With the release of Terminator Salvation behind us, I read a multi-page retrospective of the franchise in “Empire” magazine. They broke down all three prior films, in detail, and lauded the ending of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. I had to admit I hadn’t really thought about that film since seeing it in theaters and as I was reading about the ending, an idea struck. What are the top ten bleakest endings in film? As I drummed up titles, I did my best to whittle it down to ten, but found it impossible. What’s worse is that Rise of the Machines, the film that sparked the article wouldn’t make it into my top ten. What constitutes a bleak ending? I wanted to weed out films that had any sort of upside to their denouements. I didn’t want to settle for a title merely because the hero or main character died, but one that truly sucked the life out of the viewer with almost no way to leave the theater with a smile on their face. Without further ado, I present to you the top 14 bleakest endings in film.

Spoiler Warning: Please beware that because I’m discussing endings here, it’s only natural that if you haven’t seen the films listed below, the ending will be spoiled for you.

14. One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest (1975)

Convicted criminal Randall McMurphy is sentenced to serve out his time in a mental institution. He bucks the authority of Nurse Ratched and does his best wake the rest of his co-inhabitants out of their dreary existence. He organizes an escape to do some fishing off a boat. They are eventually caught and McMurphy is reprimanded via electro shock therapy. He doesn’t give up, however, as he manages to sneak booze and two women into the ward one night. The next morning, Nurse Ratched finds a patient, Billy, with one of the women. She threatens to tell his mother and Billy later slits his throat. McMurphy strangles Nurse Ratched and is taken away. He’s lobotomized. The Chief, a patient McMurphy has befriended, suffocates McMurphy as the humane thing to do.

13. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003)

Judgment Day had been a topic throughout the Terminator franchise. It was spoken of in The Terminator, it was briefly shown and serves as the subtitle in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, but is right at the tip of the iceberg in Rise of the Machines. The Skynet project was taken over by the U.S. Air Force and overseen by General Robert Brewster, the father of John Connor’s future wife, Kate. General Brewster is killed and right before dying he gives John and Kate the location of the Skynet core system. Once at the Skynet core location, however, what was thought to be the Skynet core is actually a Cold War-era fallout shelter. Skynet exists only as software run by computers worldwide and is impossible to shut down. Judgment Day is inevitable and John and Kate can only wait inside the fallout shelter as the rest of humanity gets rained down with nuclear holocaust.

12. The Great Silence (1968)

In the snow drenched mountains of 1898 Utah, a group of people struggling with the weather are forced to steal for food.  Banished from the town of Snowhill and branded outlaws, they are hunted relentlessly by bounty hunters. Leading the hunters is sadistic Loco. When a woman witnesses her husband being murdered by Loco to collect “his bounty,” she enlists a mysterious mute gunfighter named Silence to kill Loco. He is their only hope of survival. Loco tricks the struggling people of Snowhill into thinking there’s food back in town for them and rounds them up. When Silence attempts to rescue the captured people, he is killed by Loco.  Loco then guns down the rest of the refugees.  He then rides off with his gang to collect the money for the so-called outlaws.

11. Easy Rider (1969)

Two bikers named after Wyatt Earp and Billy the Kid sell a large amount of drugs and store the money in Wyatt’s motorcycle gas tank. They go on a trek in search of Mardi Gras. One night, while camping, they get beaten down while sleeping and their new friend, George, is killed courtesy of a machete to his neck. Wyatt and Billy are able to continue and after New Orleans, they pursue a wealthy retirement in Florida. While on the road, a pickup truck full of two yokels decides they’re going to scare the duo via shotgun. Billy flips them off and is fatally shot in retaliation. The men then shoot Wyatt’s gas tank, killing him and destroying the money they were going to use.

10. The Vanishing (1988)

Rex and Saskia, a Dutch couple, are traveling on a cycling vacation. They stop at a gas station to grab some snacks. Saskia volunteers to retrieve the food while Rex waits. And waits. And waits. She never comes back. Three years go by and Rex is still obsessed with Saskia’s disappearance. Every once in a while he is tantalized by the kidnapper, asking to meet, but never shows. Rex finally meets with the kidnapper and demands to know what happened to Saskia. The kidnapper refuses to tell him, but will show him, only if he’s willing to endure the same fate as Saskia. Rex’s curiosity is unmatched and he relents. He huffs some chloroform and blacks out only to wake up inside a wooden coffin. Buried alive.

9. The Descent: Unrated Cut (2005)

Sarah, Juno (not the pregnant one) and four friends go spelunking inside a cavern near the Appalachian Mountains. The idea was one of female bonding and adventure, but when Juno reveals to the group she duped them into an off-limits cave nobody knows about, things go awry. Cavern rocks start falling, trapping the girls with no way out. Then, cave-dwelling human-like creatures with a thirst for blood, feast on the group, killing them off one-by-one. Sarah manages to escape through a tiny hole, leaving Juno behind to be devoured. She manages to find her vehicle and speeds off the path as quickly as possible. Then, a bloodied Juno appears next to her in the vehicle and she realizes she’s hallucinating. She’s back in the bloody cavern, battling the crawlers with no hope. Having the rug pulled out from beneath you after a nerve-wracking fight is never pleasant.

8. Oldboy (2003)

After 15 years, trapped in a hotel room without explanation, Oh Dae-su is released. Wondering the streets, he meets Mi-do, who takes him to her home when he passes out. They form an intimate relationship together. Dae-su, bent on finding his captor, eventually finds Woo-jin. Woo-jin tells Dae-su about his reasons for imprisonment, which includes going to high school together and Dae-su spying on the incestuous relationship between Woo-jin and his sister. Rumors spread, culminating in Woo-jin’s sister’s suicide. Woo-jin hands Dae-su a photo album of his family portrait. As Dae-su scans the album he witnesses his daughter grow older until it’s revealed Mi-do, his current intimate partner, is actually his daughter. The last 15 years of Dae-su’s life have been set-up by Woo-jin just for this moment. Dae-su pleads with Woo-jin to keep the secret from Mi-do, begging for forgiveness and cuts out his own tongue as a symbol of his silence. Woo-jin agrees and kills himself in his sister’s honor. His life’s work complete.

