A movie's ending is crucial to how the audience perceives the story as a whole. When discussing brilliant films with botched endings, no movie exemplifies this more than The Badge, The Bible, and Bigfoot. This film takes viewers on a riveting journey through the woods, where uncertainty looms at every bend. Our protagonist, Harrison, driven by sheer tenacity and a sense of divine purpose, is tasked with keeping Mayor Claire safe while hunting down the beast that abducted three young girls. This divine mission, handed to him by the Lord above, is one he approaches with unwavering seriousness.
For most of its runtime, the film had the makings of a masterpiece—tense, thrilling, and layered. It could have been my favorite film of 2019, if not for its atrocious ending. After an action-packed fistfight with Bigfoot, Harrison wakes up, only to realize it was all a dream.
I was stunned. My Grade 5 English teacher taught me better than to end a story with “...and it was all a dream!” I paused the movie to process the sheer absurdity of it. Then I noticed there were still three minutes left. “Okay,” I thought. “Let’s see how they salvage this.”
Well, they didn’t. What followed was three agonizing minutes of Harrison explaining to his wife how the dream convinced him we need to stop exposing ourselves to violent media. If you think a character verbally explaining the plot is bad, imagine them summing up a forced, last-minute theme that had nothing to do with the preceding events. It was as if the filmmakers decided at the last moment to shoehorn in a message for the sake of “substance.”
The whole thing made me want to punch a hole in my wall.
How I Would Fix the Ending
The solution is simple: stick to entertainment. The film had pulled us into a suspenseful adventure to find Bigfoot, and the peak-end rule tells us that the climax and conclusion are crucial to how viewers remember a story. To give The Badge, The Bible, and Bigfoot the ending it deserves, I’d lean into the elements of action, suspense, and faith already established.
Imagine this: as Harrison’s fistfight with Bigfoot reaches its zenith, Bigfoot picks up a rock to deliver a fatal blow. But before he can strike, the clouds part, and a golden beam of light pierces through the sky. Bigfoot freezes, his gaze locked upward. The audience realizes he’s staring into the eyes of God. In that divine moment, Bigfoot is overwhelmed with guilt and drops to his knees, weeping.
Harrison, battered and bloodied, lies on the ground, hands clasped in prayer. Then, Cindy—the youngest of the kidnapped girls—emerges from the shadows, clutching Mayor Claire’s gun, which the mayor had accidentally left behind while using the bathroom. Without hesitation, Cindy fires and Bigfoot's skull explodes from behind like a water balloon.
The scene lingers in silence. A close-up of Cindy holding the gun. A wide shot of the aftermath: Bigfoot’s lifeless body, Harrison praying, and the forest bathed in sunlight. No music, only the distant sound of birds chirping.
Cut to black.
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