10 Movie Characters Who Died In The Final Shot

Whether dying peacefully of old age, falling gracefully on their own sword, or getting brutally mutilated in spectacularly over-the-top fashion

these character deaths all came at the last possible moment, and now it's time to relive them all over again

Because I am Gareth from WhatCulture.com and here are movie characters who died in the final shot

Paul Conroy Buried Rodrigo Cortez's Buried is a nerve-shredding exercise in suspense

as American truck driver Paul Conroy wakes up buried alive in a coffin in Iraq

and attempts to use his phone to effect his escape. Throughout the film, Paul is in contact with Dan Brenner

head of the hostage working group, who is attempting to find his location and rescue him

Midway through the movie, Brenner informs Paul that they saved a man called Mark White

from a similar situation several weeks prior. But at film's end, when the rescue operation unfolds

the team finds the burial site of White himself, who Brenner evidently lied about saving not Paul

And so in the film's final scene, Paul realises he isn't going to be saved

as sand begins unstoppably pouring into the coffin. He's helped us to do anything but wait to asphyxiate

on the sand filling every space of the wooden box. And just as Paul starts suffocating, we cut to black

with the final sound being Conroy telling Paul, I'm sorry Paul, I'm so sorry

Considering it seemed highly likely that Paul would be rescued by film's end

this was quite the hefty gut punch indeed. A lovely start, I'm sure you'll agree

You know, when the nights get here faster and the temperature starts dropping and I'm in need of

something cozy to pick me up, there's nothing I want to do more than spend some time with your

friend and mine, Pumpkinhead. As in the 1988 supernatural horror movie Pumpkinhead directed

by Stan Winston, obviously. And wouldn't you know it, you can go and do that on Prime Video

right now and if you sign up using our special link in the description or scan the QR code

on screen, you'll get 75% off your first two months which is as low as 99 cents per month

That includes both single subscriptions and bundles so you can add stuff like Apple TV

and HBO Max and watch all the movies and shows you want to your heart content Like guys they have all of Columbo on there I about to go into a winter hibernation and come out talking like Peter Fork

I can't wait. Mr. White and Mr. Orange, Reservoir Dogs. Quentin Tarantino's ferocious directorial debut, Reservoir Dogs

gives us a twofer as gangster Mr. White and undercover cop Mr. Orange

both expire in the film's gut-wrenching closing shot. The final shot is a two-minute single take in which Mr. White cradles a mortally wounded Mr. Orange

who confesses to being a cop, before a distraught Mr. White then points a gun at his head

At that moment, the police storm their warehouse hideout and instruct Mr. White to put his gun down

but as the camera eases in on him, he pulls the trigger, presumably killing Mr. Orange

This prompts the cops to open fire on Mr. White, who is blasted out of the frame and evidently killed

Tarantino then abruptly cuts to the credits. And that's all she wrote. There was nowhere for the movie to go after this

What with all but one of the robbers being, you know, dead. Michael Corleone, The Godfather Part 3

Say what you will about The Godfather Part 3, and of course, it's unarguably lesser than its two masterful predecessors

It nevertheless ends in fitting fashion, with the death of series protagonist Michael Corleone

The threequel climaxes with the death of Michael's daughter Mary, after which the final scene flashes forward many years

where a now elderly Michael sits alone outside Don Tomasino's villa. After a beat, Michael slumps over dead and his corpse then falls out of the chair

the final second showing one of Michael's dogs curiously examining his lifeless corpse

The end. It's a sad yet appropriate end for Michael, having lost everyone he's ever loved due to the life he was thrust into

And though Francis Ford Coppola actually cut Michael's death from his recent re-edit of the movie

The Godfather Coda, The Death of Michael Corleone, The original release is nevertheless still the one that most fans know

The Ghost, The Ghost Writer Roman Polanski's tightly-warned political thriller, The Ghost Writer

follows an unnamed ghost writer, I know, what a world, who is hired to complete an autobiography of former British Prime Minister Adam Lang

The Ghost, as he is credited, soon enough uncovers some extremely unsavory findings about Lang

