The End...Or Is It?

Horror flicks have fed my guilty pleasures long enough that I would call myself, if not an expert, at least an aficionado of any one of the four tried (more often than not tired) but true endings for every horror movie.

I’m a sucker for happy endings, especially after whatever blood-drenched travails the surviving protagonists endured to make it to the closing credits. First and foremost, I appreciate the quiet resolution that provides characters and viewers alike the opportunity to catch their breaths before moving on to face a much less terrifying future or the comforting sunshine outside the darkened theater.

Less satisfying is the ambiguous conclusion, obviously missing a tidy wrap-up of peril and menace. This “The End…Or Is It?” carryover from creature features of the 1950s has frequently been used in made-for-television thrillers on the Sci-Fi Channel as a tireless ploy for inevitable sequels.

The most disappointing, and obviously most predictable ending has to be the shocker tag - just when the evil has been defeated and survivors and audiences share a sigh of relief - SURPRISE! The monsters are back, the good guys lose, and the screen goes black. It is, in the end, a disdainful cheat on the viewer.

A notch above this slap in the face is the shocker-oh-wait-it-was-only-a-nightmare tag. Here the cinematic yardstick against which all else is measured has to be the jarring hand-from-the-grave shot in director Brian DePalma’s “Carrie.” Zombie movie auteur George A. Romero comes in a close second with the jolting conclusion to “Day of the Dead.”

I wish I had a satisfying conclusion for my thoughts at this point, but for now, I’ll just leave you wondering if this is…

The End…Or the Beginning?