Movie endings that caught you be surprise or made you think "WTF"

[-..__...]

The Usual Suspects. I loved the ending

John Carpenters "The Thing". Left the viewer guessing.

Thelma and Louise. I didn't think they'd actually do it.

[kick-ass-bob]

1. Napoleon Dynamite.

no, actually that was the whole movie.
:D

:hide:

[Fox Mulder]

27. I won't disagree with you on that one.

[BigMcLargehuge]

2. The Great Silence

the hero, his girlfriend, and all the hostages are massacred by the villain.

[eyesroll]

3. "AI."

3/4ths of a good movie...

[BigMcLargehuge]

4. my kidneys shut down by the half way mark

I'll have to take your word for it.

[gratuitous]

35. Not even 3/4 of a good movie

I don't know what movie Stanley Kubrick had in mind, but I surely hated what Steven Spielberg came up with. Just reading over the plot capsule, I thought, "Now, who in their right mind would want to bring this monster into their household?" A robot boy that stays 8 years old forever would be a monster. He never matures, he never grows up, you never see him develop, go to high school or college, get married, or anything. He was 8 years old yesterday, he's 8 years old today, and he'll be 8 years old tomorrow, and forever after that.

Thirty years after bringing this walking atrocity into your home, he's still 8 years old. You're in your late 60s, your knee is kicking up holy hell because the weather is turning colder, you just stubbed your toe on the coffee table looking for the ibuprofen, and here's the little 8 year old getting in your way with picture number 7,342 of the never-ending series "Mommy and Me."

I'd through the damn thing in a compacter.

One of my favorite surprise endings was "Chinatown."

[Enraged_Ape]

77. Reminds me of the Harlan Ellison story "Jeffty is Five"

About a five-year-old who never grows up. His parents pretty much react the way you describe.

[4_Legs_Good]

44. If it woulda ended when he was in the water and saw the blue fairy

I think it was, it could have been a good movie.

But Speilberg just can't do something like that.

david

[dback]

81. Spielberg sez that everything you think is his is Kubricks, and vice-versa

However, if you leave David at the bottom of the water, there's no dramatic resolution.

You could, however, have ended it when he is thawed out of the ice and meets the newest forms of "Artificial Intelligence," who now embrace him as their own child.

However, I still think the movie is very good--flawed, but good. People who dismiss the final ending as sugary and fake miss the point: it's not real. Everything about it is synthetic and artificial--a faux happy ending for a faux boy. Thus, it's incredibly poignant that this one day of manufactured happiness is all David gets.

[4_Legs_Good]

87. That's a good point, buuuuuuut...

I, and I've only seen it once when it was in theaters, wouldn't dismiss him at the bottom of the ocean with the blue fairy as a sad ending. I can't remember exactly why, but it could also work as an enigmatic perhaps happy ending.

Anyway, good points all around. I didn't hate the movie, but it just kinda fell flat for me at the end.

david

[livetohike]

5. The Sixth Sense

I didn't expect the ending.....

[anarch]

6. Cast Away

Well, it left me thinking "WTF did I just spend, like, three hours of my life watching that?"

[4_Legs_Good]

45. He should have either stayed on the island the entire time

or for just a very small portion of it. Either finding out about his life surviving on the island and his struggle with sanity, OR a movie about how one tries to re-enter society would have been interesting. Not both.

david

[Thtwudbeme]

49. Body Heat

She was brilliant.

[DawgHouse]

57. Oh yes, great movie! NT

[XNASA]

7. "Concenting Adults" - also with Spacey

The scene where Spacey is killed is just too weird.

[AlCzervik]

8. "Breaking the waves" i was surprised and pissed.

[miss_kitty]

9. I figured out the Usual Suspects 45 minutes into the movie

I was all I could do to keep from exploding with the name before the end...

[Zomby Woof]

40. I hear ya

I figured out the Sixth Sense by the time he had dinner with his wife. What a ripoff!

