Nobody gave a damn about those horror cliffhanger endings.
With two-part movies seemingly coming back into vogue lately, cliffhanger endings that leave audiences hanging until the next installment are apparently back in vogue.
A well-crafted cliffhanger can naturally leave viewers anxious and desperate to see the next film, to find out how the hero’s predicament will be resolved and the villain finally defeated.
But not all cliffhangers are created equal, and sometimes they just don’t hit the way the filmmakers intended. Sometimes cliffhangers can’t shake a strong whiff of desperation, that they’re trying to lure viewers in for another movie without a compelling creative drive to do so.
And that’s certainly true of these 10 horror movies, each of which ended leaving audiences with no resolution, but not in a way that proved even remotely satisfying or exciting.
Rather, these flaps felt that the directors had run out of ideas or were convinced to rustle up an endless one for the sake of that precious box office gravy.
Whatever the reason, these hoops certainly didn’t have the desired effect of making the audience care – quite the opposite, in fact…
10. Schenk Escapes – Spiral: From The Book Of Saw
The latest Saw movie concludes with the revelation that the new clone version of Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) targeting slacker cops is Detective William Schenk (Max Minghella), who probably staged his own death earlier in the film.
In the final scene, Schenk’s convoluted master plan finally plays out, with protagonist Zeke Banks’ (Chris Rock) corrupt cop father Marcus (Samuel L. Jackson) fatally shot by a SWAT team that mistakes him for a gunman.
During the chaos, Schenk escapes the warehouse via the elevator, while Zeke watches helplessly and screams in frustration.
Clearly, the ending was meant to set Schenk up as the new Jigsaw moved forward, with a sequel likely revolving around Zeke stalking him while continuing to torture and kill crooked cops.
However, even accepting that Spiral was released during a particularly bleak time of the pandemic, it was largely dismissed by critics and fans, who simply weren’t interested in Schenk or, it seems, a Saw movie without the featuring Tobin Bell’s John Kramer. .
With both Spiral and its predecessor Jigsaw failing to take the series into Kramer’s past, it’s no surprise that the upcoming tenth film, Saw X, is a “midquel” set between the first two films, allowing his turn at Bell despite Kramer’s death in Saw. III.
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