8 Terrible Movies With Awesome Endings

It's depressingly common for otherwise great movies to fall flat at the last turtle with a

deeply terrible ending, in turn compromising the entire experience. But the other way around

Not so common. Now a big prefix before we get into this, this is a mega subjective list and

not every movie here you may think of as actually being terrible. And that's cool, it's all in good

faith and we all have different takes so I'm Ewan, this is Watt Culture and here are terrible

movies with awesome endings. Meg 2 The Trench The original Meg wasn't a great movie, but it knew precisely what it was and delivered the goods

accordingly, albeit within the confines of a gore-free PG-13 rating. It performed really well

at the box office, enough for Warner Bros. to greenlight a sequel, and when acclaimed horror

filmmaker Ben Wheatley was announced to direct, Curiosity was stoked to see how his unique

sensibilities would translate to a mega budget blockbuster. The truth, sadly, is that the majority

of Meg 2, The Trench, is a strangely dull low-energy follow-up in which Wheatley gets to

flex barely an ounce of his fierce filmmaking muscle. Even with the eminent charms of lead

Jason Statham, far too much time is spent on snoozy human dramas and not enough on, well

the Megs. That is, until the third act arrives, and we get all the Megs we could hope for

and the action shifts from the muddy depths of the Mariana Trench to Fun Island, a resort that

becomes overrun with Megs, quasi-dinosaur creatures called Snappers, and, best of all

a giant freaking squid. Meg 2's third act is basically what the entire movie should have been

once on carnage without all the tiresome chit-chat that bogged down the first hour plus

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Dark Phoenix It wasn't exactly a surprise that Dark Phoenix was a huge bust, but it brought Fox's X-Men

franchise sputtering to a disappointing halt all the same. From a writing and directing perspective

so much of this movie feels completely flat. It's just the fact we've seen most of it done better elsewhere

and between a lifeless performance from Sophie Turner as Jean Grey and Jennifer Lawrence not even pretending to be interested it felt like an obligation for most of the cast involved

But the final scene at least delivers something approaching a genuinely affecting sign-off for the entire two decades saga

as a retired Charles Xavier is greeted at a Parisian cafe by Magneto before the pair play a friendly game of chess

It's not a scene full of operatic, dramatic grandstanding, but circles back to Charles and Eric's chess games from the earlier films in a slightly affecting way

It's an ending that deserved a much better film leading up to it. Staying Alive

1983's Saturday Night Fever sequel Staying Alive is a really bad movie

and by way of its hilariously awful dialogue and unrelenting, poorly staged dance sequences, it absolutely earned its critical drubbing

Yet director Sylvester Stallone did nevertheless mash to Russell up one of the most fist-pumping endings of all time

when protagonist Tony Manero's Broadway debut goes down a storm and he reconciles his girlfriend Jackie

Travolta's Tony then professes to Jackie that he needs to do one more thing in order to celebrate correctly, strut

And so, the Bee Gees' iconic Staying Alive, which was written for Saturday Night Fever's opening sequence

plays as Tony confidently struts through Times Square. Capped off by a glorious closing freeze frame, it's a perfect combination of cheesy and triumphant

Jason Goes to Hell The Final Friday The 9th Friday the 13th movie gets a lot of justified vitriol

primarily because Jason Voorhees only appears in his physical form briefly, with his spirit instead possessing various characters for most of the movie

The setup just didn't really work, with only the film's final 60 seconds doing much to entice all the Jason heads

who'd stuck with the series through thick and thin, and because it's Friday the 13th, there is a lot of thin

In the laughable climax, a reborn Jason is dragged to hell as promised by the title

but the final scene shows Jason's mask being unearthed by a dog

Moments later, Freddy Krueger's gloved hand bursts out of the dirt and pulls the mask to hell

all while Freddy's signature demonic cackle can be heard. Coming at the end of a depressingly awful conclusion to the Friday the 13th franchise

this tease of a future Freddy vs Jason movie felt like an oasis in the middle of a desert

A much needed solve that promised greater things to come, even if it took an additional decade to materialize

Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2022 Not the 1974 Texas Chainsaw Massacre follow ups really approached the original in terms of depth imagery or raw adrenaline with more than one sliding into the downright terrible category

