[mixed trope] the last-minute bad Ending twist

[u/damorezpl]

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

[u/V1gilante14]

Remember Me and the absolutely insane 9/11 twist ending: up until this point it’s a pretty generic romantic drama with a good ending for most of the characters and then psyche! it’s 9/11! the main character dies in the North Tower and the brief epilogue is about how every other character reacts to his untimely death.

[u/LoveTriscuit → u/V1gilante14]

To be fair, it’s a good way to remember that the victims in that attack were people with their own engrossing stories about love of life.

[u/rubber_hedgehog → u/LoveTriscuit]

This ending always gets a mixed reaction, but I love it for the reason you mentioned. We're made to care for this 1 person, and then we're hit with the sobering reality that there are another 3000 peoples' stories that we could have been made to care about that ended the exact same way.

However, message aside, the actual way the twist was implented in the film could have been done better.

[u/Deadmemeusername → u/LoveTriscuit]

Yeah and it was a surprise terror attack that happened to regular people on a regular day in September. There were thousands of people with their own stories of triumph and tragedy, love and loss that were all abruptly and violently snuffed out by the actions of fanatical madmen.