Stephen King has been rightfully dubbed the King of Horror, if not for his prolific work in the field, then for the innumerable adaptations in both film and television. However, there exists a hierarchical system attached to his novels. While some are downright bleak and tragic, others end on a more haunting and sinister note.
When adapted to the big screen, studios often change the original ending to feature a happier one, either for a more positive audience response or to avoid being repetitive for those who have read the books. Below are 10 Stephen King film adaptations that forego such changes and boldly retain the plot’s viscerally dark and tragic essence. The list is ranked from bleak to sinister, with 10 being the bleakest and 1 being the most chilling and sinister ending.
10. The Mist
The Mist is one of the most acclaimed of Stephen King’s adaptations for its exceptional execution of the plot, thrilling pace, and ability to induce harrowing terror with each passing minute. Although Lovecraftian creatures exist in the fold, director Frank Darabont shows how people can be the real monsters and are capable of unthinkable cruelty when pushed to desperation.
In the film’s ending, a handful of survivors leave the supermarket in hopes of a potential escape. However, the group comes across a terrifying creature just as their car runs out of gas. With widespread destruction all around, their families dead, and nothing else to live for, David (the lead) mercy-kills everyone in his group, including his 8-year-old son, Billy, before screaming at the monsters to get him as well.
But moments later, the mist abruptly begins to clear while military forces arrive to kill the creatures and rescue survivors. David realizes that the killings were all in vain. Horrified and distraught by his actions, he collapses and screams in anguish. As far as bleak endings go, The Mist surpasses all other Stephen King adaptations by focusing on the tragic human act brought on by hopelessness and desperation, rather than a supernatural entity’s influence.
9. 1408 – Director’s Cut
With 4 different endings to choose from, 1408 is one of those Stephen King adaptations that leave the audience dejected, no matter what. The theatrical cut is a signature Hollywood ending with a happy closure for Mike Enslin’s story, but it is not what the director originally envisioned for the character.
In the Director’s Cut of the film, Mike dies after setting fire to Room 1408. At his funeral, the hotel’s manager, Gerald Olin, rifles through his belongings and ends up hearing Katie’s voice on the recorder. Later, Mike is shown to walk off with a little girl whom Olin previously saw in the cemetery, implying that he reunites with his daughter in the afterlife.
This ending was received poorly by the test audience, forcing director Mikael Håfström to release the theatrical cut. In an alternate ending, John Cusack‘s character suffers a more unsettling fate in the end. In it, the film highlights the quote: As you are, I was. As I am, you will be told by Mike’s father. This implies that despite his best efforts to change, Mike never finds redemption and stays trapped in the room along with the rest of the troubled souls.
Read this article on Screen Rant for a detailed analysis of all 4 endings of the film.
8. Gerald’s Game
This psychological horror is a layered and complex drama that gets more disturbing with every twist and turn of the plot. With themes of s*xual abuse, marital r*pe, and trauma embedded right from the start, it is difficult to imagine the plot spiraling more from there. But in signature Stephen King fashion, the horror only escalates further.
What makes Gerald’s Game so masterful, despite its difficult premise, is Mike Flanagan‘s masterful touch. As far as endings go, it is a rather bleak one with Carla Gugino‘s Jessie confronting repressed s*xual trauma from her childhood, getting into a fatal car crash while escaping, and being tormented by the Moonlight Man in her nightmares.
Although she gives herself the closure she needs by standing up to her tormenter in the end, the single moment of reclamation fails to erase the unnerving ick of the film’s whole 103-minute runtime.
7. It: Chapter Two
Andy Muschietti‘s 2019 sequel, It: Chapter Two, is a veritably bleak movie that has its roots in the ending of the 2017 movie. The Losers Club reunite in Derry 27 years after the events of the first film, fulfilling a childhood promise to come back and defeat Pennywise if it ever returned in the future.
However, unlike the more wholesome finale of Chapter One, this movie’s ending goes straight for the jugular, landing a one-two punch with Eddie’s death and the revelation of Richie’s long-harbored feelings for him. Despite the overall closure of Pennywise’s arc, Ben and Bev’s happy union, and the Losers Club’s achievement, it is the untimely death and the unrequited love that make the 2019 film an emotional mess and difficult to get over in the end.
6. The Long Walk
The latest in the list of Stephen King adaptations, but definitely not the only one in 2025, The Long Walk does not disappoint when it comes to movie endings. As desolate as it is in its post-war setting, the ending is even more brutal in its execution.
Those who have read the novel already know the fate that awaits Ray and Pete, the only two Walkers left in the end. Pete chooses to stop and is killed, while Ray becomes the sole survivor and victor. However, the experience leaves him psychologically broken as he follows a phantom figure ahead and keeps walking.
The film offers a brutal twist to the already bleak ending by adding a note of heartbreak in the mix. Here, it’s Ray who stops, telling Pete he loves him, and is gunned down right after. He chooses to sacrifice himself so Pete can live on, while Pete chooses revenge as his final act in the film. Scarred by Ray’s death, he shoots the Major and walks off into the night, making for a bleak, brutal, and jarring ending. Read more on the book vs. movie difference on Vulture.
5. Christine
This supernatural horror by John Carpenter follows the story of a teenage boy obsessed with restoring an old car that, unbeknownst to him, is possessed by a malevolent, jealous, and murderous entity. Meanwhile, Arnie develops a rebellious and arrogant persona of his own, reflecting his attachment to the car as he grows increasingly obsessed with repairing it.
