My one sided beef with modern media

The beef is more of a general issue with modern media but nonetheless still a problem, to put it simply: the endings don’t make sense anymore. We all remember the final season of Game of Thrones. Eight seasons of beautiful character and world building culminated in a final battle viewers couldn't see and bizarre endings for the most beloved characters. The predictions, hopes, and insights went unanswered and a desire to rewrite history.

Personally, Daenerys' fate still doesn't make sense and felt like a u-turn from the original direction for her. Granted, the knowledge that she is meant to be the villain from early on makes their decisions less offensive. Despite doing unquestionably harsh and evil things Emilia Clark still had us feeling like Daenerys had the right and we related to her struggle against what we'd call "The Man" for our society.

Regardless, it's like all logic will suggest the show is dropping hints and reasonable setups for future plot points, that you're an investigator collecting clues to solve the mystery. When you finally feel comfortable in your prediction you are caught completely off guard by the reality of the ending. This would be fine if the ending made sense, but unfortunately it's more The Open House (2018), at the time one of the new scary movies on Netflix, than it is M. Night Shyamalan masterpiece.

All of a sudden like a circa 2007 GPS inaccurately changing directions on short notice, the story is almost unrecognizable. What you thought to be aliens is really a sentient television creature that wants to harvest human bodies for some unknown reason like the ending of Await Further Instructions. It doesn't matter if it's a pick from the scary movies on Netflix or one of the new horror movies to hit theaters, the risk of experiencing a bad ending has increased considerably.

The person who had been obviously cleared of being the killer is suddenly holding the weapon. Or worse yet, an ending like A Classic Horror Story, the whole plot of atrocities interwoven with mystique is actually just one man's attempt to create a real life horror movie.

The let down is swift and once the big, nonsensical reveal occurs the story doesn’t take nearly enough time to explain what the hell just happened. The events fold out how they would after any climax and then just like that screens fade to credits and you’re left underwhelmed at best and most likely utterly annoyed.

It would be preferable for a predictable and satisfying ending to play out like the cherry on top of the finale sundae. What could've been a great movie is now relegated to it's bizarre ending and misfire of a climax. Whenever the idea of rewatching comes up you have to consider if you can handle the let down again.

Attempts to create the most unpredictable endings and reveals are extremely present in the horror, and horror adjacent pieces. Despite best efforts this sometimes backfires and ruins the entire story.

When the option presents itself it seems that picking the best ending regardless of how generic or predictable it is turns out better. With better endings movies in the horror genre have a better chance at transcending past just the horror audience and becoming award worthy installations in media.