Inescapable Horror

After an hour or so of creepy, creepy, statues and shop mannequins that come to life and murder your face off, nothing in the world could be more relaxing than a little footage showing that these things are absolutely everywhere you look. Have fun sleeping tonight!

Usually takes the form of a single lingering shot or a montage at the end of a film or episode and is a common way of ending a horror film on a creepy note. It is often accompanied by spooky music and may include a Jump Scare. This trope is (almost exclusively) used as a way to wrap up a film or eposode in a way that is scary.

Generally their intention is to show that the monster, disease, etc is:

• Entirely ubiquitous, everywhere, surrounding us and closing in, or being sold in large numbers to an unsuspecting public (such as a voodoo doll), etc.
• Somehow survived and is biding its time.
• Or, worse, multiplied. (Can include diseases being transmitted.)

Though the thing itself doesn't even have to be related to the Big Bad in any way and may be stepping in to take its place, or was the real danger all along.

Is a form of very intentional Paranoia Fuel, can be Sequel Bait, and is (generally) intended to invoke The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You. Not to be confused with The Stinger, which generally happens during or after the credits and generally isn't intended to frighten.

Examples of Inescapable Horror include:

Film

• The American version of Godzilla ended with eggs hatching.
  • Thought this might actually be a subversion in that only one baby godzilla survives and it imprints on the protagonist of Godzilla the Animated Series, who trains it to be the defender of New York. The resulting status quo is demosntrated by this awesome albeit physics-defying opening.
• Cabin Fever: at the end of the film we see children playing in the water downstream from a dead body of one of the infected, this changes to a shot of people drinking the contaminated water and a tanker of it heading off into the distance to be sold as spring-water all over the country.
  • The ending of Cabin Fever 2 more explicitly showed the spread of the disease through an animated montage.
• Invasion of the Body Snatchers has several different versions of this (depending on which movie).
• At the end of The Film Of The Musical Of The Film Little Shop of Horrors we see a little Audrey II growing in the ground.
  • The original filmed but unused ending took it further, with Seymour and Audrey being eaten, and Audrey II sprouts ending up sold en masse. It doesn't turn out well.
• Species. At the very end, after the Sil monster is destroyed we see a rat chewing on a piece of her body. The rat mutates, indicating that it will become another Sil.
• Night of the Creeps has an odd variant. The final shot is a graveyard, which implies the space leeches are burrowing down to incubate in the brains of the dead... but there's a spaceship hovering over the graveyard, which implies that the aliens are here to clean up the space leeches—possibly at the expense of the human race.
• At the end of the American version of The Ring, the heroine and her son have learned that the only way to keep the curse from killing them is to copy the tape and show it to someone else. This means that, barring a rather horrifying Heroic Sacrifice, the thing will just keep spreading.

Literature

• An in-universe example appears in Diary of a Wimpy Kid, when Greg and Rowley watch a movie about a muddy hand that goes around killing people. The last person who sees the hand is always the next victim. At the end of the movie, the hand crawls straight towards the screen, implying that Greg and Rowley are the next victims. This kept them nervous and paranoid for the rest of the book.

Live Action Television

• The ending of the Doctor Who episode "Blink" with a montage of statues.

Doctor: [following gargoyle close-up] Don't blink. [cut to shots of three successive human statues] Blink and you're dead. [cut to several more statues] Don't turn your back, [cut to two more statues] don't look away, [cut to several more statues] and don't blink. [Several statues in quick succession] Good luck. [Cut to close up on the Doctor's eyes- he blinks]

• Dollhouse second season finale does this.

Video Games

• In Baldur's Gate, after Sarevok is defeated, we get a shot of his statue crumbling to dust. Then the camera moves away, showing an underground temple of Bhaal, filled with rows upon rows of statues.
• The Reaper fleet in Mass Effect