film’s protagonist and his son, decide to make a run for it and drive to safety. But when their vehicle runs out of gas, they decide that it’d be best to just end it all. After killing his son and the rest of the group, David Drayton emerges to find out that help was literally right outside their door the whole time.

Back before moviegoers were introduced to Nic Cage’s wackier roles, he turned in this Oscar-winning performance as an alcoholic with a death wish. As Ben Sanderson, a screenwriter who has decided to drink himself to death in Las Vegas, he befriends and falls in love with a sex-worker named Sera, played by Elizabeth Shue. The two bond while Ben slowly delves deeper into the pits of his alcoholism. As a final farewell, Ben and Sera share moments of a romance never fully realized, after which he eventually succumbs to his disease.

In this sports drama, Hilary Swank plays Maggie Fitzgerald, an ambitious waitress who convinces a crotchety but skilled trainer to aid her in her dream of becoming a professional boxer. As Maggie quickly moves up the ranks in her division, the two develop a bond similar to that of father and daughter, and everything seems to go swimmingly for the most part. That is, until a sucker punch in the ring leads to her paralysis. It’s not a fate Maggie can accept and she pleads with Frankie to put her out of her misery, which he eventually does.

Which other mournful movie ending left you emotionally bereft and lying on the cold, hard floor? Let us know in the comments down below!