In the wake of my 2,400-word essay of bitchery and moanery that was the Worst Movies of 2013, I’ve realized that the one thing most people agreed with me about was the fact that Safe Haven’s ending was f*cking hilarious. Of course, it wasn’t supposed to be funny, but the way that it just came out of left field and was delivered with such awful acting really gave it that comedic flair. If you haven’t seen Safe Haven, I strongly recommend it just for the unintentional hilarity, but you should also probably know that we’re going to get neck deep in spoilers now.
Basically, Julianne Hough is on the run from her abusive drunk husband and she meets and falls in love with Josh Duhamel when she moves to his tiny town that is located in 1950s Hollywood. Josh is a widowed father of two and he likes Julianne because she’s very fun to look at. Meanwhile, Julianne meets Robin Sparkles and they become BFF while Julianne tries to pretend that she’s not married. Her husband shows up and lights everything on fire, including all of Josh’s stuff, but he fortunately saves some letters from his dead wife and he gives one to Julianne, because it says “For Her” on it and she’s “Her.” The letter is all “I know Josh Duhamel loves you because you’re reading this” and there’s a picture of the dead wife in the envelope and it’s Robin Sparkles. That means she’s been a ghost the whole time, and Julianne isn’t a very good actress and I laugh so hard every time I watch her reaction.
But I’ll let YouTube commenter Steph Siu offer a much nicer synopsis:
Thank you, well said. Now let’s watch the ending of Safe Haven together.
Clearly, between the absurd twist and the terrible acting by Julianne Hough, who looks like a contestant on Fear Factor being lowered into a tub of tarantula jizz, while she reads, this scene looks very funny. However, to many other people, it is actually somehow considered beautiful and surprising. Let’s meet some of those people now…
Although, this one commenter did have a much better idea for an ending to Safe Haven.
My response to that ending would probably look like this:
