What is a movie where the ending is not the saddest part, what comes after is

The Graduate

The Mist

Requiem for a Dream seems an obvious choice here.

Shutter Island

The Big Short. The weight of the realization that the whole system is rigged and there’s nothing a single person can do, or even a small group can do to repair it.

manchester by the sea absolutely destroyed me for exactly that reason. lee's just stuck carrying all that guilt forever and you know he's never gonna forgive himself for me it's her - like the movie ends and joaquin phoenix's character has to figure out how to exist in a world where he fell in love with an ai that outgrew him. the breakup itself was sad but imagining him trying to date actual humans again after that experience... oof also eternal sunshine hits this way too. they're gonna keep meeting and falling in love and hurting each other over and over because they can't help themselves

The Deer Hunter

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Whiplash

Behind her Eyes series.  The little boy at the end 😢 

Kind of the opposite of your reasoning, but if you watch "The Fault in our Stars" it has a nice, calm ending. And then you realize that you just watched the protagonist die.

Not sad, but I've often thought about what Ed Norton's character will go through after Fight Club.

Scarecrow  The scene where the creepy inmate tries to force Lion (Pacino) on him was incredibly disturbing -in fact, it’s r*** (says so in the original script).   It’s the most harrowing thing I’ve ever seen on screen….  Then he emerged, his face bloodied and beaten, and it was like I was punched in the stomach; my breath was taken away by the sheer brutality. Later on in the film, Lion’s wife lies to him about having lost their son, saying that he wouldn’t go to heaven because he wasn’t baptized,  and that’s  when Lion completely broke. The water fountain scene where he tried to baptize another child was devastating - Al‘s portrayal of a man who just couldn’t live with his guilt is so beautiful and shattering. It was heartbreaking to watch Lion playing with the kids, and then just losing all sense of reality completely.  He ends up in a hospital, catatonic.  I actually do think there’s a bit of hope at the end, and director Jerry Schatzberg essentially confirmed this decades later because he had a sequel all plotted out…. But, the movie itself is like a punch in the gut, and thinking about poor Lion 😭😭😭😭

Steven Spielberg’s AI is always the answer to a question like this.

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All dogs go to heaven

A Simple Plan. Horrible things happened all along, but the survivng friend/ brother was forced to go back to poverty, and left to try to live with his own self and the knowledge that the wife of his perfect marriage had confessed that she hated her life. She had to go back to her misery, too. Ugh. It's such emptiness.

the Prom Night remake. The final girl already saw her brother and parents brutally murdered in front of her by her crazy teacher. Then a year later, she’s in therapy for the trauma and PTSD. But the teacher breaks out again and starts killing close friends of hers as well as multiple other people It comes to a head when she’s at her aunt and uncle’s house with police guards and her boyfriend. But the teachers still sneaks in, kills the 2 policemen, and kills her boyfriend while the 2 of them were asleep in her bed. Idris Elba does come in and shoot the guy but that final girl is beyond scarred for life after that

It'll be interesting to see how they end the Sunrise on the Reaping movie, because the end of the book was extra somber knowing what Haymitch's life is like from there.

Rosemary's Baby

Lord of the Rings The Return of the King. When Sam, Merry & Pippen are bawling their eyes out saying their goodbyes to Frodo. Or Tony Starks funeral in Endgame.

The Road

[removed]

invictus

Hurricane Streets

The Art of Racing in the Rain They did an 8 year time jump but Enzo's death must have been devastating.

Like the movie the Mist?

Not the answer you are aiming for, but that is pretty much exactly what the storytelling in Irreversible exploits. You actually see the after.

Call Me By Your Name (the movie, not what happens with the books after)

Threads

The Civil Dead (2022) I couldn’t stop feeling sorry for that damn ghost. For weeks afterward.

Just watched The Secret Agent. The final scene is a big what could have been if events had turned out differently, especially for the son in the film.

Watched *A Simple Plan* for the first time recently and that really stuck with me

Remember me…

Arrival.

Past Lives

Curious Case of Benjamin Button. When he leaves his family in the middle of the night

Oldboy

My favorite movie is Local Hero (1983). It's a charming movie about a yuppie Houston oilman who travels to the Scottish coast to purchase an entire small village as a refinery site. The oil bro meets the locals and has his mindset shifted the longer he stays there, realizing the shallowness of his corporate climbing and appreciating the beauty and comfort of a true community. No specific spoilers here, but as the music swells (beautiful score by Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits) and the credits roll a wordless, person-less scene is shown that is simply overwhelming once you realize what's happening.

The end of Weapons had me feeling pretty sad

Heart Is A Lonely Hunter

Never Let Me Go

Life is Beautiful.