These are some iconic movies where the end scene left viewers scratching their heads. Some film sleuths have been able to break down the entire movie to unlock the answers to the peculiar endings, but others are still open-ended! Film lovers weren't ready for these confusing and ground-breaking twists.
Black Swan
Natalie Portman plays Nina, a ballerina struggling with her own identity in the cutthroat ballet world. She is fighting her own self-doubts as The Swan Queen and her counterpart, Lily (Mila Kunis) who plays the Black Swan.
No Answer
At the end of the gut-twisting film, Nina is painfully completing her performance of Swan Lake and collapses on a mattress. Fans realized that the movie, and the entire plot, were up for interpretation. Was it all fake and in her head? Or did she truly push her sanity to the limits for this role?
Fight Club
Fight Club is a cult classic that has transcended generations. Brad Pitt and Ed Norton star as the chaotic duo who start the infamous basement Fight Club. Norton plays the main character "The Narrator" and Pitt plays Tyler Durden. The end twist definitely lives up to the hype, but how did it happen?
Alter Ego
In the end, it's revealed that Tyler Durden and The Narrator are one of the same. Durden was just a figment of The Narrator's imagination and projection of an alter ego. All of the scenes of them together were part of The Narrator's imagination, especially when they were alone.
Silent Hill
Silent Hill was actually a video game that was adapted into a movie, which makes the progression of the movie interesting and unlike any other film. The story is set between two worlds: the real world, and a terrifying mist world filled with monsters and "survivors."
No Escape?
After the exhausting story of Sharon and Rose's escape, it's revealed to the audience that the two didn't really escape after all. They tried to drive home but the mist had followed them. This is because Alessa (the cause of the mist), the antagonist, followed them. The director noted that Alessa is also multi-dimensional, which is why she basically followed them home.
Total Recall
Total Recall is an Arnold Schwarzenegger classic. He plays Douglas Quaid, a simple construction worker living what he thought was his best life. He quickly learns that he may be an unwilling participant in an international spy mission and that his current life isn't real.
Was It A Dream?
The end of the movie is open-ended. People like to argue whether or not he was living in a dream or that the movie was his true reality. Director Paul Verhoeven has said that he believes Quaid is just dreaming.
Birdman
Birdman was all over the Oscars the year it was released. The open-ended final scene left a lot of people talking! The director has said the ending, “can be interpreted as many ways as there are seats in the theater.”
Freedom?
The final scene shows Riggan (Michael Keaton) jumping out of a window. His daughter chases after him but it's too late. She peers over the window, but her eyes don't go down to the ground, they go up to the sky. Viewers have said that this is either a red herring or that her father finally found his freedom and flew.
The Planet of the Apes
The twist in Planet of the Apes had viewers up in arms. No one was expecting the movie to go where it did, so everything felt like it was left very open-ended. When Leo Davidson travels back in time, he finds that General Thade is already there...
Unanswered Questions
Fans have speculated as to how General Thade got to the past and took over the world. The most logical conclusion would be that Thade fixed the broken escape pod from Leo’s ship and to create his own time machine. There's no direct answer, though, but this is definitely the most accepted by the fans.
Citizen Kane
This film is pretty controversial in the film world. Some say that the twist was boring and an easy out. Others argue that it goes much deeper than what's presented on the surface.
Rosebud
The plot point is centered around a mysterious "Rosebud." No one knows what, or who, it is. At the end, its revealed that Rosebud was Citizen Kane's childhood sled that he had kept for his entire life. Of course, a sled isn't wild, but it was supposed to humanize the otherwise cruel main character.
Blade Runner
The ending of Blade Runner brings on a hot question: is Rick Deckard a replicant, or not? The story is actually within the movie and it takes a bit of digging and critical thinking to get to the bottom of it. It was there all along!
The Unicorn
In the final scene, Deckard finds an origami unicorn that was left for him by Eduardo Gaff. Rewind to earlier in the film and you'll see that Deckard dreams about a unicorn. The only way that Gaff would even know about that is if the dream was implanted into Deckard... Since Gaff knows the contents of Deckard's dreams, then he must be a replicant.
Vanilla Sky
Cameron Crow has said time and time again that he wished he made the ending much more ambiguous. A lot of fans would have to disagree; it's open-ended enough for the average viewer! Is he still dreaming, or is he alive?
Just Dreaming
The movie reveals that Tom Cruise's character is actually dreaming. The last scene gives him a choice: to stay dreaming or jump off of a building to wake himself up. The very last image is us seeing his eyes open, but we never saw him jump off of the building or not. Crowe has said that he chose to wake up but felt that the image of his eyes opening was too obvious. For most viewers, it wasn't!
Taxi Driver
Taxi Driver follows Travis Bickle (Robert DeNiro), a former U.S. Marine who took up a job driving taxis in New York City to make ends meet. He begins to struggle with sleep and ends up becoming delusional and aggressive. He ends up going on a killing spree due to his manic state.
Did He Make It?
At the end of the movie, Bickle is trying to shoot himself. The police show up on the scene to arrest him. The scene ends before the viewer knows what happens, and the next scene is Bickle driving a taxi yet again. People have speculated that the killings were just a dream, but Scorcese said that it was real and that the true question was if he died or not.
Interstellar
Interstellar deals with the concepts of space and time, which already makes for a pretty confusing film. Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) was pushed into a black hole during a space mission, which put him in a fourth dimension. In this world, he's able to interact with the past.
What Happened to Cooper?
Cooper chooses to tell the past version of his daughter the solution to save Earth. This ended up helping to save the human race, but the question remains: What happens to Cooper in this dimension? It's most widely accepted that they know that they won't have much time left with each other, which leaves a bittersweet ending.
12 Monkeys
12 Monkeys is another time travel movie that leaves a lot more questions than answers. Unlike most movies that deal with time travel, this film explores the idea of not letting time travelers in the past affect the future. The twist in the film, which a lot of people miss, actually happens at the beginning of the movie.
Time Loop
When Cole was young, he witnessed an unknown man die and had no idea what happened. This scene is at the beginning of the film. Fast forward to the end, and Cole goes back in time where he gets shot and dies after he attacks Dr. Peters. The reason that time travelers don't affect the future is that they were always there, in a bizarre time loop.
Edge of Tomorrow
The conclusion to this film is hard to grasp and doesn't really make sense to most viewers. Every time the main character, William Cage, dies, he is sent back in time to the same exact moment. In the end, he finally defeats the aliens that he's meant to kill, but he still dies.
Happily Ever After?
The confusing part is that after he dies that final time, he wakes up exactly where he started once again... this time, the win over the aliens still stands. This is a classic "happily ever after" ending that Hollywood loves, but most viewers don't understand it and felt like it was a copout.
Matrix Revolutions
The third Matrix film ends in some confusing terms. Neo decides to sacrifice himself so that the robots to use him against Agent Smith. The confusing part is that Agent Smith is supposed to be a part of the machine, so how would that make sense?
Neo the Martyr
It's not necessarily a happy ending. Neo ends up becoming a martyr to create peace between man and machine. He dies and the robot leader is able to use Neo's body to destroy all of the clones.
Jacob's Ladder
Jacob Singer is a Vietnam War veteran who is suffering from PTSD. He has bizarre and terrifying visions that can't be explained by doctors. In the movie, we learn that the government gave the soldiers psychedelic drugs to make them more violent.
Acceptance
At the end of the movie, his visions are happier and clearer. Apparently, the only explanation to this is that he accepted death. It kind of felt like a cop out!
The Shining
Stanley Kubrick's The Shining is cinema gold. Even today, it's still widely popular. The very end twist that shows Jack Torrance in a photo at the Overlook Hotel from the 1920s has been widely debated for years. Kubrick likes to keep people guessing, so it most likely means that the photo was something he threw in there for some intrigue without actually giving it meaning.
The Wrestler
Mickey Rourke plays a wrestler who has been warned multiple times that he will die if he continues to fight. Instead of giving up his passion, he takes his chances in the ring. At the end of the movie, he jumps off of the ropes one last time as we watch his breath leave his body. Before he hits the ground, the scene cuts to black. The director has said that he does indeed die in the ring because it's where he felt most alive.
Annihilation
Annihilation is a wild movie that will definitely keep you guessing throughout the story. It follows Lena (Natalie Portman) as she enters The Shimmer with a group of women who are there to help her defeat the evil that lurks within. In the end, she's fighting with her doppelganger. She apparently makes it out alive, but her eyes still shimmer, which indicates that it's not actually her. The director has said that it is her, but the shimmer is within everyone already.
Inception
This classic movie ending as everyone talking about it even 10 years later! In order to find out if they are dreaming, the characters use an object. For DiCaprio, he uses a topper. If it falls, he's not dreaming. The end scene shows the topper spinning and spinning, but it never falls and the screen cuts out as it wobbles. The director has stated that they are indeed in the real world and that he isn't dreaming. There are other clues to confirm this.
The Witch
This film takes place in the Puritan days. Anya Taylor-Joy and her family are being attacked by supernatural forces. They were banished from their village because Anya was possibly a witch. All of the family suffers a grizzly fate, and Anya has to kill her mother in self-defense. She walks into the forest at the end despite the supernatural evil lurking within, which suggests that she was with them all along after all.
The Graduate
After Darkness
Enemy
Jake Gyllenhaal plays a psychotic professor who is trying to steal the life of his doppelgänger. At one point, he finds that the man's wife had transformed into a tarantula. Then, it ends. The movie's director said that he wanted the film to be a puzzle and that it needed solving. Unfortunately, no internet sleuths could figure it out!
The Machinist
A sickly insomniac, Trevor, is being tortured by a man named Ivan. The craziest part of this movie is that Ivan and Trevor are the same people and that Trevor created Ivan in his own imagination. Viewers were confused because Ivan was in scenes with other characters, but it turns out that he never actually interacted with anyone else.
The Babadook
The Babadook story revolves around a mother and son duo who are grieving the death of the patriarch of the household. At the end of the film, after they had apparently defeated the monster, the mother brings a bowl of worms downstairs to feed the monster. Some fans have discussed that the monster was just a manifestation and that fighting it didn't really mean anything, or that the monster never disappeared and she wasn't ready to let it go.
Nocturnal Animals
Susan (Amy Adams) left her husband, Edward (Jake Gyllenhaal) because she hated his writing career. He sends her a copy of her new book and she gets caught up in the story, which is shown to the viewer. It was basically a love letter to her and she was so convinced to get back with him that she decided to meet up with him for dinner. In the end, he stood her up and was playing her all along.
Primer
Aaron and Abe accidentally create a time machine that creates overlapping timelines. The new versions of themselves are able to cause some significant damage to the space-time continuum. Aaron works with his former self to recreate the time machine to make it better, while Abe tries to prevent his former self to learn about it at all. They were never on the same page!
Hereditary
This is a gruesome one to wrap your head around. It seems straight forward up until the very end when things really hit the fan. The last scene has a bunch of cultists in it as they gather in the family's treehouse, all of whom were at Annie's mother's funeral at the very beginning of the movie. The family's trauma was hereditary!
Donnie Darko
There isn't one aspect of this movie that isn't confusing. The only real explanation to any of it is that parallel universes are very much a huge player in the narrative. Donnie is in a parallel universe and he's trying to fix a time rift but the only way to do that is if he dies.
It Follows
The main character, Jay, is stuck with a parasitic "ghost" that slowly follows her around in an attempt to kill her. Only Jay can see it, and she has to give it to someone else by sleeping with them. The ghost takes on many different forms. Jay gave it to her friend, Paul, who gave it to a prostitute. The director opened it for interpretation, but most people agree that the woman that Paul gave the ghost to died, and now it's following Paul yet again.
Looper
Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis play young and older versions of the same hitman who is trying to take down a crime boss who ruins their lives in the future. They end up realizing that the crime boss wouldn't become the monster he was if his mother hadn't died, so to prevent that, Levitt's character kills himself which then kills Willis.
Mulholland Drive
An aspiring LA actress finds a woman with amnesia who is living in her aunt's home. Once their story is set up, it changes, and it keeps changing. There are random stories about random characters throughout the film. David Lynch has never commented on the meaning of the film, but one critic has said that it's meant to be about nothing.
Drive
It's rare to find a decent cliffhanger these days, but Drive makes the cut. Ryan Gosling's character speeds away at the end of the film as he's suffering from a stab wound. It's never shown if he dies or not, but film sleuths have determined that he did die. Earlier in the film, he talks about a story that ends with both characters dying, relaying that he knows he will die.
Grease
This film was super normal and realistic. Sandy and Danny were teenagers who fell in love and sang songs. The ending, though, is what threw people off. For some reason, their car flew off into the sky. Despite all of the theories, the filmmakers have said that it was just a bad editing idea. It sure was!
