Legacy character Julie James (Jennifer Love Hewitt) learns the past has come back to haunt her in the 2025 slasher I Know What You Did Last Summer.Image via Sony Pictures Releasing
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A horror movie can take audiences on a terrifying ride for 90% of its runtime, but if the ending is a huge letdown, that’s all anyone will remember. When the grand finale doesn't live up to the expectations built by a creepy mystery or a seemingly unbeatable villain, the movie can retroactively feel like a waste of time.
Even though there have been absolute classic horror films released in the last decade, there are still a few with endings that left audiences confused, irritated, and disappointed. Below, we’ll take a look at the 10 most disappointing horror movie endings of the last 10 years. These movies (mostly) had promising storylines, but were doomed to have third acts that held them back from being more.
10 'Fantasy Island' (2020)
Lucy Hale as Melanie looking scared in Fantasy Island 2020.Image via Blumhouse
People’s deepest desires open the possibility of mortal danger in the 2020 horror film Fantasy Island. A film adaptation of the '70s TV series of the same name, Fantasy Island follows a group of strangers who are invited to an island where any wish they make comes true. They’ll need to be careful regarding what they ask for, because once the wish is granted, it will need to reach a natural conclusion before the fantasy is over.
Fantasy Island will forever remain an oddity among horror movies — an adaptation of a TV series that didn’t necessarily lend itself to the genre. The film wasn’t destined for greatness, but the motivation behind Melanie (Lucy Hale), who is on a mission of revenge, becomes especially silly when we find out she’s doing this for a person she never actually had a romantic relationship with. The movie quickly points out how absurd her reason for revenge is, but acknowledging a problem in the script doesn’t negate it.
9 'The Open House' (2018)
Logan shines a flashlight in a dark room as a shadowy, knife-wielding figure appears behind himImage via Netflix
In The Open House, Naomi (Piercey Dalton) and her teenage son Logan (Dylan Minnette) take up a temporary residence inside her sister’s house after the unexpected death of her husband. The house is for sale, meaning multiple people have access to view the home, including a figure who possibly means to do Naomi and Logan harm. As strange occurrences designed to harass the pair escalate, the mother and son find themselves at the mercy of the unseen stalker.
Not every movie needs to have an ending that wraps up everything perfectly, and in horror, ambiguous, bleak endings are rarely a punishable offense. However, The Open House presents itself as a mystery thriller, but builds to a reveal that never happens. Watching The Open House is similar to reading a mystery novel, becoming invested in the plot, and then finding the last 10 pages torn out.
8 'Old' (2021)
Guy Cappa and two women behind him looking ahead with shocked expressionsImage via Universal Picture
A day on the beach can last a lifetime in the M. Night Shyamalan film Old. When a family takes a trip to a remote beach, they find themselves panicking instead of relaxing when they realize everyone is aging at a rapid rate. The family works with the other strangers on the beach to search for an escape, but time is not on their side in a place where years pass by in hours.
Near the end of Old, we learn that a pharmaceutical company uses the beach to receive immediate results when testing long-term medications. The scheme is an overly busy piece of business on a story about the passage of time and the bittersweet process of growing old with loved ones. Sometimes less is more, and in a movie where the sand makes you magically older, a mystery remaining around the hows and whys would make for a much more satisfying experience.
7 '47 Meters Down' (2017)
Kate and Lisa stand in wetsuits looking through the doorway from the bridge of the diving shipImage via Entertainment Studios Motion Pictures
The dangerous idea of being lowered in a cage to look at sharks becomes even worse in the survival horror movie 47 Meters Down. Lisa (Mandy Moore) and Kate (Claire Holt) are sisters vacationing in Mexico who decide to see sharks up close on a dive. However, when their cage cable breaks, and they fall to the ocean floor, they’ll be left with limited oxygen and great white predators circling, waiting for their next meal.
Genuinely, it’s unclear if anyone enjoys fake-out endings that didn’t actually happen. The climax of the film sees the two sisters make a daring escape and return to the surface against all the odds, only to reveal that what the audience watched was the hallucinations of Lisa, who was running out of oxygen. The reality is, Kate is dead, likely eaten by a shark, and Lisa is close to dying from nitrogen narcosis.
6 'Jigsaw' (2017)
People sit on the floor wearing metal helmets chained to something offscreen in 'Jigsaw'.Image via Lionsgate.
In Jigsaw, a new copycat killer is picking up where Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) left off, orchestrating new games to test morally bankrupt victims. While an investigation is underway, a group of strangers is being put through increasingly difficult trials where one wrong move will result in an excruciatingly painful death. Both storylines converge in an unexpected way, revealing hidden truths about Jigsaw and those who helped him with his games.