But before anything can be brought to light Lang is assassinated The Ghost is asked to finish the book to commemorate Lang life and the film ends with him attending the book launch where he discovers a secret message in the book original manuscript revealing that Lang wife Ruth is the real villain The ghost reveals to Ruth that

he knows this, but as he leaves the party and disappears off-screen, a car quickly accelerates

in his direction and runs him down. We don't see the ghost corpse, but the implication is clear

made even more devastating as we see the pages of the incriminating manuscript blow away in the

wind, ensuring the secrets will never be made public. Heather, the Blair Witch Project. Love it

or hate it, nobody will ever forget the final moments of the Blair Witch Project, where embattled

filmmaker protagonist Heather enters the ruins of an abandoned house in the woods and finds her

friend Mike standing in the corner of the basement. Heather calls out to Mike at which point she's

attacked from behind. Her screaming abruptly stops and her camera falls to the floor. While

there is a sure ambiguity to the ending given that we don't 100% know precisely what happens

it seems pretty cut and dry that Heather is killed by either the Blair Witch

or somebody being possessed by the Blair Witch. Given that Mike faces the corner of the basement

just as famed serial killer Rustin Parr made his child victims do while carrying out a killing

and neither Helen nor her two friends were ever found, it's safe to say we're seeing Heather's final moments in the movie's chilling closing shot

Butch and Sundance, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid boast one of the most iconic endings in all of cinema

as a wounded Butch and Sundance find themselves cornered by the Bolivian army with seemingly no means of escape

Nevertheless, the duo seem confident that they can survive the encounter and make it to Australia

running out into the open and faring away. Just at that moment, director George Roy Hill freezes the image of Butch and Sundance

all while several lengthy hails of machine gun fire ring out. While we don't see Butch and Sundance's dead bodies

there is no ambiguity whatsoever that we're seeing their final nanoseconds of life

in this unforgettable freeze frame. It's a final image that's been homaged in numerous movies over the years

The Lieutenant, Bad Lieutenant. Abel Ferrara's mesmerizing neo-noir Bad Lieutenant doesn't offer up a remotely surprising fate for its unnamed protagonist

played with gutsy panache by the great Harvey Keitel After spending basically the entire movie being the worst cop the world has ever seen the lieutenant finds a bizarre brand of redemption by not killing or bringing two rapists to justice

As their victim has forgiven them, he decides to put them on a bus with a ton of money while

instructing them to never come back to New York. The lieutenant then returns to his car

where after a moment he's shot and killed by a driver passerby. In a brilliantly eerie final

choice, Ferrara keeps a locked off camera pointed at the car from afar for another minute

lingering on the New Yorkers walking past the lieutenant's corpse and quickly going on with

their lives. For all the many bad things he did throughout the movie, you can't say the lieutenant's

brutal demise was a shock, even if it tragically came just when he finally found some inner peace

Bruce Robbo Robertson, Filth The criminally underappreciated 2013 black comedy Filth stars James McAvoy as Bruce Robbo Robertson

a psychopathic, drug-abusing member of the Edinburgh Police Force. In the final scene

Bruce has lost everything and prepares to hang himself. But just as he steps off his chair to

hang, there's a knock at the door. It's the widow and her young son that Bruce briefly connected

with earlier in the film. Bruce, seemingly regretting his decision, initially attempts

to steady himself and regain his footing on the chair. But as the widow and her son walk away

after receiving no response, Bruce breaks the fourth wall, laughing at the audience and accepting

his fate. In the final shot, the chair falls from under Bruce and he hangs. As writer-director John

S. Baird abruptly cuts to the credits in what's surely one of the most darkly hilarious smash

cuts in cinema history, Jack, the house that Jack built. Lars von Trier is absolutely obsessed with

doing this very thing, having killed off the protagonist in the final shot of his movie

numerous times. But perhaps the most memorable and certainly the most unexpectedly hilarious of

the bunch is in his hugely controversial psychological horror film, The House That Jack Built

Matt Dillon stars as Jack, a serial killer who recounts his various murders to Verge

aka Virgil from Dante's Inferno, who is leading him through the nine circles of hell

At the very end of the film, Jack and Virg reach the ninth circle, at which point Jack notices a stairway leading out of hell and back to earth

Due to the bridge to the stairway being broken, Jack attempts to scale the ninth circle's wall

climbing across to the steps. However, he ends up slipping, helplessly falling to his death in the molten abyss below