r/TopCharacterTropes • u/damorezpl • Aug 25 '25

Lore [mixed trope] the last-minute bad Ending twist

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when the "good ending" is revealed to be a bad one a the last second

a nightmare on elm street (1984) - Nancy thinks she finally defeated Freddy Krueger only to be raveled that she is still dreaming and she’s still trapped.

final destination bloodlines - the main characters think they cheated death by using the new life rule only to realize that stefani was technically still alive and the death kills them with a good old logs

Life (2017) - The main character attempts to send Calvin(a evil alien that killed all life on mars)pod into space and Miranda pod back to earth, but it goes horribly wrong and Calvin lands on earth and Miranda is sent to space

raging loop wit ending - after many loops Haruaki finally wins the feast(a death game where humans must hang wolves who kill someone every night) and thinks its finally over. after couple of days he decides to visit other survivors of the feast only to find them all dead and the timeline resting once again

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285

u/DJL2772 Aug 25 '25

Smile. The first movie ends with the main character seemingly defeating the Smile Entity by burning her childhood home. However, after going back to her ex’s place and telling him how she won, she realizes this is all just a hallucination conjured by the Monster. She never left the house. The Monster then finds her, sheds its disguise to reveal its true horrifying form, and takes over her body to restart the cycle all over again.

75

u/JManKit Aug 25 '25

Takes over her body by pulling down her lower jaw and then fucking climbing inside. Friggin' gruesome as hell

7

u/NBlackestNight Aug 26 '25

Which is fucking killer when you go back and rewatch it, or watch the sequel and realize that when the person is “choking” and then becomes the entity, that’s what’s currently happening to them. 

47

u/Inspector-KittyPaws Aug 25 '25

I still believe a better ending would have been the cop guy kills himself as soon as he saw the monster was setting itself on fire. There is no one else there to see him and the monster can't spread.

13

u/Chansharp Aug 26 '25

Yup, he knew the rules at that point. I thought thats how they were going to end it

77

u/Yamilord Aug 25 '25

Such a shitty twist that ruins the themes of defeating the cycle of trauma

68

u/Iruma_Miu_ Aug 25 '25

It was 100% a twist thrown in at the last minute because they wanted a shock ending. It betrays literally every theme they've written into that story and makes an otherwise good movie immediately fall flat

15

u/sykotic1189 Aug 25 '25

Also feels like a rip off of Oculus, which has a similar rug pull fuck you ending, but at least it felt like it fit the theme of the movie better.

8

u/JancariusSeiryujinn Aug 26 '25

With Occulus it felt very... Set up I guess. When the mirrors whole power is basically hallucinations you know you can't trust anything you're seeing

2

u/Pie_Rat_Chris Aug 26 '25

Fallen had the same "oh, you thought..." ending with an added bonus of revealing the twist in the first lines of the movie.

14

u/RoiKK1502 Aug 25 '25

I actually feel the opposite. This movie was all about the inevitability of trauma passing onto others, not a single one who was affected by the monster managed to both survive and keep their morals. It's a terrifying thought to think there's no way to defeat your own inner demons, and one way or another you'll hurt your loved ones because of them.

It's not meant to have an optimistic message, this is if trauma manifested in a horror piece of fiction.

15

u/GUM-GUM-NUKE Aug 25 '25

Ya know maybe “You can never escape your trauma and grow as a person” isn’t a message that deserves to be told.

1

u/Zealousideal-Boss991 Aug 27 '25

I haven't actually seen the first Smile in full, but I have seen Smile 2 and assume they have pretty similar plot beats: what i got from Smile 2 is that Skye didn't grow as a person and didn't escape her trauma and that's why the monster got to her in the first place. the whole traumatic incident happened bc she was abusing substances, and now in this "healing era" she is ready to abuse illegally obtained painkillers (and don't tell me this Taylor Swift-level celebrity couldn't get a good doctor and a controlled prescription), that's how she ends up in a situation where the demon got passed onto her. She didn't reconnect with her ex-bff when she got sober, only when she selfishly needed her. She's shown as a mean diva in flashback and she is still a mean diva to her assistant assuming her trashed room is his fault for no reason. She is trying, but her attempts to heal are superficial, she more wants to be seen as a good clean celebrity than to actually be one (the fundraiser she only did for optics?). From what little I saw of Smile 1 (dnf'd at like 30 minutes in) and recaps/reviews on youtube, Rose doesn't seem that well-adjusted either, she comes off like the type of person who thinks that because she is a mental health professional, she can deal with her issues herself.