The Saw franchise kicked off with a twist ending widely loved by fans, but the same can’t be said for Jigsaw’s final swerve. Between the revelation that the events in the barn happened years earlier and a shoehorned new Jigsaw apprentice being revealed, it felt like Jigsaw was trying to do too much for the sake of tricking the audience. The resulting finale was confusing, overly complex, and largely rejected by longtime fans of the movies.
5 'The Boy' (2016)
Greta says hello to a doll in The BoyImage via STX Entertainment
In The Boy, Greta (Lauren Cohan) is hired to care for a young boy, but is surprised to find a doll named Brahms instead. The wealthy elderly “parents” of the doll insist that she must treat it as if it were alive while they’re away, and Greta skeptically agrees to their wishes. As strange things begin to happen involving the doll, Greta opens up the possibility that Brahms may be more than a toy.
The disappointing conclusion of The Boy confirms that no, the doll is not alive, but Brahms has been alive the whole time and living within the walls. Years of living like a large mouse have not been good for Brahms’ mental state, and he eventually breaks free and forces Greta into a physical confrontation. The ending is mildly plausible, but switching from a supernatural force to a wall dweller was a letdown for viewers.
4 'I Know What You Did Last Summer' (2025)
Freddie Prinze Jr. as Ray Bronson in I Know What You Did Last Summer 2025.Image Via Sony
There’s something about the culture in Southport that stops people from reporting vehicular accidents. After a new group of young adults in Southport inadvertently causes the death of someone while parked on a road, they agree to cover up their involvement so as not to destroy their futures. However, one year later, a mysterious stranger makes it clear they know what happened, and they plan on killing the group one by one.
Much of 2025’s I Know What You Did Last Summer had one foot in the past with the first movie, including crowning one of the original characters a killer. When Freddie Prinze Jr’s Ray is revealed to be involved in the murders, the moment was surprising, but it didn’t carry strong logical weight. If the build of the plot leaned more in his direction, or his explanation made sense, everyone would have probably embraced it, but instead, Ray’s murderous turn left the audience confused and underwhelmed.
3 'Glass' (2019)
Elijah, Kevin, and David sitting in an empty room facing a figure with her back to the camera in 'Glass'Image via Universal Pictures
Bringing together the characters from Unbreakable and Split, Glass carried a high level of anticipation. In the film, David Dunn (Bruce Willis) is captured and institutionalized alongside Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy) and Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson). Here, all three are told that the powers they think they possess are only delusions, but the motives of the doctors’ prognosis don’t seem entirely truthful.
Arguably, Glass is the most disappointing ending in all of M. Night Shyamalan’s films, and that’s saying something. Subverting expectations about a climactic superhero battle is one thing, and that’s an idea worth exploring, but what happens in Glass is three steps further than that. David, a character audiences have followed and enjoyed, receives a death that is so insulting and abrupt that it was shocking for all the wrong reasons.
2 'It: Chapter Two' (2019)
It: Chapter Two serves as the conclusion to the big-screen adaptation of Stephen King’s classic novel, It. The kids in the Losers Club thought they had killed Pennywise, but 27 years later, the evil presence has returned. Now, as adults, they’ll all return to Derry to finish what they started and stop any more innocent children from dying.
Pennywise is one of the most recognizable horror villains in modern horror, and Bill Skarsgard’s performance is widely praised, so the effort it takes to kill him should be a legendary battle. Instead, the adult version of the Losers Club insults Pennywise until he begins to literally shrink and… feel bad about himself? They continue to yell at him, calling him a clown (which, to be clear, he knows he’s a clown; he can turn into anything, and he picked that specifically). After more yelling, Pennywise turns into an It baby, at which point the group proceeds to pull his heart out, and the power of bullying saves the day.
1 'Halloween Ends' (2022)
Corey Cunningham enters Michael Myers lair in Halloween Ends.Image via Universal Pictures
All great horror stories must come to an end, and even though Michael Myers has supposedly ended a few times, it ends once again in Halloween Ends. Four years since the events of Halloween Kills, Michael Myers' (James Jude Courtney) absence opens the door to a new killer to continue the cycle of violence. Despite silence from Myers, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) knows he’s still out there, and she’s waiting for their final confrontation.
Truly, all of Halloween Ends was disappointing to a large portion of the fanbase, and the ending is part of the movie. The story told in the film, one that follows Corey (Rohan Campbell) as he embraces murderous power, is interesting, but the timing was bad for the trilogy capper. When Michael does eventually take on Laurie, it’s a welcome scene, but it also seems like an afterthought and not the main event.
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Halloween Ends
R
Horror
Thriller
Release Date
October 14, 2022
Runtime
111 Minutes
Director
David Gordon Green
Writers
Chris Bernier, John Carpenter, David Gordon Green, Debra Hill, Paul Brad Logan, Danny McBride
Cast
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Jamie Lee Curtis
Laurie
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Andi Matichak
Allyson
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It Chapter Two
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