Some of the worst movie endings of all time are so bad, they completely derailed an otherwise promising film. It doesn't matter how amazing the bulk of a movie is — if a film fails to stick the landing, it could ruin the whole experience and leave a nasty taste in audiences' mouths. There are plenty of movies that have fallen into that category of spoiling the goodwill of what came before with some of the worst movie endings ever. Some movie endings are terrible because of an ill-thought-out twist, some don't provide enough payoff for the preceding narrative, and some are considered bad because they just don't make sense.

Just as the endings of movies like Fight Club and Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back have gone down in cinema history for how good they are, plenty of films are remembered only for how much the ending misfired. Between a thrilling mystery movie that fails to tie everything together, a horror adaptation that misses the point of the source material, and a clever X-Men movie that becomes too clichéd, these films cannot cross the finish line without stumbling. The majority of it might have been effective, but when the last thing audiences feel is a disappointment, it doesn't bode well for the movie's overall reputation.

15 Sunshine (2007)

The sci-fi movie Sunshine had a lot going for it when it was first announced. With Danny Boyle as director and Alex Garland as screenwriter as well as a cast that included Cillian Murphy, Chris Evans, and Michelle Yeoh, there's no reason Sunshine couldn't have been a decade-defining sci-fi movie. However, the result was a movie whose first two acts of the movie were a riveting thriller about a world-saving space expedition to the sun with high-stakes thrills and the feeling that one simple mistake can result in disaster for the mission. Its final act, however, rather nonsensically became a strange almost-horror tale that borrowed elements from Event Horizon and 2001: A Space Odyssey, without managing to hold a candle to either. Sunshine worked in part because the only antagonist was the danger of space itself. That was thrown out the window in the last act with the sudden introduction of a stowaway on board the ship that turns it into a dull slasher movie.

14 War Of The Worlds (2005)

After the charming E.T. The Extra-terrestrial and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Steven Spielberg decided to explore the idea of hostile aliens coming to Earth in War of the Worlds. Tom Cruise stars as a deadbeat father who has to protect his kids during an alien invasion in which Earth's forces finds themselves totally outmatched. Spielberg delivers a bleak sci-fi action movie with a darker tone than usually seen in his blockbusters and some great set pieces. However, along with the anti-climax of the aliens being defeated by germs, Spielberg cannot help but give audiences a happy ending, undoing the emotionally powerful death of a main character. While this does follow the narrative of the source material, it still felt far too twee for Spielberg's adaptation — especially when it emerges that every single member of Tom Cruise's fictional family survived the Martian invasion unscathed.

13 The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)

Though many people would agree the Jurassic Park franchise never came close to matching the first movie, The Lost World: Jurassic Park is a fun follow-up. While it doesn't recapture the magic of the original, the premise of Ian Malcolm being stuck on one of the dino-infested island with a group of mercenaries made for some great dinosaur action sequences. It benefited from being the only other Jurassic Park movie to have Spielberg back directing. However, the tacked-on ending of a T-Rex being brought to the mainland and subsequently running amok in San Diego feels too silly and like it belongs in another movie — especially since it didn't lead to the dinosaur invasion-style sequel many had hoped for.

12 The Box (2009)

Richard Kelly is a one-hit-wonder director, as his directorial debut was the incredible cult hit Donnie Darko, but since then, he has failed to match that success. The closest he came was with The Box, but the ending takes a lot away from the intriguing premise. The 2009 movie raises an incredible moral dilemma, and it would ordinarily make for a fascinating narrative. In the 2009 movie, a couple is given a box with a button on top, and if they press the button, they'll be awarded a million dollars, but a random person will be murdered. Unfortunately, Kelly complicates things with subplots about the afterlife and an unseen force surveilling everyone, all leading to the predictable ending that simply reveals "greed is bad."

11 Downsizing (2017)

Fans tend to know what to expect from movies written and directed by Alexander Payne; an irreverent comedy about a middle-aged protagonist who has some kind of nihilistic outlook on the future. That's no different with the sci-fi comedy Downsizing, except the tone and even the genre change completely in the final act of the movie. The 2017 film turns into a Charlie Kaufman-esque absurdist dramedy about climate change. It still goes in an interesting direction, but given that Downsizing was totally mismarketed as an outright laugh-out-loud comedy, the ending undoubtedly angered most audiences.

10 Old (2021)

M. Night Shyamalan is notorious for his endings, and his reliance on shock twists has made him one of cinema's most polarizing filmmakers. While no one can deny his talent, it is the endings of his movies that leave people hating the experience. Old falls into this category, and is easily one of the worst movie endings from M. Night Shyamalan. The premise of Old is intriguing, and rightly drew a lot of attention when it was announced. The movie follows a group of people on a beach that mysteriously makes people age quickly to the point they experience years in the space of a day. This makes for some gruesome and disturbing moments, unlike anything Shyamalan has done before. Then comes the twist that the whole thing is used to test the long-term effects of pharmaceutical drugs. It is a lackluster revelation that poses far too many questions about the secrecy of this program and why they would feel this is the easiest method of collecting that data.

9 The Matrix Resurrections (2021)

The Matrix Resurrections was the last sequel anybody was asking for, but despite its polarizing reception which caused the movie to bomb at the box office, there are some great moments, and it does have a huge fanbase of its own. The meta approach to the sequel was an interesting way to explore the sequel and could have delivered a unique blockbuster while commenting on the legacy of the franchise. However, in the final act, Resurrections devolves into a shell of its former self, and action sequences that don't hold a candle to the 1999 original. What makes The Matrix Resurrections particularly notable among the worst movie endings is that it didn't just tarnish a single movie, but an entire trilogy with how badly it fell short of expectations.