[miss_kitty]

73. I felt pret-ty stupid for not getting that

and being surprised at the ending! :D

[skypilot]

89. I felt stupid, too.

The ending really annoyed me. The only reason I didn't guess it before the end was because I'd seen so many other movies with the same or similar endings that it didn't occur to me that this would be yet another one--especially after the critics went on and on about what a "doozy" the ending was. I was expecting to see something that I'd never seen before so I was in a completely different mindset as all the obvious clues went right over my head.

[jayfish]

10. "To Live And Die In LA"

Still one of the best endings ever.


Jay

[Lindsey]

11. definitely The Sixth Sense and Mulholland Drive....

I'm still wondering WTF with Mulholland Drive.

[Connie_Corleone]

12. Definitely WTF for Mulholland Drive.

In fact, the whole movie was a WTF moment. That's David Lynch for ya.

[ceile]

34. Even years on, I'm still thinking WTF

[Zero Division]

60. You have to pay attention to the visual clues.

It didn't make sense for me at all the first time, either. Check out the way the camera zooms in on the pillow in the beginning, for instance...hint...hint. I loved the atmosphere in Mulholland Drive. Once I figured out what Lynch intended the movie to be, I also found it fun to analyze why certain things happened the way they did in the first part of the movie.

[SharonRB]

61. Those two -- absolutely!

Mulholland Drive is one of my all-time faves. I've seen it four times and still don't totally get it. Everytime I watch it I find something new. Here's a hint: If you take the last third of the movie and put it first, it helps a bit.

[regnaD kciN]

74. Well, as to 'Mulholland Drive'...

...the film really divides into two parts, with the break coming when the cowboy character says something like "time to wake up." But the question is which part was "real" -- was the first half a dream of the main character from the second half, or is the second half a nightmare of the main character of the first half? I tend to suspect the former, but either interpretation is defensible.

[skypilot]

90. There is a great movie by Brian DePalma...

...called "Sisters" that was made in the early '70s. It is about a set of conjoined twins who had to be separated because one of the twins was psychotic. The psychotic twins dies but the surviving twins would sometimes assume her personality. I loved the movie but I always thought that it would have been even more interesting if DePalma had made it more ambiguous as to which twin had actually died. But it still works well as is.

[Wetzelbill]

75. oh yeah, great choice

I love that film.

[alarcojon]

84. Great car chase scene, too

and great use of Wang Chung B-)

[jayfish]

86. Yes, The Car Chase Is One Of The Best As Well.

Certainly better than that crappy Ronin chase everyone seems to love. Talk about underwhelmed.

Jay

[Le Taz Hot]

13. "Waiting to Exhale"

Did the movie makers not read the book? They gave it the old "And they all found men and they all lived happily ever after" ending. Counter to the WHOLE god blessed point of the book!

[ronnykmarshall]

54. They didn't all find men.

Only one of them (Loretta Divine) met someone. They rest of them either found happiness being single or told their man to take a hike.

[Rabrrrrrr]

14. Se7en

That ending caught me by surprise.

[Blue_Tires]

70. me too---i had no idea WHAT to expect

very creepy

[DS1]

15. Alien 3 was a refreshing change

[soleft]

16. Seven, Alien 3 and my personal fave for this thread The Game

Were all directed by David Fincher, who also did Panic Room.

I personally hated Seven and Alien 3, but I've liked his other work

[DS1]

17. and Fight Club

for Fincher directing, anyway.

[soleft]

21. I'm embarrassed to say I haven't seen this classic

But I know there's an awesome twist, so it appears that's his thing

[4_Legs_Good]

46. I love The Game

and not just because Joe Frank has a cameo in it.

One of my favorite "watch it a million times" films.

david

[edbermac]

18. Night of the Living Dead...

That poor guy manages to fend off 100 zombies by locking himslef in that house cellar and then gets shot by the cops because they think he's a zombie...depressing as hell...

[ucmike]

19. "open water"-divers left at sea

didn't last long in theatres, but i enjoyed it. at the end all i could think was "well, i didn't see that coming".

[wildhorses]

36. great movie

and the ending....whoa baby?!?!?

