Be Thankful Ma's Lame Alternate Ending Never Made It To Theaters

Sometimes, alternate endings to movies can actually be better than the one that released theatrically, like with this year's Pet Sematary. Other times, you know exactly why the movie cut it out, and this is 100 percent the case with the horror/thriller Ma.

Just a heads up, this post contains spoilers for the end of Ma.

The film follows a Erica (Juliette Lewis) and her daughter Maggie (Diana Silvers), who who move back to Erica's hometown to start over. Maggie befriends some other teens, and they all find Sue Ann AKA Ma (Octavia Spencer) who buys them alcohol and allows them to use her basement to throw parties. Things get a bit weird when they all realize Ma is unhinged and trying to relive her high school days while taking revenge on those who wronged her in the past. It gets pretty screwed up at the end.

In the original ending, the teens--and Ma's daughter Genie--escape the basement with the help of Erica, and a bloodied Ma heads upstairs to cuddle the corpse of a man she killed while the house burns around her. It is an extremely abrupt ending that lets the viewer know, "The good guys lived and the bad guy died," and nothing more.

On the home release for Ma, there is an alternate ending--which feels a whole lot more like the original ending of the movie--and it is an extremely typical one for any horror movie. Some time has passed after Ma's house burned down, and the teens--along with Genie--are all hanging outside of the school, and they're still best buds. We learn that Ma's body was never found through some dialogue, and the teens plan to party in the middle of nowhere.

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This cuts to them drinking at night on a pile of rocks, which then cuts to the vet Ma used to work at. We see a burned hand grab some tranquilizers--which she used on the kids in the film--and then we see Ma in a hat that says, "Sexy" walking towards the camera. This was a shot used in the trailers for the movie. It was essentially the end to any slasher movie made from the '80s to the '00s where the studio felt they could spin out some sequels. Everyone is safe, or are they? (They're not.)

Luckily for Ma the movie, changing the ending up was a good thing. The movie itself is actually a lot of fun, and Spencer's Sue Ann character is very unsettling. The home release of Ma is available now digitally and on Blu-ray and DVD on Tuesday, September 3. There are a few other extras, aside from the alternate ending, including 12 deleted scenes and a couple of featurettes, one of which is Spencer talking about the Sue Ann character.

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