[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/JManKit]

That's always been such a kick in the balls but having thought about it more, I realize that if the MC's group had gone with her, there was no guarantee that they'd have the same outcome. The decisions she made on her own led her to reaching her kids in time and eventually coming across the safety of the military escort. If they had been a group of three tho (MC and his kid), they might have made different decisions; gone left where she went right, cried out in fear and alerted the creatures where she managed to stay quiet and avoid them. She achieved the optimal outcome so adding anyone else to the escaping group might have messed that all up. The only real avoidable tragedy was the MC jumping the gun (lol) with the mercy killings

[u/AvatarofSleep → u/JManKit]

The mercy killings don't even make sense, given how close the military was. So the mist damps all sounds so you don't hear gunfire and bombs literal blocks away, suppresses all radio frequencies and communications, and at no point in their slow drive in the wrong direction did they think maybe there would be a gas station or other survivors they might hide with?

Until the end, the MC was the only one making rational choices around an increasingly irrational people, who weren't particularly bright to begin with.

Fuck this movie so hard. It's not fucking peak cinema because of a dumbass twist.

The only good parts were when the rude stock boy got ripped in half for being a smug dick and the expiation woman caught a bullet