David Blue Garcia's 2022 effort, which ignores all other sequels Halloween 2018 style

may not rest squarely at the bottom, but it is a garbled mess of a film that leans into

slasher convention, undermining any salient commentary it may have to say on gun violence

or political division in the process. However, the film does have a ripper of an ending

a real rug pull moment that, while in the vein of a Friday the 13th final jump scare

is brutally effective in how unrelentingly cruel it is. After dueling with and seemingly defeating

Leatherface, protagonist Melody and Lila prepare to leave Harlow in a self-driving car, quite

literally letting their guard down for an easy journey back home. And then Leatherface suddenly

emerges, drags Melody out the window and decapitates her, all while Lila screams as the car

drives away. Leatherface dances in the street with the head, getting the last laugh on those

pesky gentrifiers and leaving the film on an appropriately gutting note. Star Wars Episode 2, Attack of the Clones

My relationship with Attack of the Clones has taken a curious evaluation in recent years. To be

blunt, this was the first time I faced disappointment in a movie as a child. I loved

and still loved The Phantom Menace, but Clones at the time felt like a turgid

awkwardly romantic follow-up filled with lots of iffy effects. As I've grown older

I still think that much of that remains the case, but I do at least see and appreciate

what George Lucas was going for. Clones is meant to be Star Wars

ran through the filter of a 70s political thriller. Like the parallax view

but instead of Warren Beatty unearthing a global cabal of assassins, you have Ewan McGregor going to Kamino

to look at sea otters. We're looking at sea otters. Six of them here

Oh, and a giant clone army, that's also important. The film is politically prescient

an indictment of the lure of conflict and the terrible freedoms it gobbles up, and yeah, despite some wooden dialogue

I think Hayden Christensen was dealt a harsh deck. Anakin is meant to be annoying in this story

The main issues here, really, are a mix of half-baked characters, thank God Dooku was saved by the expanded canon

and technical ogliness that sludge-ifies Lucas' once ornate cosmic tapestry. tapestry. And despite all of this the film still has a hauntingly beautiful ending John Williams imperial march has never been more menacing with the Republic having ushered in its own means of destruction through the creation of a standing army Accompany

that with Yoda's BEGUN THE CLONE WAR HAS, and you're left with one of the best mic drop moments

in the entire franchise. Thor The Dark World There's plenty of fan debate about precisely how bad Thor The Dark World is, but it's near

universally accepted to be one of the weakest MCU movies. From its forgettable villain to its

cringeworthy comic relief, flat visuals, and anonymous direction, it's an also-ran superhero

movie sequel that's basically the summation of every complaint that's ever been levelled against

the MCU. But that ending? Ooh, that's a good one. Given that Tom Hiddleston's Loki was the

sure highlight of the original Thor and proved himself to be a terrifically entertaining villain

in the first Avengers, seeing him die at the end of this movie's second act hit hard. But

what a relief it was when the final scene saw Thor have a heartfelt reunion with his father Odin

in Asgard. Oh, so it seemed. Until Thor leaves and it's revealed that Loki, ever the trickster

is still alive and was impersonating Odin all along. It's a scene that forced audiences to

perk up at the end of an otherwise deeply forgettable film and relished the fact that

the MCU didn't just jettison one of its best characters after a mere two movies

Dracula 2000 It's always a bad sign when a movie plasters the name of someone tangentially associated

with it all over the marketing. And so when Dracula 2000 billed itself with executive producer Wes Craven's name as

a prefix, it felt like a calculated admission that the film couldn't rest on its own merits

And yeah, Dracula 2000 sucks. It's an aggressively early 2000s riff on Dracula, which with its edgy nu metal soundtrack

and painfully dated wardrobe choices, is a comically stodgy product of its era

the horror movie Daredevil I guess. For the record, I love that vibe, but yeah it's not great

Dracula 2000 is, for 90% of its runtime, a thoroughly uninteresting reimagining of Dracula

lore, until it finally trips and stumbles over its one truly great idea in a closing scene

Here it's revealed that Gerard Butler's Dracula is actually Judas Iscariot, who was cursed by God

to live forever as a vampire due to his portrayal of Jesus Christ. It's one of those

Those revelations that genuinely forces you to reconsider everything you've just seen

And though Dracula 2000 is still a fundamentally stinky bad movie, its final rug pull does provide some wildly unexpected food for thought