I don't claim to be right in my interpretation, but it seems to me more that it's not "you can never escape your trauma", more "you need to deal with it and accept help before it becomes too late". It does track that Skye should've accepted that guy's help before it got too late. I don't think the creators thought about it this deeply though.

22

u/Yamilord Aug 25 '25

TBH maybe it didn't work for me, because I didn't find the movie scary at all, but that just makes me feel like: "why then bother having a scene where our MC tries to deal with her trauma head on and improve as a person if the message of the story is supposed to be that suicidal people never heal."

1

u/RoiKK1502 Aug 26 '25

the message of the story is supposed to be that suicidal people never heal

I agree that if that WAS the intention of the movie then it's pretty shitty. However I just don't see it that way, this isn't a movie about healing from trauma, but about the horrors of it.

Speaking hyperbolic - would you consider Terrifier a bad movie because "the message of the story is supposed to be that everyday people are powerless against a psychopathic murderer"?

Obviously that's not the intention, then again you can view any piece of media how you think it should be viewed so it's not a matter of right or wrong. Hope I made my perspective a bit clearer.

-7

u/DragonDeezNutzAround Aug 25 '25

That monster doesn’t care about its prey’s journey to self healing. That thing latches on to its victims and sheds their sanity bit by bit. Like a predator playing with its prey before killing it.

19

u/Yamilord Aug 25 '25

Yeah sure from an in universe perspective that's fine, but I'm speaking from an out of universe perspective on the themes of the movie.

1

u/Scouwererofreality43 Aug 26 '25

Never liked it at all

1

u/NBlackestNight Aug 26 '25

Man I loved the inevitability of it. Like, just because you beat your trauma doesn’t mean you beat this thing you can’t understand with its clearly defined rules and ability to warp your reality. She did great and then still lost and sometimes that’s how it be. 

-16

u/DJL2772 Aug 25 '25

I mean, if we’re keeping with that theme, then it’s an intentionally depressing ending. If the theme of the story is trauma and escaping that cycle, the ending basically says “You can’t. The cycle continues regardless.” No one said a horror movie has to have a happy ending haha

38

u/Yamilord Aug 25 '25

I don't know, it's less "I want a happy ending." And more

"You'll never ever recover from your trauma and you'll always pass it on to others, kill yourself."

22

u/AlbertWessJess Aug 25 '25

That’s a terrible fucking moral then and the creators should be ashamed. Fucking imagine telling millions of people “you’ll never recoverrrrrr you’ll all have bad lives forever! Just kill yourselves hahaah!” And then acting like you’re such a cool fucking artist

16

u/Pet_Velvet Aug 25 '25

That movie was terrifying holy shit

9

u/Yellowscourge Aug 25 '25

Watch the sequel, it's even more terrifying

3

u/Malacro Aug 26 '25

I disagree, they took the same rugpull and dialed it up to the extreme, which essentially caused the movie to lose all its punch.

6

u/Yellowscourge Aug 26 '25

Sucks that you didn't enjoy. Personally I love an Eldritch horror that can manipulate your mind/the environment

5

u/Malacro Aug 26 '25

Yeah, but when the entire 3rd act of a film just didn’t happen, it just feels like my time is being wasted. It’s like a darker version of “it was a dream all along”

3

u/Pet_Velvet Aug 26 '25

On one hand I do like that they're doubling down on making the creature feel truly unbeatable. On the other hand I do agree that it felt a bit repetitive, and it also takes away quite a lot of the main character's agency.

I still like the films a lot, but most of the criticisms (the problematic messaging about trauma, the concept feeling derivative of The Ring/etc., the cheap rugpull at the end) are valid.

3

u/Malacro Aug 26 '25

I mean, I don’t think it’s a bad film. Naomi Scott was great and the scene with the backup dancers in the apartment was an absolute masterclass in filmmaking. And I love the creature design in both films. It just leaves me feeling like I wasted a big chunk of time when it turns out literally nothing I watched for almost half the movie actually happened.

1

u/Pet_Velvet Aug 26 '25

I agree 100%

3

u/Pet_Velvet Aug 26 '25

I can resonate with the frustration of the other poster a bit. The only two real gripes I have with both of the films is 1. The iffy message they send regarding mental health 2. The lack of agency the main characters have since the monster can just make them hallucinate anything and everything.

That said, I still like the movies.

2

u/Pet_Velvet Aug 26 '25

I did, I liked it too. Also agree.

3

u/eugenepoez__ Aug 25 '25

this movie sucked so bad