This discussion inevitably involves spoilers. Apologies for that and for the possibility that I overlooked some previous thread on this subject. Although I did find threads about movies in which the main character dies, here I’m more interested in scenarios involving the death of every principal character. (This comes to mind as I reflect on one of my more stupid little repetitive jokes in which I inform my SO that I’ve already seen whatever she’s watching, and that ‘everyone dies at the end’.)
Clearly there must be a lot of horror movies meeting that criterion. What about otherwise? I’d say that every arguably major character must die; that implied-only deaths probably shouldn’t count (thus disqualifying e.g. 2005 British horror film The Descent); and that any antagonist, monster, or murderer should die as well.
Suggesting Open Spoilers, but in this post I’ll try to be kinder. I’m having a rather embarrassingly difficult time coming up with examples, particularly ones that aren’t in the horror genre. A couple:
1968 horror: Night of the Living Dead, really the only example I can think of which unambiguously fits the criteria
1992 crime/thriller: Reservoir Dogs, arguably, possibly disqualified by the above criteria
2010 british fantasy realism/horror: Outcast; counts as long as you don’t consider the love interest a principal character — certainly the main protagonists and antagonists all die
The Cabin in the Woods; it ends with the gods destroying the entire world
There’s also a 1970s sci-fi film that sort of cheats:
Beneath the Planet of the Apes ends with Charlton Heston blowng up the entire Earth. Of course, they “cheated” by making a sequel in which a few of the chimps escaped
I don’t think I need a spoiler for this: all the principal characters are dead at the start of Grave of the Fireflies. (The movie then goes backwards in time to show how they died.)
I can think of a classic book in which everyone dies, but while there have been several movie versions, the movies usually cheat and allow for survivors. Are there any excpetions? I dunno- I haven’t seen all the movie versions.
In Agatha Christie’s ***And Then There Were None ***(also called ***Ten Little ***Indians), the Judge murders everyone on the island (all of whom were murderers who’d escaped justice) and then commits suicide, leaving an unsolvable mystery for the police. In the two movie versions I’ve seen, they changed the ending, so that one of the suspects was really a detective and the cute female was innocent of the murder the Judge accused her of (in the book, she was guilty as sin), and those two live happily ever after.
In Return of the Living Dead, the Army is notified of the zombie plague, and they nuke the area, killing both the zombies AND the people who’d managed to survive
Do alternate endings count? 2008 Australian/American co-production horror film
The Ruins
has all the characters dead, but only in the alternate ending. I’d argue that by the film’s logic, even in the theatrical cut the death of the survivor[s] is implied even though they are shown “escaping”.
I could be wrong about this (I only saw it once), but …
In Contagion, I believe the last scene hints that Patient Zero was mis-identified, so we are led to believe that the contagion isn’t contained at all and therefore … everyone dies. Eventually.