00:00Whether dying peacefully of old age, falling gracefully on their own sword, or getting brutally mutilated in spectacularly over-the
00:08-top fashion,
00:09these character deaths all came at the last possible moment.
00:13And now it's time to relive them all over again, because I am Gareth from WhatCulture.com and here are
00:18movie characters who died in the final shot.
00:21Paul Conroy Buried
00:22Rodrigo Cortez's Buried is a nerve-shredding exercise in suspense.
00:27As American truck driver Paul Conroy wakes up buried alive in a coffin in Iraq, and attempts to use his
00:33phone to effect his escape.
00:35Throughout the film, Paul is in contact with Dan Brenner, head of the hostage working group, who is attempting to
00:41find his location and rescue him.
00:43Midway through the movie, Brenner informs Paul that they saved a man called Mark White from a similar situation several
00:49weeks prior.
00:50But at film's end, when the rescue operation unfolds, the team finds the burial site of White himself, who Brenner
00:57evidently lied about saving, not Paul.
01:00And so in the film's final scene, Paul realizes he isn't going to be saved as sand begins unstoppably pouring
01:06into the coffin.
01:07He's helpless to do anything but wait to asphyxiate on the sand filling every space of the wooden box.
01:13And just as Paul starts suffocating, we cut to black, with the final sound being Conroy telling Paul, I'm sorry
01:19Paul, I'm so sorry.
01:21Considering it seemed highly likely that Paul would be rescued by film's end, this was quite the hefty gut punch
01:26indeed.
01:27A lovely start, I'm sure you'll agree.
01:29You know, when the nights get here faster and the temperature starts dropping and I'm in need of something cozy
01:35to pick me up,
01:36there's nothing I want to do more than spend some time with your friend and mine, Pumpkinhead.
01:42As in the 1988 supernatural horror movie Pumpkinhead, directed by Stan Winston.
01:47Obviously.
01:48And wouldn't you know it, you can go and do that on Prime Video right now.
01:52And if you sign up using our special link in the description or scan the QR code on screen,
01:57you'll get 75% off your first two months, which is as low as 99 cents per month.
02:03That includes both single subscriptions and bundles, so you can add in stuff like Apple TV and HBO Max
02:10and watch all the movies and shows you want to your heart's content.
02:14Like, guys, they have all of Columbo on there.
02:16I'm about to go into a winter hibernation and come out talking like Peter Fork.
02:21I can't wait.
02:21Mr. White and Mr. Orange, Reservoir Dogs.
02:25Quentin Tarantino's ferocious directorial debut, Reservoir Dogs, gives us a twofer as gangster Mr. White and undercover cop Mr. Orange
02:33both expire in the film's gut-wrenching closing shot.
02:37The final shot is a two-minute single take in which Mr. White cradles a mortally wounded Mr. Orange who
02:43confesses to being a cop,
02:44before a distraught Mr. White then points a gun at his head.
02:48At that moment, the police storm their warehouse hideout and instruct Mr. White to put his gun down.
02:54But as the camera eases in on him, he pulls the trigger, presumably killing Mr. Orange.
02:59This prompts the cops to open fire on Mr. White, who is blasted out of the frame and evidently killed.
03:05Tarantino then abruptly cuts to the credits.
03:07And that's all she wrote.
03:08There was nowhere for the movie to go after this.
03:10What with all but one of the robbers being, you know, dead.
03:13Michael Corleone, The Godfather Part 3.
03:16Say what you will about The Godfather Part 3, and of course, it's unarguably lesser than its two masterful predecessors.
03:22It nevertheless ends in fitting fashion, with the death of series protagonist Michael Corleone.
03:27The threequel climaxes with the death of Michael's daughter Mary, after which the final scene flashes forward many years.
03:34Where a now elderly Michael sits alone outside Don Tomasino's villa.
03:38After a beat, Michael slumps over dead and his corpse then falls out of the chair.
03:42The final second showing one of Michael's dogs curiously examining his lifeless corpse.
03:47The end.
03:48It's a sad yet appropriate end for Michael, having lost everyone he's ever loved due to the life he was
03:53thrust into.
03:54And though Francis Ford Coppola actually cut Michael's death from his recent re-edit of the movie, The Godfather Coda,
04:00The Death of Michael Corleone,
04:01The original release is nevertheless still the one that most fans know, The Ghost, The Ghost Writer.
04:07Roman Polanski's tightly-wound political thriller, The Ghost Writer, follows an unnamed ghost writer, I know, what a world,
04:13who is hired to complete an autobiography of former British Prime Minister Adam Lang.
04:17The Ghost, as he's credited, soon enough uncovers some extremely unsavory findings about Lang.
04:23But before anything can be brought to light, Lang is assassinated.
04:25The Ghost is asked to finish the book to commemorate Lang's life, and the film ends with him attending the
04:30book launch,
04:31where he discovers a secret message in the book's original manuscript, revealing that Lang's wife Ruth is the real villain.