[AnarchoFreeThinker]

20. Pretty Woman. Who saw a happy ending coming?

[4_Legs_Good]

47. LMAO!

:)

[Gidney N Cloyd]

22. Boogie Nights

And I don't mean the shot of Wahlburg. I can't figure out the whole sequence at the end-- was that what one of the characters was dreaming would be the happy ending?

[redqueen]

23. Saw

:wtf:

[Lydia Leftcoast]

24. Australian movie called The Interview

A man is rousted out by the police in the middle of the night and is interrogated for what at first seem to be obscure reasons. It gradually becomes clear that they think he's a serial killer...


The original European version of The Vanishing. A man tries to find out what happened to his girlfriend, who disappeared from a freeway rest stop.

[CanuckAmok]

37. "The Vanishing". Br-r-r-r-r-r-r.

Scariest. Villain. Ever.

Hollywood needs to study this character and realise that a real monster is one who lives unremarkably next door to you for years, not some "average" guy with inexplicable and near-comical superhuman powers (Hannibal Lechter, I'm talking to you!).

[NewJeffCT]

25. Sixth Sense surprised me...and a few others

What is that movie with Kevin Costner & Sean Young? Didn't that have a twist at the end?

The revelation that Darth Vader was Luke's father was a great twist at the end of 'The Empire Strikes Back', which was also not exactly a happy ending (Han Solo getting frozen in carbonite, too)

[xmas74]

38. Is that No Way Out?

[NewJeffCT]

42. yes, that is it!

didn't it have a big twist at the end.

[mnmoderatedem]

97. yes it did *spoiler*

Kevin Costner was actually a Soviet agent the whole time...

[nytemare]

26. "Crash"

I won't give any spoilers, but all the character's endings were surprising.

[4_Legs_Good]

51. Which one?

I just watched the David Cronenberg film, and it was kinda interesting, but I just didn't buy the premise so it kinda fell flat for me, which is sad for a movie with tons and tons of sex.

I know there's a newer movie called "Crash" too, though.

david

[nytemare]

58. The newer one.

I did see the older one, and, although I like movies that are different, that was...well...TOO different.

[applegrove]

28. Apartment Zero. Now that was the scariest film ever.

[dback]

82. YES! My shirt was wet with perspiration when I came out of that film

I've never had cold-sweat terrors before, but that movie did it to me. Colin Firth has done tons of great stuff (though I think that put him on the map), but Hart Bochner has never been better.

[Fox Mulder]

29. The ending of Debbie Does Dallas (2000).

My :wtf: reaction came from the fact that I actually saw an entire porno movie. :D

[superconnected]

30. Donny Darko

Excellent, excellent movie. And no, I didn't guess.

[no name no slogan]

31. No Way Out

even though it was a Costner flick, the ending was still kind of cool.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

48. Best Twist Ending EVER IMHO. Only 'so-so' movie overall though.

[DawgHouse]

65. One of my favorites. NT

[Guy Fawkes]

32. Land of the Dead (2005)

...wtf?

[ceile]

33. Hide and Seek n/t

[Mz Pip]

39. The Crying Game

That was a shocker.

Dark City, a strange Sci-Fi movie had a pretty bizarre ending, too.

Mz Pip
:dem:

[NewJeffCT]

53. yes, it was quite a revealing ending

and, certainly unexpected.

[SocratesInSpirit]

41. House of Flying Daggers

Wasn't expecting any twists whatsoever. When all was revealed, I was like, "wait...what..." and then my brain shut down. :)

[Left Is Write]

43. I wasn't allowed to be surprised by Thelma & Louise. (ending mentioned)

I rented it with a friend of mine. We had all the supplies for a great night of movie watching - pizza, popcorn, and beer - and we had just settled in. The opening credits ran across the screen. My friend said, "Don' you just love this movie? I love how they go off the cliff at the end."

I had never seen the movie before.

