I think this is the classic despised ending. Another bad ending is the  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deus_ex_machina" rel="nofollow - deus ex machina .

 

1990 was the year of "This was all a dream" endings. The one that I couldn't wait to see as everyone raved about it was Jacob's Ladder. Man that pissed me off.

Agreed. That was the first Coen brothers movie I enjoyed as well!

basic rule of horror - don't lose your nerve.

Surely though the worst ending was Blade Runner in its original theatrical release. Thankfully fixed later.

wasn't that an important point of the plot though? Total recall was based on Philip K Dick's 'We can remember it for you wholesale' . It was all about stuff that wasn't real but can be inserted into your head.

BTW my favourite ending to a film is probably Brazil where the main character retreats into a dream world to escape the torture. Terry Gilliam was great at endings. he stood firm against studio wishes on Twelve Monkeys and its so much better as a result.

I remember seeing Jaws when I was 12 and that was an okay ending. Spielberg ranked up the tension so much that at the end I was expecting more to happen! It didn't need to.

The absolutely worst ending (and in fact whole movie) has to be I Am Legend 2007.

Dreadful in every sense of the word.

Zombies in love???

Just the worst.

I like the ambiguity of the ending in 1990's Total Recall.  Not a great film I would say, but it's one of those that I have most enjoyed seeing in the cinema with friends. I have a short story compilation of Philip K. Dick that includes We can Remember it for You Wholesale, and just re-read it since it had been quite a few years since I last did. I would say that it is much less ambiguous, and while the protagonist (Quail in the short story) spends some time questioning what's real, it seems clear that he had experienced events that were planned to be implanted by Rekal as fantasy fulfilment (he started to remember under the influence of Narkadrine without false memories being implanted).  Not one of his best-written stories (rather clunky in part), but fun and quite funny in its way.  In the 1990 film version (I haven't yet seen the later Total Recall despite loving lots of Colin Farrell work) it's left more open to interpretation.  

As for Brazil, I love at least a couple of cuts of the film.  The Love Conquers All happy ending producer's cut version that was released to American filmgoers is vastly inferior to me and I really dislike the ending that the producer had made for that (due to test screenings, and expected length).  I really like the way dream sequences are used in Brazil (well, not in the producer's cut).

I tend to agree - I much prefer a film where the ending is ambiguous, without all the loose ends being necessarily tied up, and leaves you thinking about the 'what ifs'... which is probably why I watch a lot of European cinema and art house stuff.

Logan wrote: As refereed to earlier, the endings I often dislike are when things are too neatly tied up and tied together, and those silly, unrealistic happy endings.  I dislike ones often that have too much expositional value, like the audience needs to be spoon-fed information so they aren't left questioning things/ confused.  That is what some audience members want.  They want to know how they are supposed to think instead of things being left open to interpretation.  Thy don't want to ponder at the end about meaning.  Some endings are so obviously concocted to try to make sense of the precedings, and feel terribly artificial.  Of course there's a mind or minds concocting it, but I don't want to become too aware of that when watching it generally (that takes me out of it).

I very much agree on this, but then those endings usually belong to films I only rarely watch (well I don't watch that many films).

There are even art films with endings I have troubles appreciating. A good example is Carl Th. Dreyer's "Ordet" (The Word) which ends with a resurrection.

"No Country for Old Men" is an excellent example. The book and movie are flawless. 

I've been a Clive Barker fan since The Books of Blood. I saw Rawhead Rex at the theater. Barker disavowed the movie- Rawhead Rex. I thought everything about the movie was solid except the ending...which was solved by a one hero, wrapped in a pretty bow, stupid, with corny special effects. Sitting in the theater, I was looking forward to the book ending.  In the book, the villagers kill the monster like ants kill a scorpion. In the book, the monster and the villagers tear each other apart.  I was extremely disappointed that the book ending was replaced with CHEESE.

Back in the 60s and 70s, you didn't know how a film would end. I was 16, watching 1965's- The Bedford Incident on Saturday afternoon TV. The ending gobsmacked me. I was blown away.  I did not expect that ending. If you like endings that you don't expect then check out a 1983 slasher film- Sleepaway Camp.