Top 10 most haunting endings in horror movie history
By Jeremy Dick
3. Friday the 13th Part 3 (1982)
Easily, the third entry in the Friday the 13th series has the most disturbing of them all. Perhaps that’s because the film is more based in psychological horror than the other flicks in the franchise. In any case, the horror felt by final girl Chris Higgins (expertly played by Dana Kimmell) feels so real that it makes the hairs on the back of my next stand up, even though she made it.
In the movie, a get together at Chris’s family home at Crystal Lake goes terribly wrong when Jason Voorhees shows up and butchers all of her friends. Chris just barely manages to survive by planting an axe in Jason’s forehead (giving the mask that signature crack seen in most subsequent sequels).
The next morning, Chris awakens and sees Jason in the window of the barn, having survived the axe blow (seemingly). Moments later, he vanishes, and the corpse of Mrs. Voorhees emerges from the lake and pulls Chris into the water. Soon after, the police arrive, and they confirm that Jason is still dead in the barn and there’s no lady in the lake — so traumatized from the ordeal with Jason, a now crazy Chris hallucinated the whole thing.
Although Jason is “dead” and Chris lives, the horror is far from over for her. As officers escort her away, she laughs, cries, and shrieks in horror. Now completely insane, she’s still a victim of Jason’s rampage.
2. Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988)
In the fourth Halloween movie, Michael Myers returned to the franchise to prey on the people of Haddonfield once again. This time, he sets his sights on his niece, Jamie Lloyd, chasing her throughout the town on Halloween night to kill her. Along the way, he slaughters everyone else who so much as gets in his way.
With the help of her foster sister Rachel and Dr. Loomis, Jamie manages to survive the night and Michael Myers is stopped. Back at home, Jamie, having had the evil of her uncle heavily traumatize her, attacks her foster mother in the bathroom with a pair of scissors, seemingly killing her. She then stands at the top of the staircase, holding the bloody scissors and wearing a clown suit similar to young Michael’s from the original Halloween. Horrified, Loomis is left screaming, “No!” repeatedly at the sight of Jamie being possessed by the evil of Michael Myers.