Probably one of the worst, cheapest endings in horror; so chliche, so pedestrian. The only horror movie I can think of with a worse ending is 'The Mist'. Not the same type - one is overused, the other is so completely unbelievable to ruin the movie - but both absolutely sucked.
I will watch HT again tho to see if my opinion changes, but I remember that bloody awful ending. Perhaps the rest of the movie can carry it when I'm in a different paradigm. :)
I share your frustration with the ending in that the twist was predictable, and it would be interesting to think of the film without it. It's almost as if it's so tense it has to fall back on something less tense (a cliche as you put it) or simply break from itself.
The twist is handled well, though, and though the doors opened may not lead to new possibilities for the genre, it succeeds in, like Funny Games and Martyrs, pulling itself up by its bootstraps and becoming more than a mere horror flick.
Little corners of the movie seem to complicate the twist in interesting ways. I prefer to view this movie as a meta-horror that masks itself initially as hyper-realism. But the movie isn't about what a situation like this would ACTUALLY look like; it's about how the premise plays out and victim and killer become blurred until, we must assume, we've morphed into tiny killers ourselves for following the movie down its dark lane.
The ending rocks, when marie reaches out with the cuffed hands towards alex who is behind the glass. That scene is perfect. I think you mean the final act when the "twist" is revealed, when there are still 20 mins left in the film. I can understand not liking the twist- you are certainly not alone, but twist or not, this movie offers some great tension, suspense and gore.
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