Random Movies You Never Realized Have Super Bleak Endings (15 items)

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  (#6) The Graduate

  • Dustin Hoffman, Anne Bancroft, Katharine Ross, William Daniels, Murray Hamilton, Elizabeth Wilson, Brian Avery, Walter Brooke, Norman Fell, Alice Ghostley, Buck Henry, Marion Lorne

  Ben (Dustin Hoffman) drives up and down PCH in order to stop Elaine (Katharine Ross) from marrying the worst guy ever in The Graduate. He gets to the chapel moments too late and bangs on the windows, screaming "Elaine!" One of the more indelible images in cinema.  

  The moment after the young lovers run off together harshes the mellow. Elaine and a very disheveled Ben race to a bus, laughing at leaving her Ken doll fiancée at the altar.  

  Slowly, the laughs and smiles dissipate, as reality sinks in. "What have we done?" The Sounds of Silence indeed. These rich kids might be disowned by one, or both, of their parents, which will leave them each one trust fund short of success. The Vietnam War is under way, Richard Nixon's presidency looms, and both characters are so wrapped up in their own problems they probably don't have the time of day to care about one another.

  Who wants to bet they did the Baby Boomer classic? A few years a rebellion followed by kids, corporate jobs, nice houses, fat retirement packages, a bitter divorce, and a lot of complaining about how much groovier life was in the '60s. 
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  (#8) Metropolis

  • Brigitte Helm, Alfred Abel, Gustav Fröhlich, Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Fritz Rasp, Theodor Loos, Erwin Biswanger, Heinrich George, Olaf Storm, Hanns Leo Reich, Heinrich Gotho, Margarete Lanner, Fritz Alberti

  Fritz Lang's sci-fi masterpiece Metropolis ends with what is essentially a gentleman's agreement between rebellious workers demanding better working conditions and the rank capitalists who were mistreating them. It seems like everything works out well for both parties, because the capitalists learn to have a conscious and the lives of the workers will most certainly improve in light of the agreement. 

  Okay, sure. Except the capitalists are in no way beholden to helping the workers at all. There is no legal agreement, no oversight. No third party keeping tabs on things. In fact, you might argue, as does Siegfried Kracauer in his book From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film, the workers are worse off than they were before. To quote Goethe, "None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."
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  (#7) Terminator 2: Judgment Day

  • Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Edward Furlong, Robert Patrick, Earl Boen, Joe Morton, S. Epatha Merkerson, Castulo Guerra, Danny Cooksey, Jenette Goldstein, Xander Berkeley

  Terminator 2 is inherently bleak because you know going into the movie everything is happening because machines take over the world and people live either as slaves or members of an endlessly persecuted resistance movement led by John Connor. But the ending of the movie doesn't seem that bad. T100 dies, T-800 dies, John and Sarah get away, and Miles Dyson destroys the technology from the first Terminator that leads to his creating Skynet. 

  But it's not all roses and sunshine, kids. Sarah Connor escaped a mental institution and will be chased by American authorities unless she flees the country. The implication is she escapes to Mexico. Which means John grows up a fugitive, ever fearful machines will destroy the world and force him to become a resistance leader. In preparation for such an eventuality, his mom will train him in survival and military techniques, so there goes your childhood, John. Which was already a nightmare, honestly.

  How many freakin' psychological problems is this kid gonna have by the time Skynet takes over the world? 
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  (#2) Prometheus

  • Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron, Idris Elba, Guy Pearce, Logan Marshall-Green, Sean Harris, Rafe Spall, Emun Elliott, Benedict Wong, Kate Dickie

  Looking back, the bleakest part of Prometheus's ending is that it begat Alien: Legacy.   

  But at the time, the ending seemed on the up and up. Any Alien film (or sort-of-Alien film) in which the lead survives, along with the head of a cyborg, qualifies as having a happy ending. Dr. Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) lives, like Ripley in Alien. Not so bad. You kind of knew everyone else would die going into it, right?  

  However, in a film filled with characters making idiotic choices, Shaw takes the gold, silver, and bronze medals. See, Shaw has a ship, and could fly it back to Earth. Instead, she opts to track down the home planet of the Powder-esque aliens that gave birth to the human race. Which sounds like a one-way ticket to an excruciating death. If she runs into a bunch of god-aliens, they'll murder her. If there aren't any of them at her destination, she's alone in the middle of nowhere, light years from earth. Great. A real lose-lose situation there, Dr. Shaw.
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  (#5) The Devil's Backbone

  • Marisa Paredes, Eduardo Noriega, Federico Luppi, Fernando Tielve, Irene Visedo, Iñigo Garcés, José Manuel Lorenzo, Paco Maestre

  In The Devil's Backbone, Guillermo Del Toro's haunting tale of an orphanage during the Spanish Civil War, things seem to work out for young protagonist Carlos and friends. At the end, the boys lure evil Jacinto into the basement, stab him repeatedly (boys will be boys), and drown him with the help of a vengeful ghost.   

  Carlos and his gang then escape the orphanage, alive, with some gold, to boot. Seems like the kids are alright. But The Devil's Backbone is the definitive example of out of the frying pan, into the fire. The future is bleak indeed for Carlos and friends. Even if they make it out of Spain, which is ravaged by sectarian violence and will be ruled by fascist dictator General Franco for decades to come, it's 1939 in Europe. The Nazi have just, or will soon, annex Poland, and all hell will break lose. 
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  (#10) E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

  • Henry Thomas, Dee Wallace, Peter Coyote, Drew Barrymore, C. Thomas Howell, Robert MacNaughton, K.C. Martel, Sean Frye

  You could argue the end of ET: the Extra Terrestrial is more bittersweet than bleak.   Elliott and friends break ET out of a makeshift government facility and the little alien is reunited with his posse. He says a tearful good-bye to Elliott and goes on his way (a cyborg would get misty-eyed; it's all very emotional). 

  The bleak bit comes the next day. Agent Keys (Peter Coyote) may have been sympathetic to ET's cause, but there are a few thousand other agents who won't be so kind. At the very least, Keys will probably be arrested for treason and the kids have a plethora of probing waiting for them. Especially since Elliot and crew showed the authorities they could fly. The feds are definitely gonna want to know what's up with that and how it can be weaponized for military use.     

  If they ever made an E.T. sequel, it would have been the darkest episode of X-Files ever.  

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