6 Movie Endings That Transformed the Rest of the Film 》

What do you normally expect out of a movie ending? In most cases, films wrap their plots up with a nice bow, give us a happy ending, and let us bask in the warm glow of the credits.

Some movies, however, had very different and very unexpected endings. And the best of these films did more than take us by surprise. Instead, these endings transformed how we viewed the rest of the movie.

So, which film endings changed their movies so much you basically need to rewatch them? Keep reading to find out!

Night of the Living Dead

Night of the Living Dead pretty much invented the modern horror movie. At the same time, it neatly invented the classic trope of inverting our expectations.

For example, the movie’s basic plot involves a ragtag group of humans trying to survive the night in a house besieged by flesh-eating zombies. The group has a simple goal: to survive long enough for help to arrive. Eventually, help arrives and shoots and kills the character Ben because his bedraggled appearance makes him look like the walking dead.

In this way, the movie drove home what would become a common zombie theme: the humans are just as dangerous, if not more dangerous, than the zombies. Additionally, the sight of an armed white man at the end executing Ben, a defenseless Black man, accidentally gave this movie (that came out at the end of the Civil Rights era) a special resonance.