Pi
Max Cohen is a logical thinker who believes that everything can be solved by using numbers. He spends his lifetime making stock predictions but ends up suffering from headaches and hallucinations. He's driven to complete madness and performs a lobotomy on himself to end the pain.
A Clockwork Orange
Stanley Kubrick strikes again with this head-scratcher. The film takes a darker turn than the book. After a suicide attempt, he undergoes conditioning to make him a "happier" person. He soon returns to his manic and destructive ways. There's no happy ending.
2001: A Space Odyssey
The ending of this film has viewers guessing at what happened. Did Bowman really get sent back to Earth with new powers, or did he get stuck in some sort of trance by the super-beings that kidnapped him? Stanley Kubrick has said that he was sent back to Earth, but what happened there is up to the viewer to decide.
The Dark Knight Rises
Fans went nuts over the ending scene in The Dark Knight Rises. In the scene, Albert seen Bruce in a crowded cafe after he had apparently died when he saved Gotham City from a nuclear bomb. Fans had to wonder: was this just a figment of Albert's imagination, or did Batman really die? It's subtle, but the film does show that Bruce does fix his autopilot and was able to exit the aircraft before the bomb went off.
Life of Pi
After the boy on the boat got rescued, he told his survival story to Yann Martel. The story he told was completely different than the story that the viewers saw. Yann asked the boy if it was real, and he only gave a vague answer. Viewers were left to question why the boy would lie, and the only real answer is that the boy was questioning his his own reality.
Shutter Island
Shutter Island had viewers flip-flopping on whether or not Leonardo DiCaprio's character was crazy or not. He gets trapped at the mental hospital he was supposed to be investigating and tries to escape. Eventually, we find out that he's actually a mental patient who is having an episode the entire time. He was suffering from the guilt of killing his wife after she had killed their children.
Barton Fink
A playwright is hired by a big studio in Hollywood to write some scripts. He becomes disillusioned with the lifestyle and eventually has a psychological break. At the end of the film, we see a woman standing on the beach. The woman looks exactly like a photo that was hanging up in Fink's room. The director explained that he wasn't actually seeing the woman, but he was hallucinating her because she represented his lifestyle in Hollywood.
No Country For Old Men
Despite the brutality of this film, it ends on a somewhat calm note. Sheriff Bell is caught on a long monologue discussing his dreams and aspirations. The undertone of the speech are darker and about his failures, which is really what the movie is about.
Memento
Memento actually works backward. The end of the film (the beginning of Leonard's journey) shows us that Leonard is Jankis and his brain simply created a mystery so that he could cope with his own guilt. He solved his own mystery.
American Pyscho
It's no secret that Patrick Batemen is a psychopath and possibly violent sociopath. He's going through a severe mental breakdown with the coolness of cucumber in most scenes. His narration of the events is unreliable, which would explain why he was so convinced that he went on a killing spree even though he really didn't.
Arrival
Amy Adams's character in the film is complicated and hard to understand. She's seeing visions of what we thought was her past, but it was actually visions of Louise's future, which makes most of the confusing parts make more sense. The ending is interesting because only she and the viewer know what is really at stake.
Now You See Me
These magicians/criminals were eventually offered entrance into The Eye, which is an ancient group of talented magicians of their stature. They agreed to join, but then they step into a moving carousel and completely disappear. Viewers were confused, but the director cleared up that they were indeed brought into the secret society.
The Tree of Life
The Fountain
Director Darren Aronofksy has refused to give viewers the answer to his confusing ending. He said, “It’s a film that’s a journey and it’s a trip and it’s an experience throughout the meditation of a lot of these questions.” Basically, if you don't get it, look deeper!
Solaris
This film follows the character Kris Kelvin as he is on a spaceship that's orbiting a sentient planet. Somehow, the planet is able to tap into his memories and create false realities. At the end of the film, Kris reunites with his father and everything is "perfect." According to the director, he's actually still on Solaris and chose to be in a false reality instead of the harsh, real one.
A Scanner Darkley
Robert Arctor (Keanu Reeves) is an undercover cop who is trying to find the source of a new drug called Substance D. The company who makes the drug is plotting against him and wants to get him addicted to it so he will be under their power. At the end, Robert sends a flower to his superiors to prove that he isn't under their control despite him visibly being broken.