7. American History X (1998)

Danny, a white supremacist, is forced to take a special history class administered by his black principal, titled “American History X.” The objective of the class is to write a paper about Danny’s older brother, Derek. Derek has landed in jail and is put off by the Neo-Nazi gang behind bars, raped by them and befriends a black inmate while working the laundry room. When Derek is released, he sees Danny has conformed to his past life. Derek resists all temptation to fall into old habits and tries to school Danny in his new way of thought. Danny finally turns a corner and together they rip down all Nazi paraphernalia they own. Danny encounters a black student he had an altercation with the previous day and the student unloads three bullets into Danny’s chest, killing him. Derek hears of the news and cradles Danny in his arms. Danny narrates: “Life’s too short to be pissed off all the time.”

6. Requiem for a Dream (2000)

Addiction plagues Sara, a mother taking weight-loss pills in order to fit into a dress for a TV appearance; Harry and Tyrone, heroin junkies trying to get into the distribution side of things; and Marion, a coke-snorting girlfriend of Harry’s. Add Rebecca Bloomwood from Confessions of a Shopaholic and they can have a nice intervention. By the end, Sara’s mind is blown and she undergoes electro shock therapy, numbing her brain. Harry’s trackmarked arm gets infected to the point where it needs to be amputated. Tyrone gets to mess with prison guards, hard labor and drug withdrawal by himself. Marion prostitutes herself for cocaine. Where’s the uplift in that?

5. Duck, You Sucker aka A Fistful of Dynamite (1971)

A Mexican outlaw, Juan Miranda, and an exiled IRA Irish explosive expert, John Mallory, become friends during the Mexican Revolution.  With 1,000 troops coming to the revolutionaries’ position via train, they must find a way to stall the train until Poncho Villa and Emiliano Zapata come with reinforcements. John agrees to go by train to collide and derail the enemy train. The dynamite packed train collides with the other, John escapes unscathed and a massive battle ensues.  Juan witnesses an enemy general shoot John in the back.  Dying, John tells Juan to let him be, but Juan insists that he can make it.  As Juan rushes to get help, John kills himself in a fiery explosion and Juan is forced to watch his friend parish in flames.  With his friend dead, Juan blankly asks, “What about me?”

4. There Will Be Blood (2007)

Adopting a baby boy as you witness his father and your co-worker die a gruesome death plumbing for oil is a nice gesture. Slapping the boy for being a mute and then banishing him from your life after he pours his heart out through the only form of communication he knows – sign language – isn’t so nice. Daniel Plainview is certainly a ruthless oilman, “you will agree,” and his final confrontation with his lifelong adversary, the young preacher, Eli, is solitary, but epic. Milkshake metaphors abound, Plainview forces Eli to denounce his life’s dedication to God and proceeds to bash his head in with a wooden bowling pin. Plainview’s goal is to live a life devoid of others. His wish is granted.

3. Seven (1995)

There’s not much cooler a concept than a serial killer doing what he does best to violators of the seven deadly sins. John Doe was killing for moralistic purposes long before the movies thought it was necessary to do so. However, he surrenders himself to detectives Mills and Somerset after they’d only found five of the seven. That’s odd. He tells them he’ll lead them to the other couple of bodies. In the middle of nowhere, they stop. A lone van comes along and delivers a box to the detectives. “What’s in the box?” That would be Mills’ wife’s head. Doe became jealous of their love and killer her. Envy. That’s six. In retaliation, Mills puts two in Doe’s brain. Wrath. All seven. The detective so bent on stopping the completion is the one who perfected it. Somerset quotes Hemingway: “‘The world is a fine place and worth fighting for.’ I agree with the second part.” Take that, world.

2. Arlington Road (1999)

When I first saw this film, I thought it was the worst ending I’d ever seen. It was so vastly different from anything else. I thought it was lazy, but over time I’ve come to respect the hell out of it. Michael Faraday, a professor of American terrorism, suspects his new neighbors, Oliver and Cheryl Lang of something funky. Oliver lies about his work and where he went to school. Cheryl kills Michael’s girlfriend. Nevertheless Michael’s son, Grant, has committed to a Boy Scout trip under the tutelage of the couple. Michael tails the transportation van, hoping to stop Grant’s imminent annihilation. He follows the van into FBI headquarters and realizes it’s the wrong van. He opens the trunk to his rental car and BOOM. 184 people dead. Grant is orphaned. The best part being the terrorist label is slapped on Michael and will stay with him posthumously forever.

1. The Mist (2007)

After surviving being trapped in a grocery store surrounded by winged creatures, tentacled things and other ghastly beings that swarmed in through the title-described haze, David, his young son and three others make a run for it in a jeep. The idea is to get as far away from everything as the world they knew is overtaken by the nightmare-inducing creatures. They drive as far as the jeep can take them. Their gas has exhausted. They have a gun, but only four bullets. Doing the only humane thing possible, David uses the bullets on his son and the other passengers, forcing himself to deal with the torture of being killed by the creatures. Their call is heard. A large object sorts through the mist. It’s a cavalry of rescue vehicles. Now David must endure the torment of having killed his child only seconds before finding rescue.

Are there any we missed? Do you think the order should be changed? Let us know.

P.S. Before it’s suggested, Million Dollar Baby would’ve been number 15 on the list, but since it’s so similar to the ending of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, I excised it at the risk of being redundant.