10 Terrible Movie Sequels That Leave a Bitter Aftertaste

Bad movie endings can ruin the entire movie, including poorly executed plot twists and vague conclusions.
For example, the ending of “Identity” relied on shock value over substance, revealing that everything that happened in the film was just in someone’s head.
Another example is “The Devil Inside,” which had an abysmal ending, cutting to black without any resolution and providing a website link for viewers to learn more.

Choosing a satisfying movie ending is very important because a subpar movie can leave viewers feeling unsatisfied. The ending frequently defines a movie or any story for that matter. For example, Game of Thrones was a huge cultural sensation in the 2010s, and its highly controversial conclusion rendered it virtually irrelevant. Since the end of the film is what the audience will be thinking about after the film is over, the third act of the film is probably the most important for the market.

There are movies that lose their way in the third act, but there are also movies that never get off the ground and still end up with a terrible conclusion. It’s one thing to watch a movie that’s terribly poor or not to the audience’s taste, but it’s even more disappointing to see a potentially good movie fall short in its final moments. Some terrible movie endings should never have happened and the rest of the narrative would have compromised the enjoyment it provided.

10 Terrible Movie

The Rise Of Skywalker

With new releases, Star Wars sequels became increasingly divisive. Although borrowing the plot of A New Hope, The Force Awakens seemed like a safe bet in introducing some fresh new concepts. The response to The Last Jedi was more polarized. Then, in response to that split, The Rise of Skywalker came to an abrupt end. The film’s epilogue sequence, in which Rey finds herself back on Tatooine and an old woman asks her name, represents the pinnacle of this breakdown. When Rey unexpectedly reveals her name to be “Rey Skywalker,” it leaves fans with a bitter taste in their mouths as it seems to sum up everything that has gone wrong with the Star Wars movies.

Identity

The film Identity, directed by James Mangold, follows 10 guests who are waiting out a storm in a hotel when they die one by one. Agatha Christie’s and Then There Were None and the concept is similar, although the latter is significantly less satisfying. The conclusion of Identity is the perfect example of a story surprise that prioritizes shock effect over meaning. The entire film is shown to be inside someone’s brain, a plot point that has come to be known as a cliché in thrillers and which leads to an incredibly uninteresting conclusion to an otherwise exciting story.

The Devil Inside

Whether the 2012 horror film The Devil Inside deserves a disappointing 6% rating on Rotten Tomatoes is debatable. The finale is an unfinished cherry, though the film never seemed likely to come together due to its overuse of video horror clichés like the light cam. The movie ends abruptly, giving the viewer no sense of closure or climax, and then shows a text card with a website link so they can find out more.

World War Z

General response to Brad Pitt’s action film World War Z was mixed. However, it is fair to say that this adaptation is not the most faithful to the book on which it is based. In that sense, the film could be interesting as it plays like a zombie action thriller. But the movie, especially the ending, is less true and compelling than the plot of the book. After spending time and money on tweaks, the original premise of World War Z didn’t sit well with test audiences. The result is a more optimistic ending that is indistinguishable from the original work and doesn’t fit well with the rest of the picture.

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets Of Dumbledore

The Fantastic Beasts films were not as popular as the Harry Potter films, which were all massive hits. The Crimes of Grindelwald and The Secrets of Dumbledore were not well reviewed, although the former was good. Despite the fact that the marriage between Queenie and Jacob at the conclusion of The Secrets of Dumbledore was indeed a mistake, the book had strange decisions that seemed to go against what the franchise had tried to establish in its previous entries. Their marriage was difficult to watch because the Queen had been mind-controlling Jacob for months and siding with Grindelwald for a large part of the film.

Serenity

The 2019 film Serenity, starring Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway, had all the makings of a fantastic thriller, including Diane Lane, Jason Clarke, Jeremy Strong and Digimon Hounsou. In the film, a man named Baker is pursued by his ex-girlfriend in an attempt to kill her violent partner. The shocking revelation during the conclusion is that Baker is a character in a computer game created by his son, in which his father kills the horrible man his mother married after returning from the war. Written and directed by Steven Knight, the man behind Peaky Blinders, Serenity creates a perplexing story full of obvious shock value.

Don’t Worry Darling

Unfortunately, Don’t Worry Darling caused controversy among critics and fans despite Olivia Wilde’s film being one of the most interesting actors of 2022. There’s a surprise in a psychological thriller that could work well but isn’t executed well and is an interesting idea. Many questions were raised about the flaws in the story and the writing issues which were ignored by the audience. The premise of “Don’t Worry Darling” ends abruptly and abruptly, which works well on thrillers like Mulholland Drive and Memento but didn’t work in this instance because the film lacked enough substance.

I Am Legend

One of Will Smith’s best films is the 2007 post-apocalyptic thriller I Am Legend, which is notorious for its gruesome conclusion. I Am Legend had a different ending, but bad focus group testing forced the film to be redone, producing an ending that was almost universally despised. At the film’s conclusion, I Am Legend’s protagonist, Robert Neville, makes the ultimate sacrifice to save the two men he encounters. The problem is that, despite the apparent heroism, it was completely unnecessary, and there are two better ways to conclude the story: either the universally acclaimed novel ending or the alternate movie ending.

The Happening

M. Night Shyamalan’s films are known for their suspenseful builds to surprising twist endings. While these conclusions are masterfully executed in Unbreakable and The Sixth Sense, they fail miserably in The Happening. The film’s tone, stale language and erratic pacing have all been criticized, but the conclusion takes the cake. The “happening” that gave rise to the events of the film ends abruptly and everything returns to normal. Although the film seems to have some allegory of public fear, the concept seems implausible in the ridiculous way it all fits together.

Now You See Me

Now You See Me is not the dullest movie ever. Ultimately, the film is about magicians who rob banks, but it also has some hilarious moments as it pieces together brilliant heist plans and reveals the tricks the magicians use to pull them off. At the film’s conclusion, Dylan Rhodes, played by Mark Ruffalo, the FBI agent who works throughout the film to capture the Four Horsemen, is revealed to be a genius magician who masterminded the entire plot. Nothing in the film before the reveal indicated that this could happen, so this conclusion seemed completely unfair.

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