[RFKHumphreyObama]

64. I can identify with that

My friend rang me up after seeing the "Sixth Sense" at the cinema and I asked her whether she enjoyed it and she goes "Oh, it was great" and proceeded to inform me of what the ending was

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

50. The old, old horror movie 'The Other'.

http://imdb.com/title/tt0069050/

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

52. 'Unbreakable'

[peekaloo]

62. same here.

I liked it, too.

:dunce:

[ronnykmarshall]

55. Godzilla vs. Rodan

Who knew that they were once lovers?

[sakabatou]

56. Perfect Blue

[Orsino]

59. Murder By Death.

The ending is a real head-scratcher--deliberately so.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

63. Titanic

I mean, wasn't it supposed to be unsinkable?

[Guy Fawkes]

66. That's just freeper propaganda.

[proud patriot]

67. Arlington Road

just saw that for the first time last week .

had me guessing til the end .

[TroubleMan]

68. Fantasy Mission Force

Most WTF ending ever.

[yellowdogintexas]

69. "The Sting"

when you think all the good guys are dead......

[WoodrowFan]

71. Teenage Cheerleader Camp Virgins Part 3.

I mean, COME ON PEOPLE, at least TRY to make it believable. And what the hell was Judi Dench doing in that last scene????

[lizziegrace]

72. Three stick with me

The Sixth Sense
No Way Out
The Village

[Wetzelbill]

76. "Ran" by Akira Kurosawa

That movie blew me away. I first watched it right before the Iraq War started. The humanism hit me like a ton of bricks. The ending is so sad, just truly sorrowful.

"The Seventh Seal"- by Ingmar Bergman A perfect film.

"Giant" by George Stevens When Bick lost that fight in the diner and then Leslie accepted Reata as her home.

Those movies blew me away and made me think more because they were great than any big surprise though.

"The French Connection" and "To Live And Die In L.A." both by William Friedkin.


"Mystic River" by Clint Eastwood

"Amores Perros" by Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu

"Fight Club" and "Se7en" both by David Fincher

"Traffic" by Steven Soderbergh

"Unbreakable" by M. Night Shyamalan

[Nye Bevan]

78. 2001 - A Space Odyssey

:wtf: was up with that ending?

[jackelope72]

79. I think 2001 was one of those movies...

that you weren't necessarily SUPPOSED to understand. It had kind of a "just go with it, don't try to understand it, just take it all in and you'll get what you need to out of it" type of feel to it.

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

80. Dead or Alive

SPOILER





It's a pretty conventional, albeit stylish, cop v yakuza movie. It ends on a deserted road with the two protagonists taking shots at each other. You think they're dead, but slowly the cop stands up and pulls a huge motherfucker of a rocket launcher from behind his back. The yakuza, bent double, reaches deep inside his chest & pulls out (what I can only conclude must be) his soul. The cop fires, the yakuza hurles the ball of energy and they collide. Cut to a map of the world and the entire country of Japan being destroyed.

[mattomjoe]

83. Naked Lunch

Then again, the whole movie was pretty much :wtf:

[sakabatou]

85. Also...

End of Evangelion
Monster a-Go-Go
and The Beast of Yucca Flats

[Democrats_win]

88. "The Cowboys" John Wayne cannot die!!!! Its un-American

[El Fuego]

91. Million Dollar Baby

[TallahasseeGrannie]

92. Leaving Las Vegas

[Shell Beau]

93. Birth and Closer

[Shell Beau]

99. Also 21 grams!

[RubyDuby in GA]

94. American Psycho

But I was kinda like "wtf???" the whole movie.
Although, I do have a new appreciation for Huey Lewis & the News now.

[gnarlygoddess]

95. "Movie endings that caught you be surprise or made you think "WTF""

The movie called "Pay it forward" I saw it a few years ago and I still think of it often.

[bj2110]

96. Mulholland Dr. -... well, the whole movie made to go, "WTF" nt

[coyote]

98. Magnolia

One word: Frogs

[taterguy]

100. Das Boot

Caught me by surprise but I was young when I saw it

[Zen Democrat]

101. Memento was shocking to me.

As the movie backs up, it's a shock to get to the beginning (at the end) and find out about Teddy.