I started to think about how films end. Seems obvious I know. Who doesn’t like a great ending. Recently I saw ‘Beau is Afraid’ by Ari Aster and I won’t go over again why I didn’t care for it but I will say I couldn’t stop thinking about the ending. Not because it was great but because it was awful and in that brings the whole film down. The ending of that film reminds you of something better in another film and becomes absolutely too goofy not even absurd anymore to be taken with any real feeling. In sports they talk about sticking the landing as literally with gymnastics or how the Bruins are currently failing to just bring home The Stanley Cup to finish the greatest hockey season Ever which without the cup the whole thing is tarnished. The same thing is true for Film. I almost think with film the ending is the most important. I’ve seen films where the ending makes up for many of the flaws of the rest of the film. A book can have a bad ending and that’s disappointing but you spent so much time there you almost forget the small tie in details so maybe it doesn’t devastate as much, but also vis versa where you spent so much time reading you are more angry, but I digress. A painting that has bad edges is one thing but if your looking at a brilliant painting then a random water balloon of paint smashes it then that is what a bad ending in a film feels like for me. Before I go into a bunch of bad endings I hate I’d like to explore 5 endings of horror films that I think are absolutely brilliant. Why I choose Horror for part 1 of this series that I will write about endings is because I think Horror films need, desperately need that last grandeur at the end. Other types of films can wrap up or swoon away or abruptly end or fade out but for me Horror needs to slap one more time!
The five films I’ll start with, and spoilers for all of these, are ‘The Witch’ by Robert Eggers, ‘Aliens’ By James Cameron, ‘Ready or not’ by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, ‘Pearl’ by Ti West and lastly ‘Drag me To Hell’ by Sam Rami. All four of these I think hit the perfect brilliant tone of what great endings can do for a film, which in my opinion is elevate them to cloud nine heights.
Spoilers ahead, for the literal fucking endings, okay warned lets begin.
First is a little gem of which I thought I would hate but found it to be the fucking best! ‘Ready or Not’ of which the directors would go on to make 2 Scream Films which are brilliant as well. So this whole film revolves around A woman who gets married to this rich guy and has to meet the in-laws, that’s it but something strange is happening when people who believe in dark rituals that those have gained them wealth, think they have to hunt you to keep those things. So anyways all hell breaks loose, literally which we find out in the end. The whole film makes you wonder if these rich psychos are really working for the Devil or its just bullshit. You find out they are and they all explode in a ray of blood and guts, chefs kiss. But the real brilliance of the ending is The lead character played by Samara Weaving is sitting on the steps, calm after laughing when they all exploded, finally not hiding just smoking a cigarette as a fire fighter asked what happens and she just says, “In-laws”. Its fucking brilliant because it has to do with the deeper meaning of catharsis and relief but the pain of surviving dealing with in-laws. The line is delivered in such dead pan that the dark humor comes through too. Our in-laws or families may not be actual demons but sometimes how they treat us it feels that way, so this films gives us that moment of breathing when the weekend is over and we get to be ourselves once more.
Second is the brilliant film from 1986 ‘ALIENS’. So everyone probably knows this one. Aliens or Xenomorphs attack a bunch of people on an off world colony. All hell breaks loose once again most people die, Aliens real fucking scary, Ripley, Sigourney Weaver, Kicks some serious ass saving her surrogate daughter Newt happy ending right?…. Nah. The last shots of the film are them getting into the Hyper sleep pods, it seems very innocuous but I only realized this recently that the whole thing references back to the beginning. The film starts with Ripley being pulled from a pod just like this one after being lost in space for 57 years and finding out her daughter is dead now though she hasn’t aged. For me this ending is not eluding to everything will be fine but instead shit can go real south, like the ship going off course again or whatever. So the brilliance for me lies in the ominous tone of those last second push in on the surviving sleeping crew. It is nice to have some peace though on a hero’s journey but is their ever in space? Making it full circle for the character does give this whole moment gravity as well, something to fight for but then again, we don’t know for sure the little girl didn’t get an egg laid in her….
Next ‘The Witch’ one of my all time favorite horror paranoia films. This film is similar to ‘Ready or Not’ in the fact that they both have the viewer wondering if the Devil or witches in this case too, really exist or is it just the paranoia of humans ruining everything. What is great about both films is that both facts are true! The father and Family of Anya Taylor Joys character here are paranoid religious zealots who cause their own suffering while inflicting control, abuse and oppression on their children. But the ending is brilliant in the way that it gives power with freedom to Thomasin, Anya’s character. Thomasin lives in an oppressive society created by her father and males alike who run religious institutions. She is treated like a second class citizen just for being a woman, which has been true in society unfortunately for most of history. So when in the end she actually finds a coven of witches around a bon fire and ascends into the air laughing with them it is overwhelming not to feel joy for her. She is a Witch sure but also free. It does not judge them but instead the film lends an eye to understand the oppressed. The elation I feel at this films conclusion is one I can only describe as ecstasy.
‘Pearl’ What can we say about this film not said yet. Well the whole film embraces the psychosis of Pearl, brilliantly played by Mia Goth, to understand and sympathize with how she got to where she is now. So how should it end? In a blood Bath? Her screaming running mad? Nope instead it should end with her greatest desire, a family meal with her honey bunch coming back from the Great War. That is what they did in the film so brilliantly. They just showed Pearl in all of her emotion crazy as a loon, rightfully so in many ways, starring heart broken but lovingly into the camera with a slow push in. She has been hanging on by a thread to any sanity all film, so showing her full range of emotions with pain of desperate hope sums up all the heavy emotion seen throughout. It ends in a muffled teary whispered forced smile, like a painting melting. A family dinner set with maggoty pork and dead family abusers for her sweet love Howard. Now ain’t that just peachy.
Last but surely not least. ‘Drag me to Hell’. A film so polarizing that whole articles are written on why people hate this ending. I am in the other very loud camp saying this is the perfect ending. You follow a character Christine brown, played fantastically by Alison Lohman who in trying to get a promotion at her bank job but goes against her kinder judgment and takes an old-woman’s house. The old woman then curses her, so the rest of the film she tries to undo that curse through a litany of more jarring ways that build to a point of… graveyard pouring rain body horror. Its all lovely horrific stuff but the real cherry on top is when you think she has actually done it, she has actually broken the cure, she hasn’t! A twist that is slightly telegraphed as all good twists should be so we as a viewer can have more information that the characters making it that more painful when they fall. It ends with her thinking she had given the cursed item back to the corpse of the old lady but had really messed up only giving her boyfriends coin back, not her cursed button, which she now holds on the train platform. Which in turn did nothing. So as our “hero” goes to go on vacation she is gobbled up on train tracks by the demons of Hell!! Its so fucking fun, I can’t. It shows the themes complete of what being self serving will get you. Getting ahead and once more letting men dictate that, will only bring suffering.
So there you have it, Part 1 of me wanting to talk “Endings” until you want to end me. These are 5 films I adore and think should be watched and praised. Horror gets a bad wrap but they have some of the best endings EVER, and just films in general. Endings make a film feel complete, full, and grand…that’s exactly what happened in all of these works of art.
