5 Incredibly Depressing Movie Endings That Still Haunt Us Years Later

Movies have the power to transport us to other worlds or make us believe that the impossible is happening right before our eyes. However, that same magic that movies work on us can sometimes take the form of some deep trauma. There are films out there that tell stories so sad, or end on such a down note, that the pain of the viewing experience never fades from memory. There are endings to films that still plague our minds with thought, in some cases, even decades after the film was released. We’ve compiled a list of 5 examples of sad endings, which most movie fans would agree will haunt them forever.

NOTE: We aren’t going for the films that are clearly made to be dramas or tear-jerkers – Braveheart, My Girl, Old Yeller, Steel Magnolias – these are easy targets. Instead, we looked back at films that hit us with sad or twisted endings without warning, creating deep core traumas that still stick with us.

Here are the 5 incredibly depressing movie endings that we just can’t get out of our minds.

Honorable Mention: Memento

Christopher Nolan got his breakout hit with his 2000 neo-Noir indie film, which tells its story by moving backward through the narrative. For most of the first and second acts of the film, we believe that poor Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce) has truly been on a noble hunt for his wife’s killer, which ends with the violent killing that opens the film. Nolan then twists our perceptions in Act Two, revealing that our memory-impaired gumshoe is actually in way over his head, with “allies” that he can’t remember are foes, and a mission that may be deeply compromised. However, the third and final act of Memento is where Nolan scarred a generation of movie fans.

The final reveal of the film (which is actually the middle of the story, chronologically) is that Leonard has been lying to himself all along. His wife wasn’t killed by some criminal; he accidentally killed her by not remembering her correct dosage of insulin. Afterward, “Lenny” managed to track down and kill the criminals who invaded his home, assaulted his wife, and impaired his mind; however, he couldn’t even remember his great act of vengeance. To keep himself alive with purpose, Lenny has become a relentless and remorseless serial killer, constantly telling himself the story that he is the hero. We were rooting for the villain the entire time. Perspective is everything.

Chris Nolan is the Chris Nolan we know today in large part because Memento was early evidence of his power to use film and nonlinear story to examine deeply unsettling things about the human mind. As Lenny says in his final, confessional monologue: “We all need mirrors to remind ourselves who we are. I’m no different.” If that film hasn’t made you question your reality and memory every day afterward, it means you haven’t watched it yet.

5) The Mist

Stephen King’s stories aren’t known to have happy endings, but there is one King adaptation that definitely stands above all the rest when it comes to saving its deepest horror for the final moments.

The Mist (2007) takes place in a Maine town that is suddenly hit by a large cloud of mist that seems like it could be a chemical attack. A group of locals gets stranded inside a supermarket, where tensions quickly rise when some characters discover that the mist is hiding supernatural monsters waiting to pounce. Other characters refuse to believe in the threat, while some start to break down and go mad from fear. Eventually, sides are chosen, and the opposing camps go to war. The main character, David Drayton (Thomas Jane), decides to flee the store with his son and a small group of sympathizers; they get into a car and drive as long as they can in the mist, but eventually run out of gas. Hearing the monsters coming for them, David pulls out a revolver with just enough bullets to kill everyone but himself, and takes on the task of euthanizing his friends and his child.

Director Frank Darabont made that ending seem bleak enough in that moment, but The Mist achieves infamy for its final epilogue, when it’s revealed that the sounds of impending doom are actually the US military arriving to save the day. As the soldiers burn away the mist and all the creatures in it, returning the world to normal, David is left on the road screaming, his mind fracturing from the guilt of what he’s just done.

Some endings are sad or depraved to drive some deeper thematic point; The Mist almost seems sadistic the way it makes us perpetually wish (with every re-watch) that David could just hold out hope for one more second.

4) Marley & Me

Brooooo! We came to the theater in 2008 expecting to see a cute rom-com with Owen Wilson, Jennifer Aniston, and an adorable yellow Labrador retriever dog; and, for the most part, that’s exactly what director David Frankel delivered. In the film, John (Wilson) and Jenny (Aniston) Grogan are working out their relationship issues and parenthood potential through their fur-baby, while Marley the dog is a lovable scamp who doesn’t make it easy for his parents at any turn. Pure cinema.

However, the ending of Marley & Me broke moviegoers with its sudden and deeply sad turn. John and Jenny reach middle age, having built a family of three kids. The movie could’ve ended there (and should’ve); however, writers Scott Frank and Don Roos decided to push further, with the Grogan Family eventually having to put Marley down after the elderly dog is rocked by multiple internal disorders. Marley gets buried in the yard, as the Grogans move on through life with their human kids.

We get it: Marley & Me wanted to examine the full cycle of dog ownership, including the inevitable heartbreaking end. Only problem is: the film tends to be remembered more for being deeply triggering, rather than instructive or cathartic about the loss of a beloved pet. And date night sure didn’t end well for all those unsuspecting couples who hit the theater.

