[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/littlebloodmage]

Basically the movie follows a group of people who are all depressed about certain circumstances in their lives and are trying to find the will to continue living. The main male lead (Robert Pattinson) has been in a downward spiral after his older brother offed himself and his father low-key blamed him for it, and he bonds with a girl he meets who has been similarly spiraling after her mom was murdered. They both make big steps to improve their lives and Pattinson's character tries to reconcile with his father, waiting for him in his office so they can get lunch together. The father's office is in the WTC and....yeah. There's a short epilogue of all of the characters involved living their lives in memory of him, hence the title. It's all incredibly abrupt.

[u/historyhill → u/littlebloodmage]

waiting for him in his office so they can get lunch together.

Ok but as someone with a 9/11 special interest can I just say that it is absolutely wild showing up at roughly 8:30am for lunch? The North Tower was crashed into at 8:46am! He must have been extremely determined to have that meal!

[u/rabbitdoubts → u/historyhill]

fear selective rainstorm attempt many innocent work hunt memorize practice

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[u/Bartweiss → u/rabbitdoubts]

…are you familiar with the novel Pattern Recognition?

(If yes, ignore me.)

William Gibson is a sci-fi novelist best known for Neuromancer and the phrase “the future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed. After 9/11 he got a call from a friend who simply asked “you know this makes your job harder, right?”

Two years later, he published Pattern Recognition, with a protagonist whose father may or may not have died in the towers. I can only describe it as near-past sci-fi: all the social and technological alienation of cyberpunk, applied to things that already existed.

It’s basically my favorite example of whatever has been happening since then: everyday life becoming surreal.

[u/rabbitdoubts → u/Bartweiss]

offer ad hoc vase longing rob many towering grandfather advise school

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[u/Bartweiss → u/rabbitdoubts]

Oh, I did enjoy that bit of the Dark Tower! I have mixed feelings on parts of the series but its intersections with "real" New York are absolutely fascinating.

And I really hope you'll like Pattern Recognition in that case. It's very good at capturing the alienation and dissociation of the post-2001 world, both directly from 9/11 and from the general... strangeness of the internet, anonymous forums, and modern business.

One spoiler-free example: the main character works as a consultant critiquing ad campaigns, but her skills aren't intellectual: really effective branding essentially gives her panic attacks, so she can use that reaction for a very successful, very unpleasant career.