Throughout the film, the car, named Christine, goes on a murderous rampage, eliminating everyone it considers a threat to Arnie or itself, going so far as to kill his high school bullies and nearly choking Arnie’s girlfriend to death. In the end, Leigh and Dennis (Arnie’s girlfriend and best friend) take a last stand against Arnie and the car.
The ensuing showdown kills the former by impaling him on a glass shard, and in his final moments, he shares a toxic and creepy goodbye with Christine, who plays Pledging My Love over the car’s radio. The latter is leveled by a bulldozer and crushed into a cube at a junkyard. After all that, one would think the evil has been put away, but unbeknownst to Leigh and Dennis, Christine’s grille shows a final twitch, implying its sinister return sometime in the future.
4. Pet Sematary (the 2019 film)
Perhaps, TIME says it best when it writes about the film:
Pet Sematary is creepy for a time, before it becomes stupid. Then it’s creepy again: The final image will make you want your mommy.
The 2019 rendition of the Stephen King novel makes drastic changes to the original story, and the 1989 film, which showed the grief-stricken father, Louis, trying to reverse his son’s death using the Native American burial ground. In the chilling finale, the resurrected but evil version of the boy returns home, while the father is left to deal with the fallout of his actions.
The 2019 film takes it a step further by having the daughter, Ellie, killed by a truck and her demonic version resurrected by her father. She then goes on to kill her mother, Rachel, and resurrect her using the burial ground’s powers. Louis, in an attempt to save his family, is impaled on a stake, killed, and resurrected by Ellie and Rachel.
In the chilling final moment, the undead Creed family surrounds the family car, where Gage, their little boy, awaits a similar fate. Though his death is not exclusively shown on screen, the sound of the car’s door unlocking and the looming threat make the 2019 film’s ending all the more sinister and eerie.
3. It: Chapter One
The highest-grossing horror movie of all time, It: Chapter One does justice to its genre with ample moments of paralyzing terror blended with appropriately timed jump scares and blood-curdling visions of Pennywise the Dancing Clown. But while the young cast delivers a masterclass in acting and compels the audience to drink in their fear, it’s the ending that leaves a more sinister aftertaste than all of the film’s subplots combined.
Although the Losers Club defeats Pennywise in 1989, the implication of It’s return looms pervasively in the end. It is both hopeless and tragic to consider all the effort and waking nightmare that the group endured merely to send Pennywise into a temporary hibernation. That feeling is further compounded by the vision that Bev saw during her catatonic state in Pennywise’s lair.
Despite the Losers overcoming their individual fears, defeating their bullies and abusers, and crossing great hurdles to subdue the terrifying threat, it is all for nothing, as the sinister evil keeps haunting its victims with the promise of returning 27 years later.
2. Carrie
Carrie is every high school girl’s nightmare of a prom gone wrong. After being bullied and mocked to her breaking point, Carrie goes on a telekinetic rampage, killing several of her classmates in the process, only for her to return home and get stabbed by her fanatical mother.
In her final act, she uses her powers to stab the latter with an assortment of knives, crucifying her to the wall, before Carrie, too, collapses, with her out-of-control powers causing the house to collapse around her.
What makes this classic 1976 Brian De Palma film so sinister is its final dream sequence, where Sue Snell, the only survivor of the prom massacre, is shown to visit Carrie’s burnt-down house. Just as she places the flowers on the ground, Carrie’s bloody arm reaches up from the ground and grabs her.
The iconic sequence has since then become a fixture of pop culture, with the image of the bloody arm reaching up from the ground being popularized, reused, and circulated through the years. Stephen King, himself, stated that the film’s ending far exceeded his own novel’s ending, while Quentin Tarantino also used a similar sequence in his movie, Kill Bill Vol. 2, when the Bride is buried alive.
1. The Shining
The building paranoia, eerie visions of twins and bloody corridors, the suffocating and claustrophobic presence of the unspeakable evil in Room 337, the creepy manuscript pages reading “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” over and over again, and the maddening spiral of Jack’s axe-wielding rampage – all of it makes Stanley Kubrick‘s 1980 horror a masterpiece.
But nothing can beat the nightmarish image of Jack Nicholson’s frozen corpse, still wearing a barely noticeable grin and the ever-present manic expression in his cold and dead eyes. This final scene might be what elevates The Shining to an all-time cult classic of its genre.
Below is a table of all 10 films and their critical ratings after release:
| Movie | Rotten Tomatoes | IMDb | Year of Release |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Mist | 73% | 7.1 | 2007 |
| 1408 | 79% | 6.8 | 2007 |
| Gerald’s Game | 91% | 6.5 | 2017 |
| It: Chapter Two | 62% | 6.5 | 2019 |
| The Long Walk | 93% | 7.6 | 2025 |
| Christine | 74% | 6.8 | 1983 |
| Pet Sematary | 57% | 5.7 | 2019 |
| It: Chapter One | 85% | 7.3 | 2017 |
| Carrie | 94% | 7.4 | 1976 |
| The Shining | 84% | 8.4 | 1980 |
Two other Stephen King works are in post-production right now, with Glen Powell‘s The Running Man slated for 7 November 2025, and an HBO prequel series, It: Welcome to Derry, scheduled to launch later this year.
Which of the above adaptations is your favorite? Let us know in the comments below.
The Long Walk is currently playing in theaters worldwide.