3) Se7en

“What’s in the box?” is one of the all-time biggest quotes in movies, precisely because David Fincher traumatized every moviegoer of the 1990s era. Fincher is known for his darkly lavish style now, but when Se7en hit in 1995, people were not prepared. Unlike every other entry on this list, the film never advertised itself to be a “feel-good” or easygoing time: the entire premise of a serial killer following the Seven Deadly Sins of the Bible is as dark as it gets. It’s the fact that Se7en managed to cap its dark, depraved story with one of the darkest endings in movie history that makes it so unforgettable.

For most of the film, the beats of the story follow in step with the premise: detectives Mills (Brad Pitt) and Somerset (Morgan Freeman) try to get ahead of the killer by using biblical lore to predict where he’ll strike next. However, after finding out where “John Doe” (Kevin Spacey) lives, the detectives pressure the killer into speeding up his timetable and finishing his grand design in one day. When John turns himself in at the police station with two sins left unpunished, the detectives don’t buy into his surrender. When John leads them on a hunt for a final body, they play his game, fully confident that they’ll be able to turn the tables. But as Somerset eventually cries out, “John Doe has the upper hand!”

It’s revealed that John Doe’s final victim is none other the Detective Mills’ pregnant wife, Tracy (Gwyneth Paltrow), whose head the killer puts into a package that is delivered to their meeting site. Doe claims to have the sin of “Envy” for admiring Mills’ “perfect life”; hotheaded Mills finishes the killer’s design by becoming “Wrath” and gunning down John Doe in cold blood, despite Somerset’s pleading and objections. Not only is it one of the bleakest endings to a movie ever (where the killer “wins” over the detectives), it’s also a mind-screw the more you think about Se7en and Mills’ entire “pride before the fall” arc – especially the pivotal moments where he missed the chance to catch John Doe, earlier in the film.

Somerset’s final voiceover line (a Hemingway quote) is forever haunting: “‘The world is a fine place, and worth fighting for.’ I agree with the second part.”

2) Titanic

No teenage girl (or boy) living in the 1990s escaped the emotional damage that James Cameron wrought with his 1997 film Titanic. Moviegoers everywhere packed into theaters to see Cameron’s meticulous recreation of the legendary cruise ship – as well as the sizzling chemistry between Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. Granted, we all knew that doom was inevitable: there wasn’t a person in the world who didn’t know the fate of the RMS Titanic, and the film opens with the wreckage of the vessel, before the flashback to the main story.

However, what viewers weren’t prepared for was the ending twist that saw DiCaprio’s Jack sacrifice his life to make sure that Winslet’s Rose survives the sinking of the Titanic. It wasn’t enough finding out that Jack was going to die: Cameron forced us to watch one of the longest and most dramatic death scenes of all time, with Jack giving an impassioned speech that Rose should “live” (in every sense of the word) while he is slowly succumbing to hypothermia in the freezing water. Cameron even had to add the gruesome detail of Jack’s frozen body slipping off into the darkness of the night sea. The film ends by twisting the knife of making us watch an elderly Rose die, with the implied catharsis of knowing she and Jack are reunited in the afterlife.

Celine Dion made her biggest hit song off the fact that an entire generation of moviegoers experienced their first real sense of loss and heartbreak through Titanic. Some fans will never be able to fully cope with how Titanic played out: you know it because to this day, the debate rages over whether or not Rose’s life raft (a door from the ship) had room for Jack, too.

1) Grave of the Fireflies

This one will probably be debated, and fairly so. For American audiences who don’t do anime, a film like Titanic is probably the saddest ending to a movie they’ve ever experienced. However, if we’re judging all movies, then there’s no ending that’s sadder or more depressing than Grave of the Fireflies. Not even close.

The film is set in Japan during the final months of WWII and centers on two orphaned children, Seita and his sister, Setsuko. The film follows the pair as they go from one hard-luck situation to another, slowly but surely falling through the cracks of Japanese civilization as it teeters on the brink. Eventually, Seita turns to crime to try to feed his sister, and even that moral compromise fails to do any good. In the film’s “climax,” Seita has to watch Setsuko die of starvation, carrying his sister’s ashes around in a candy tin. That tragedy is followed swiftly by Seita’s death, starving and homeless, waiting outside a train station with other desperate and hungry people. His body and possessions are swept aside to prepare for the American military’s arrival, while his spirit rejoins his sister on a ghost train, looking back at their tragic lifetime.

Grave of the Fireflies is considered one of the greatest films Studio Ghibli ever made; one of the greatest animated films ever made, and one of the greatest films ever made, period. But man… watching two beloved animated children starve to death is some of the darkest magic a movie has ever worked on us.

What films have endings that still stick with you today? Let us know in the comments or start up a discussion on the ComicBook Forums.

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