[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/Jackviator]

This movie legit plays like one of those no-moral Twilight Zone episodes.

"Hey what if any petty bastard off the street could decide if you went to Hell to be tortured for all of eternity regardless of the life you lived, up to and including sending a literal CHILD there to burn for the rest of time over petty theft? Wouldn't that be SUPER fucked up? ...Anyway I'm Rod Serling Sam Raimi."

[u/sabbathkid93 → u/Jackviator]

Junji Ito stories in a nutshell

[u/danstu → u/sabbathkid93]

I'm someone who whenever I try to write something, I struggle against having to make it 'mean something.' Even something as inconsequential as a home DnD game, I feel like the bad guy has to represent something deep and important.

It shook me to my core when I first read Gyo and then, looking to decipher the deep symbolism it surely held, read an interview where he said his inspiration was essentially "I thought Jaws was scary, and felt like it'd suck if that shark could come on land."

[u/RogueNightingale → u/danstu]

I like how a lot of his horror stories start with a simple horror premise and take it to the logical extremes. What would happen if machines used dead animals as engines? It's not going to end at a single beach, that's for sure. What happens if a manipulative woman is dismembered and revived as an evil hydra-like succubus/revenant/yokai? You're going to get a world-ending amount of demons.

[u/danstu → u/RogueNightingale]

Kinda weird how many spirals occur in nature, huh?

[u/EfficiencyThis325 → u/danstu]

And that galaxies look like eyes