10 Confusing Movie Endings That People Still Debate Today

A movie’s final scene can affect how audiences feel about the entire story, but some endings are so confusing that they have been at the center of debates for years, or even decades. Confusing endings usually fall into one of two categories. The first category is the purposefully ambiguous ending, where audiences are left with unanswered questions about what happens next or what they have just seen, like how Rocky III ends with a freeze-frame as the fight begins. The other type of confusing ending involves a puzzling scene where the audience is left to deconstruct the meaning for themselves, like Tommy Lee Jones’ dream monologue at the end of No Country for Old Men.

No matter what type of confusing ending a filmmaker chooses, a movie can live a lot longer in the memory if it leaves a mystery after the credits roll. Rather than having everything answered neatly, audiences are more likely to turn the story over in their heads for a lot longer if something is left unresolved. Such endings can also tie into a movie’s key themes. Black Swan features some intense hallucinations, so it makes sense for its ending to avoid answering the question of what is real and what isn’t. It’s not always easy to try and pull off an ambiguous ending, but when it’s done well it can have audiences scratching their heads for a long time.

10 Lost In Translation (2003)

Bob whispers to Charlotte

Lost in Translation follows two American strangers in Tokyo who strike up an unlikely affair as they search for satisfaction in their lives. Bob, an over-the-hill actor, meets Charlotte, a neglected young woman, and they find solace in each other’s company. Just as they are about to part ways, seemingly forever, Bob spots Charlotte in a crowd and jumps from his taxi to embrace her one last time. He pulls her close to share a parting message, but it’s unclear what Bob whispers to Charlotte. After the intensity of their brief affair, it would be hard for Bob to encapsulate his feelings in a single sentence.

9 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Dave arrives in a strange bedroom

2001: A Space Odyssey can roughly be split into four parts. The movie begins with the dawn of man, jumps forward to exploration of the moon and Jupiter, and then ends with Dave journeying through a wormhole of some kind. Dave hurtles through a dazzling corridor of abstract light and color before arriving in a gray bedroom, which combines classical design elements with the sterile feel of a laboratory. Dave sees himself aging rapidly, but when he is on the verge of death, he is reborn in an altered form, floating out in space. The enigmatic ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey has puzzled audiences for over 50 years.

8 American Psycho (2000)

Paul Allen is alive

American Psycho is shockingly violent, but the ending suggests that the graphic murders may have only taken place inside Patrick Bateman’s imagination. After admitting to killing between 20 and 40 people, Patrick finds that his confession is brushed off as a joke, and that one of his high-profile victims, Paul Allen, is still alive. This suggests that Patrick may not have killed anybody, but it’s unclear how many of his experiences were imagined and how many were real. If his crimes were imaginary, then the movie doesn’t account for his real actions, and the repercussions of the crimes, such as the thrilling police chase, would all be meaningless.

7 Birdman (2014)

Sam visits Riggan in hospital

Washed-up actor Riggan Thomson tries desperately to reclaim the respect he feels he deserves by adapting a collection of Raymond Carver’s short stories for Broadway, but the production is plagued by issues. In the end, Riggan reaches his limit and shoots himself in the head on stage. He wakes up in a hospital bed with his daughter Sam by his side, and it seems as though he has achieved everything he wanted. It appears as though he jumps out of the window, but Sam looks up and smiles. The final scene could all be taking place in Riggan’s imagination, or it could be just an abstraction of his dreams.

6 Enemy (2013)

Helen turns into a spider

Enemy is a twisty psychological drama about a man who finds his exact doppelgänger, and the way that their lives start to blend together. Jake Gyllenhaal plays both roles, and although he does a fantastic job of differentiating their subtle mannerisms, director Denis Villeneuve expertly blurs the lines separating the two men. In the final scene of Enemy, Adam goes into the bedroom to check on Helen before he leaves, only to discover that she has transformed into an enormous spider. Spiders are a recurring motif in Enemy, but Helen’s sudden transformation is still a shock that ramps up the surrealist factor.

5 The Graduate (1967)

Benjamin and Elaine catch a bus

After Benjamin rescues Elaine from her wedding, the two ride away on a bus. As the thrill of their escape starts to subside, their smiles fade, and they leave their ordeal fading into the background. The ending of The Graduate is fairly simple, but audiences debate whether or not it constitutes a happy ending. On one hand, Benjamin and Elaine have stood up to their parents and done something for their own benefit, but their facial expressions suggest that they may know their actions were hasty and overly sentimental. The ending is a Rorschach test of sorts, and viewers are able to project their own feelings onto the young couple.

4 Us (2019)

Hands Across America

The Tethered struggle to rise up both metaphorically and literally from their underground dwellings, until they incite a violent uprising to claim the lives that they believe they deserve. The final act of Us is packed with shocking twists, but the last images show the Tethered forming a human chain across the nation, echoing the Hands Across America charity event. There are several different interpretations of this image, and they all circle back to the question of what the Tethered represent, whether they are America’s working class, a specific ethnic group, or a personification of the dark corners of the human psyche.

3 The Italian Job (1969)

Teetering on the edge of a cliff

After a gang manages to pull off a daring heist in Turin, they celebrate wildly as their bus slides around the twisting corners of an alpine road. Just when they think they have escaped danger, the bus skids toward the edge of a cliff. With the weight of the gold threatening to pull the bus over the edge, Charlie Croker says that he has an idea, but the movie ends abruptly. It’s unclear if his plan would work, or even what it is, since The Italian Job ends on a literal cliffhanger. In the decades since The Italian Job there have been plenty of theories, but none have been confirmed.

2 Inception (2010)

The spinning top

Christopher Nolan is clearly a fan of ambiguous or otherwise confusing endings. Both Tenet and Interstellar are great examples of movies with endings which require multiple viewings, but Inception may present his most enduring riddle yet. The mind-bending thriller toys with the concept of reality, and the ending doesn’t definitively answer whether Cobb is still dreaming or not. He uses a spinning top to distinguish between the real world and his own subconscious, and the top falters ever so slightly just as the movie cuts to black. There are plenty of persistent theories about Inception attempting to decode the movie, even over a decade after its release.

1 Blade Runner (1982)

Is Deckard a replicant?

The mystery at the ending of Ridley Scott’s sci-fi classic Blade Runner highlights the same mystery which runs throughout the entire movie: is Deckard a human or a replicant? There are a few hints that Deckard may not be human scattered throughout the movie, and Scott’s different cuts add more fuel to this theory. Harrison Ford thinks Deckard is a replicant, but Blade Runner is less explicit. Roy Batty saves Deckard from falling to his death, and he seems to relate to him, as if he can recognize a fellow replicant. Roy’s famous monologue also hints at a shared understanding between himself and the man who has been hunting him.