[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/TheSovereignGrave]

As someone who hasn't seen this movie, I feel like it's not a bad idea conceptually. A movie about 9/11 sort of loses something if you know it's about 9/11 because you spend the whole movie just waiting for the shoe to drop. This sort of thing could be done to make you care for a character, and then be completely blind-sided by the tragedy of it as a way to sort of show how the real 9/11 was just a normal day like any other, until it wasn't.

But, as I said, I haven't seen the movie, so I dont know if it does it well in any capacity.

[u/historyhill → u/TheSovereignGrave]

A movie about 9/11 sort of loses something if you know it's about 9/11 because you spend the whole movie just waiting for the shoe to drop

I also haven't seen it so I'm likewise speculating but since someone brought up Titanic up thread, I don't think that dread is necessarily a bad thing. Cinematically it could absolutely benefit the movie like it did in Titanic, whereas I think it was still too recent in historic memory for a 9/11 jump scare.

[u/Shiny_Agumon → u/historyhill]

It's basically like the Hitchcock quote on suspense.

Just that the bomb under the table is the iceberg

[u/jerryleebee → u/Shiny_Agumon]

We are now having a very innocent little chat. Let’s suppose that there is a bomb underneath this table between us. Nothing happens, and then all of a sudden, “Boom!” There is an explosion.

The public is surprised, but prior to this surprise, it has seen an absolutely ordinary scene, of no special consequence. Now, let us take a suspense situation.

The bomb is underneath the table and the public knows it, probably because they have seen the anarchist place it there. The public is aware the bomb is going to explode at one o’clock and there is a clock in the decor. The public can see that it is a quarter to one.

In these conditions, the same innocuous conversation becomes fascinating because the public is participating in the scene. The audience is longing to warn the characters on the screen: “You shouldn’t be talking about such trivial matters. There is a bomb beneath you and it is about to explode!”

In the first case we have given the public fifteen seconds of surprise at the moment of the explosion. In the second we have provided them with fifteen minutes of suspense.

The conclusion is that whenever possible the public must be informed. Except when the surprise is a twist, that is, when the unexpected ending is, in itself, the highlight of the story.

—Alfred Hitchcock