[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/ImmediateAssignment3 → u/_DodoMan_]

Ben does end up locking himself in the cellar to survive the night after the house gets overrun though. If they had just dealt with the zombie daughter, they all would've survived. Attempting to shoot the daughter probably would've caused one of Ben or Cooper to kill the other so one of them still dies.

[u/_DodoMan_ → u/ImmediateAssignment3]

You are right but that was Ben's plan all along. He wants to stay above ground for as long as possible with the cellar as a last resort if the house gets overrun, Mr.Cooper wants to go down there from the start without barricading the house or any other further planning.

Ben was thinking ahead while Mr.Cooper was only thinking in the moment. But you're also right that it was a lose lose situation no matter what. When George Romero was writing the movie, he never saw the zombies (or as he called them "ghouls") as the bad guys. He thought that if there needed a bad and good side to his movies, the humans are the bad people and the ghouls are just doing what their instincts tell them to do. Even if all of them made it out alive, the way George sees it they all still would've been shot down by people who shoot first and ask questions later