The Final Cut: Two Truly Terrifying Horror Film Endings
**SPOILER ALERT** - In this blog I will be discussing the endings of two classic psychological horror films. However, I am not about to tell you what happens. GOTCHA!
Halloween is almost upon us and who doesn’t like to scare themselves senseless with a great horror flick or two? Who cares if you wake up the next morning late for work, in a cold sweat with pea soup dribbling out of your mouth? There are so many horror movies to choose from. Where do you start? Well, with the ending of course!
In films, or any work of fiction for that matter, the ending is often the toughest part. How do you tie up the loose ends while avoiding the clichés – it was all a dream… it was all in his/her head… it wasn’t all in his/her head but he/she thinks it was? Horror films have the added challenge of needing to wrap things up in a scary or ominous way. Actually many modern horror films are more concerned with preserving plot openings so there is a starting point for the protagonist or antagonist in the next chapter of the “franchise”. See – Saw.
1) Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) directed by: Philip Kaufman
Before Hollywood remade every popular horror film it could get its hands on, Philip Kaufman did the unthinkable – he took a bona fide cinematic horror classic and made it even creepier and scarier. The original 1956 Don Siegel film starring Kevin McCarthy is probably the better picture. Unfortunately, its groundbreaking and shocking ending was somewhat compromised by a studio that wanted to soften the blow. No such challenges faced Kaufman who took the pod people out of 1950s small town California and dropped them into 1970s health-obsessed San Francisco. The plot involves human beings being substituted by duplicates of themselves, which are in fact aliens without human emotions. What lends this fairly simple premise such weight is the inspired casting and performances. Donald Sutherland, Leonard Nimoy, Jeff Goldblum… these men could actually be aliens for all I know. (I guess Christopher Walken was busy shooting The Deer Hunter at the time). Despite their eccentricities, or maybe because of them, you find yourself cheering on this cast of head-shrinkers, struggling writers and mud bath aficionados to avoid the conformity of the pod people even as more of them fall prey to the alien forces. Then comes the ending… everything is calm… too calm… until the penultimate and final SCREAM!
2) The Vanishing (1988) directed by: George Sluizer
Here is a case of the original being much superior to the remake. This masterpiece about the disappearance of a young Dutch woman at a gas station while on vacation with her boyfriend far exceeds the stupid Hollywood remake. The sociopath Raymond Lemorne is one of the screen’s creepiest villains because he comes across so normal. He lives in the country with his wife and two daughters and goes about his horrible deeds as if they are written on some To-Do List. Even scarier, he refers tohimself as a sociopath and embraces the role. Raymond freely admits to abducting the Dutch Woman when he finally confronts her boyfriend years later. But, what did he do with her? The answer is revealed in what is possibly the most frightening ending of all time. You’ve been warned… Happy Halloween!