04:38The Ghost reveals to Ruth that he knows this, but as he leaves the party and disappears off-screen,
04:43a car quickly accelerates in his direction and runs him down.
04:46We don't see the Ghost's corpse, but the implication is clear, made even more devastating,
04:51as we see the pages of the incriminating manuscript blow away in the wind.
04:55Ensuring the secrets will never be made public.
04:58Heather, the Blair Witch Project
04:59Love it or hate it, nobody will ever forget the final moments of the Blair Witch Project,
05:04where embattled filmmaker-protagonist Heather enters the ruins of an abandoned house in the woods,
05:09and finds her friend Mike standing in the corner of the basement.
05:12Heather calls out to Mike, at which point she's attacked from behind.
05:16Her screaming abruptly stops, and her camera falls to the floor.
05:19While there is a sure ambiguity to the ending, given that we don't 100% know precisely what happens,
05:24it seems pretty cut and dry that Heather is killed by either the Blair Witch,
05:28or somebody being possessed by the Blair Witch.
05:31Given that Mike faces the corner of the basement,
05:33just as famed serial killer Rustin Parr made his child victim's due while carrying out a killing,
05:38and neither Helen nor her two friends were ever found,
05:41it's safe to say we're seeing Heather's final moments in the movie's chilling closing shot.
05:45Butch and Sundance, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
05:48Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid boast one of the most iconic endings in all of cinema,
05:54as a wounded Butch and Sundance find themselves cornered by the Bolivian army,
05:58with seemingly no means of escape.
06:00Nevertheless, the duo seem confident that they can survive the encounter,
06:03and make it to Australia, running out into the open and faring away.
06:07Just at that moment, director George Roy Hill freezes the image of Butch and Sundance,
06:12all while several lengthy hails of machine gun fire ring out.
06:16While we don't see Butch and Sundance's dead bodies,
06:19there is no ambiguity whatsoever that we're seeing their final nanoseconds of life
06:23in this unforgettable freeze frame.
06:26It's a final image that's been homaged in numerous movies over the years.
06:29The Lieutenant, Bad Lieutenant.
06:31Abel Ferrara's mesmerizing neo-noir Bad Lieutenant
06:34doesn't offer up a remotely surprising fate for its unnamed protagonist,
06:38played with gutsy panache by the great Harvey Keitel.
06:41After spending basically the entire movie being the worst cop the world has ever seen,
06:45the Lieutenant finds a bizarre brand of redemption
06:47by not killing or bringing two rapists to justice.
06:51As their victim has forgiven them,
06:52he decides to put them on a bus with a ton of money
06:54while instructing them to never come back to New York.
06:57The Lieutenant then returns to his car,
06:59where after a moment he's shot and killed by a driver passerby.
07:03In a brilliantly eerie final choice,
07:05Ferrara keeps a locked-off camera pointed at the car from afar for another minute.
07:09Lingering on the New Yorkers walking past the Lieutenant's corpse
07:12and quickly going on with their lives.
07:14For all the many bad things he did throughout the movie,
07:17you can't say the Lieutenant's brutal demise was a shock,
07:19even if it tragically came just when he finally found some inner peace.
07:23Bruce Robbo Robertson, Filth.
07:26The criminally underappreciated 2013 black comedy Filth
07:29stars James McAvoy as Bruce Robbo Robertson,
07:32a psychopathic, drug-abusing member of the Edinburgh Police Force.
07:35In the final scene, Bruce has lost everything and prepares to hang himself.
07:39But just as he steps off his chair to hang,
07:42there's a knock at the door.
07:43It's the widow and her young son that Bruce briefly connected with earlier in the film.
07:47Bruce, seemingly regretting his decision,
07:50initially attempts to steady himself and regain his footing on the chair.
07:53But as the widow and her son walk away after receiving no response,
07:57Bruce breaks the fourth wall, laughing at the audience and accepting his fate.
08:01In the final shot, the chair falls from under Bruce and he hangs.
08:04As writer-director John S. Baird abruptly cuts to the credits,
08:08in what's surely one of the most darkly hilarious smash cuts in cinema history.
08:12Jack, The House That Jack Built
08:14Lars von Trier is absolutely obsessed with doing this very thing,
08:18having killed off the protagonist in the final shot of his movie numerous times.
08:22But perhaps the most memorable and certainly the most unexpectedly hilarious of the bunch
08:26is in his hugely controversial psychological horror film, The House That Jack Built.
08:30Matt Dillon stars as Jack, a serial killer who recounts his various murders to Verge,
08:35aka Virgil from Dante's Inferno, who is leading him through the nine circles of hell.
08:41At the very end of the film, Jack and Verge reach the ninth circle,
08:44at which point Jack notices a stairway leading out of hell and back to earth.
08:48Due to the bridge to the stairway being broken,
08:51Jack attempts to scale the ninth circle's wall,
08:54climbing across to the steps.
08:55However, he ends up slipping, helplessly falling to his death in the molten abyss below.
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