Top 10 Annoyingly Ambiguous Movie Endings

Yesterday, we posted a very funny video from College Humor that resolved some classic ambiguous endings in film: The Graduate, Lost in Translation, and so forth. But it reminded me that sometimes these vague endings can be truly irritating and frustrating. I hate sitting through what is shaping up into a good movie experience, then the end negates the whole film, makes no sense, or just plain ends without warning or closure.

Sometimes these ambiguous endings are great: I felt the ending of The Wrestler was just right, and I also liked the way the recently released A Serious Man concluded. Sometimes these unresolved endings are meant to pave the way for a sequel, which is great if you happen to have the sequel there with you, but when it's a new movie, you just want to throttle the filmmakers. Here are 10 movies with endings that make me want to throw a popcorn box at the screen, or find the filmmakers and demand an explanation. It goes without saying that I'm about to spoil the endings of 10 films, so you've been warned.

No Country for Old Men

This movie was in the College Humor video, so I feel a bit guilty repeating it, but it annoyed the living crap out of me. First, the Coens structured it so we didn't see the death of a major character, which was unsatisfying. And then the last scene ... is Tommy Lee Jones telling us about a dream he had. That's it? That's the end? Many people thought this adaptation of a Cormac McCarthy novel was the best movie of 2007, but I never "got" it myself, and the ending (shown below) had a lot to do with my dislike.



Kill Bill Vol. 2

You may ask, "Jette, why on earth is this ambiguous? Beatrix heads off into the sunset with her little girl, it's a happy ending." Really? Not to me. The Bride is now going to be The Mom, and a nice traditional mom at that? I found that difficult to believe. In my head, this movie has another ending -- an epilogue, set 15 years in the future. We're back at Hattori Hanzo's sushi bar and he's good-naturedly arguing with his assistant, Beatrix, when Vernita's daughter Nikki walks in, seeking revenge. We pan up to the attic and there's Beatrix's daughter, practicing with a sword. I had to invent my own ending because the one in the film was so damned unsatisfying.



The Evil Dead

Have you gone back and watched the 1981 film lately? I suspect more of us remember Evil Dead 2 or Army of Darkness. The Evil Dead is more of a straightforward horror movie -- and look at how young Bruce Campbell is! That in itself is almost unbelievable. But imagine you didn't know there were any sequels, and you saw this movie in a theater back in the day. The movie ends with Ash walking outside at dawn, feeling as though he's escaped the terrors that claimed his friends ... and then the DeadCam starts gearing up again. Are they going to claim him, or not? Are they even supposed to be out there after dawn? Did this movie break its own rules? If we didn't know about Raimi's other films, this vague ending would be super frustrating. Horror films do this a lot -- finish up the action, wrap everything up, and then stick in one last shock whether it's consistent or not. I blame Brian De Palma and the awful ending of Carrie. Speaking of inconsistency, I love the end credits music for this movie, too.



Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

My husband, who encouraged me to watch this film for the first time earlier this year, suggested this film, and he has a point. Again, if you saw this movie in a theater and didn't have Star Trek III right there in your DVD cabinet, the cliffhanger-y ending would be extremely frustrating. Back in the day, remember, it wasn't a done deal that there would be more sequels, either -- the first Star Trek film was not a runaway success, although this one was. Spock dies, but there's some ambiguity around that -- the ending feels patched-together and doesn't fit the rest of the film. This is in fact because some of it was reshot because test audiences found Spock's death too dark and final. Now it's not final ... and the ending feels off-kilter.

2001: A Space Odyssey

It could be argued that the entire movie is incomprehensible. We're on the spaceship, but then we're in an elegant room, where people disappear and appear and transform. Next thing you know, there's a baby in a bubble and we're in space and the music swells. WTF? My husband tells me that if I would only read the book, everything about this Stanley Kubrick adaptation would make sense -- more sense than it does now, at least. In the meantime, I just sigh a lot while watching the final scenes, and feel like a philistine for not appreciating it more.



He Was a Quiet Man

I caught this indie film at SXSW 2007 and for the most part, it followed a fairly straightforward story line. Christian Slater's character Bob saves the office from a crazy office worker gone postal, even as he considered doing the same thing himself, and he continues to ponder whether it's worthwhile to let all these greedy, selfish people live. At the end, the movie flashes back to the scene where Bob stops the shooting rampage ... or does he? Or is he going on a shooting rampage himself? He talks directly to the screen, the movie ends, and what the hell just happened? Was it all a fantasy or dream sequence? I had no idea. The director talked about everyone deciding for themselves but I was completely irritated by the ambiguity. If it's a dream, I want to know that; if it's real, I want to know that too.

Ghost World

Speaking of the frustrating blur between dreams/fantasies and reality, the ending of Ghost World nearly made me hate the whole movie preceding it. Enid waits at a "Not in Service" bus stop, then boards a bus that picks her up ... is it a real bus? Is it a metaphor for the afterlife, and is she committing suicide, or is she just taking the road less traveled? What the hell? By injecting something unreal at the end of a realistic movie, the filmmakers break the rules of the film's universe and annoy the audience. I had the same problem with the end of The Men Who Stare at Goats.



When the Levees Broke

Possibly this four-hour documentary about the devastation in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 causes me more frustration than any other movie on the list. We never do find out what happens to the city of New Orleans. Will the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers ever build strong levees built to last during hurricanes? Will poor New Orleanians ever get out of temporary housing and back to their homes? Will city, state and federal politicians ever do anything major and lasting to rebuild the city? What's going to happen to the Lower Ninth Ward? It's been four years and those questions are unanswered. Admittedly, however, I can't blame director Spike Lee for that -- it's not exactly a problem with the film.

Blade Runner

You can pick your ending for Blade Runner these days -- the original theatrical version, the 1992 director's cut, or the 2007 "final cut" that Ridley Scott supervised. Any way you slice it, it's in need of interpretation: is Decker a replicant, how much longer do he and Rachael have, and so forth. The theatrical ending is a little like the "happy ending" cut of Brazil, but the other cuts are also maddeningly ambiguous.





Monty Python and the Holy Grail

I first saw this movie in high school and I had trouble believing it was really over. Did the TV station broadcasting the movie cut out some key funny bit, or end it early? Would there be another ending after the credits? What was wrong? Suddenly the storming of the castle shifted into policemen arresting people and breaking up mobs, and bam! Credits. The ending does actually fit the universe of the film, not to mention the Python brand of humor, but it's so very abrupt that I didn't understand it had ended at all. I think it's funny now, but at the time I was extremely frustrated.