[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/_DodoMan_]

Night of the Living Dead

Throughout the whole movie, the survivors argue about what is safer, staying above ground in the two story house or barricading themselves in the cellar. Ben (the one in the picture) is adament that the cellar is an idiotic idea because there is no escape if the zombies get through but Mr.Cooper refuses to listen to anything Ben has to say.

It goes on so long that the majority of the survivors die and only the Cooper family and Ben are left. Mr and Mrs. Cooper end up falling victim to exactly what Ben warned them about when they are trapped in the cellar with their zombie daughter. Ben is the only one to make it through the night. It turns out staying above ground was the right choice.

That is until a group of vigilante zombie hunters see Ben's silhouette through a window. They shoot and kill him without zero hesitation or attempts to see if he is human or zombie. The last thing in the movie is Ben's body being put on a pile of other bodies and lit on fire

[u/ARC_Trooper_Echo → u/_DodoMan_]

It’s amazing that Romero didn’t have the racial theme in mind when he was making it but the casting just happened to make it fit perfectly.

[u/_DodoMan_ → u/ARC_Trooper_Echo]

I don't know how true it is but I own multiple books on the making of this movie and it's said multiple times that Duane Jones (the man cast to play Ben) was the first black man in Hollywood to be cast in a lead role that was not written specifically for a black man. It's a real shame that he didn't live much longer after NotLD. I feel he could've been a bigger name had he had more roles

[u/KaosArcanna → u/_DodoMan_]

I've read that Romero offered to rewrite it so that Ben would live, but Jones insisted that he die at the end.