Amazon’s ‘Don’t Make Me Go’ Has the Most WTF Ending of 2022

Don’t Make Me Go, which began streaming on Amazon Prime Video, warns viewers right off the bat that they will not like the ending of this movie.

“You’re not gonna like the way this story ends,” the protagonist, played by Mia Isaacs, says in a voiceover. “But I think you’re gonna like the story.”

Well, Mia Isaacs was right. I did not like the way Don’t Make Me Go ended. Not one bit. Mostly because it’s the darkest, most shocking ending of any movie I’ve seen this year. When the credits roll, there was really only one thing on my mind: What the fuck?

For most of the movie, I was completely on board. Sure, it’s a bit of a predictable father-and-daughter bonding movie, but in a comforting sort of way. The two leads—John Cho and Mia Isaac—are charming and likable and watchable, making every moment with the two of them a joy to watch. Their chemistry is intoxicating, the jokes are funny, and the father-daughter bonding is adorable. Then, quite unexpectedly, the Don’t Make Me Go ending reached into my chest, pulled out my heart, stomped on it, and spat in my face for good measure. It’s true, we were warned going in. But I didn’t think we were being warned about this.

Let’s get into it, shall we?

What is Don’t Make Me Go about? Don’t Make Me Go plot summary:

Single father Max Park (played by John Cho) is told by a doctor that he has a terminal tumor near his brain. There is an operation that could save his life, but it’s risky—the odds of him dying on the table are higher than the odds of him pulling through. If he doesn’t do the operation, doctors give him about a year to live. Max decides not to get the surgery. Right now, he’s the only support that his teenage daughter, Wally (Mia Isaac) has. But Max intends to change that, by reuniting his daughter with her estranged mother.

Max invites (and then forces) his daughter to accompany him on a road trip, ostensibly to go to his college reunion. Secretly, he’s seen on Facebook that his former BFF and man who stole away his ex-wife will be in attendance. He doesn’t tell Wally about the tumor, or about the fact that he’s taking her to meet her mother.

Wally, of course, doesn’t want to go on this road trip. She wants to spend the summer with her not-boyfriend, a guy who refuses to be “official” with her, even though Wally adorably passes out when he kisses her on the soccer field. But Wally and Max clearly have a special relationship, and Wally is a good daughter, so she goes. Plus, Max promises to teach her to drive on the way.

On the open road, it’s Max and Wally against the world. They sing Iggy Pop and almost get into car crashes together. Max helps Wally realize that she’s way too good for her not-boyfriend. At one point, Wally runs off to have a night of fun with some local teenagers, causing her dad to go nuts with worry, but it all works out.

Finally, they make it to the reunion, but Wally’s mother isn’t there. Max manages to track down her new address. He clues Wally in that he’s taking her to meet her mom, but still hasn’t told her about the tumor. Unfortunately, the meeting doesn’t go well—Mom doesn’t want to see Wally, and Wally is understandably hurt. In the fight with her dad that follows, the truth about Max’s cancer comes out.

What is the Don’t Make Me Go ending, explained?

Spoiler warning: Stop reading this right now if you don’t want Don’t Make Me Go spoilers. Like, really big spoilers. 

After the emotional heart-to-heart-to that’s been building the whole movie, Wally convinces her dad to get the surgery. He agrees. They go do celebratory karaoke at a nearby bar, and Wally convinces her dad—a former musician—to get up and sing. You don’t know if Max will make it through the surgery, but you know that Wally will be OK. That’s all the happy ending you can ask, for… right?

Wrong, apparently. Here’s the big Don’t Make Me Go plot twist: It’s not Max who dies, it’s Wally. While her dad is singing Iggy Pop, Max suddenly passes out. Her dad runs to her as the screen blurs. Wally comes on over voice-over, reminding the audience that she did warn us we weren’t going to like the ending. As it turns out, it wasn’t so adorable that she passed out in front of her not-boyfriend, or that she got dizzy doing a keg stand, or that she sweats when she’s nervous. Those were signs of an undiagnosed rare—and deadly—disease.

The next shot in the movie is Wally’s funeral. It’s so abrupt and out-of-left-field, that it would be comical, were it not so horribly tragic. In the final moments of the movie, we follow Max as he does get the surgery, and comes out alive. We see that he’s going to finally start living life to the fullest—but without his daughter by his side. Sure, you could find a note of hope in Max’s ability to pull through after such a devastating loss, but also? A 16-year-old girl just unexpectedly dropped dead. That’s really freakin’ bleak!

According to director Hannah Marks in a previous interview with Decider, there was never any question that Wally was always going to die—even when studios asked screenwriter Vera Herbert for a happier ending. “There was never a version of the script where Wally survived,” Marks said. “That was something that was really important to me, to the screenwriter, and to all of our producers. There had been many iterations of this movie before I came on board because Vera wrote this back when she was in college—in 2012, I believe. And over the years, of course, people said, ‘What if you had a happier ending? What if you didn’t do it this way?’ A lot of studios would say that in order to make the movie, but no one was willing to cave.”

Marks went on to say that she understands the ending will be upsetting for some, but that “to me, it made the story more empowering. It made it more Wally’s story, and it made it more of Wally’s influence on Max showing him how to live his best life. To me, that was empowering, even though it was a sad ending.”

I respect the commitment, but also, I’m devastated. Raise your hand if you were personally victimized by the ostensibly adorable father-daughter movie on Amazon—because I certainly was.