8 The Wolverine (2013)

There are loads of things The Wolverine got right, such as the darker themes and the Japanese setting. However, that's right up until the shoe-horned introduction of Silver Samurai in the third act along with the obvious reveal that a character who was supposedly dead in still alive. It was impossible for the James Mangold-directed The Wolverine to be worse than its predecessor, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, but seeing this promising solo movie suddenly turn into another VFX-heavy fight sequence with a lackluster villain is a huge disappointment.

7 Now You See Me (2013)

Now You See Me is a fun action crime movie, and the series has enough fans that there's a huge demand for Now You See Me 3. But as entertaining as the movies are for the way magic tricks are used as set pieces and catalysts for massive action sequences, the first film falls short at the final hurdle. At the end of the film, it's revealed that the Horsemen team was created by Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo), the very FBI agent who was on the case, as a way to exact revenge for his father's death. The big reveal causes so many plot holes that no magic trick could possibly hide. The Now You See Me franchise had always managed to walk the incredibly thin tightrope between the incredible and the implausible, but the ending of Now You See Me 3 pushed the trilogy too far into the realms of mandatory disbelief-suspension.

6 Lucy (2014)

The Luc Besson-directed Lucy is a great cross between the action of John Wick and Nikita in which Scarlett Johansson plays a woman who accidentally injects a drug that unlocks the full potential of her brain power. While the action sequences are inspiring, the ending holds it back from being talked about as one of the most exciting action movies of the past decade. The titular Lucy finally reaches 100% of her brain power which inexplicably turns her into a living computer. The movie required considerable suspicion of disbelief up until then, but it just becomes a parody at that point. Despite how much the in-universe science of the movie tries to rationalize it, it's just too fantastical a premise that using 100% of the human brain would grant somebody the abilities of a God. The concept is intriguing, but movies like 2011's Limitless explore it much better.

5 The Devil Inside (2012)

The Devil Inside is a found-footage horror movie and was a solid addition to the subgenre for much of its running time. However, this movie had what critics and fans agreed was one of the worst endings in movie history. That is because it didn't have an ending. The movie ended abruptly with a title card that told viewers to get on the internet and go to a website to see how the story ends. Certainly one of the laziest movie conclusions of all time, The Devil Inside immediately earns the scorn of its audience, cheating them out of an actual conclusion to the story that had become invested in. There were many experiments in the 00s and early 2010s on how to integrate digital mediums into the movie-going experience to enhance immersion. Since The Devil Inside is considered to have one of the worst movie endings of all time, it's safe to say this one failed.

4 Serenity (2019)

Serenity is a movie made in 2019 that starred Oscar-winners Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway. The movie is a thriller where a fishing boat captain is asked by his ex-wife to kill her current abusive husband. As expected, nothing was as it seems, but the twist that McConaughey's Dill isn't even a real person ruined the entire story. It is revealed that the whole story that has been happening on screen is really just a video game created by a young boy. It is a laughable twist that makes the whole movie seem rather pointless and unintentionally silly. This twist might have fared better in an earlier decade when audiences weren't as familiar with the works of M. Night Shyamalan, Fight Club, or The Matrix movies, but by 2019 it felt beyond dated to viewers already long-since-over the "they weren't a real person all along" trope and virtual reality/non-reality being a source of fear.

3 High Tension (2003)

The Alexandre Aja horror movie High Tension is a simple and effective thrill ride filled with intensity and brutality. The movie follows two female friends on a road trip who find themselves stalked by a bloodthirsty killer. It is a gripping thriller with some standout sequences including the early home invasion scene. However, the movie leaves audiences confused and finding endless plot holes with the unnecessary twist that one of the main girls has actually been the killer the entire time. High Tension is a perfect example of how trying to be too smart can undermine an otherwise solid narrative, because while it has one of the worst movie endings of all time, High Tension more than lives up to its title and would be remembered much more fondly had it stuck to a simpler finale.

2 Signs (2002)

When it comes to movies that people loved, but then fell out of love with at the end, M. Night Shyamalan's Signs is a good example. Shyamalan did a lot right in this movie, including keeping the aliens mostly hidden until key moments. However, all the dread and creepy atmosphere seemed to fall apart when it turned out the aliens' one main weakness was water, and they chose a planet that was almost all water to invade. M. Night Shyamalan attempts to tie everything together in a clever way, but the pieces of the puzzle feel forced. It is an ending that caused back people to feel Shyamalan's attempts to outdo his shock ending in The Sixth Sense ruining his career.

1 I Am Legend (2007)

There's no greater proof that I Am Legend has the worst movie ending than the fact that it's been re-released with a different one on streaming platforms, with the original and "alternate" endings now swapped in the official canon. The biggest problem with the ending of I Am Legend was that the movie changed the original source material's ending, and therefore changed the entire purpose of the story. For those who didn't know the story, it wasn't a problem, but for those who loved the original, it ruined an otherwise great horror movie. The change was that Neville learned in the original story that he was the monster now, terrorizing and killing the vampires who wanted to live in peace. However, the movie changed the ending to a typical story where the vampires had to be cured. It is an ending so bad that the upcoming I Am Legend 2 is retconning it to go with the more popular alternate ending.