Most great movies have one thing in common, a great ending. While there are many ways to end a movie, the shock value produced by intense endings is unmatched… In the past, films would tend to end in a predictable, happily ever after way, though nowadays that’s not the case. Modern filmmakers have developed a propensity for experimenting with the climax and adding symbolic elements to conclude their films, to the point where the viewer may forget the beginning but never the end. Here’s a look at some of the most intense movie endings, ranked.
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8 Sorcerer (1977)
Universal / Paramount Pictures
William Friedkin’s Sorcerer is the ultimate tale of the greed that precedes madness. The film centers around four men that take recluse from the law in a South American town. Broke and on the run, the men decide to take up an offer of a large sum of money and legal citizenship in exchange for transporting a highly-explosive substance, across rocky terrain. It’s from here that the film comes to life. Faced with the mammoth task at hand, the men realize the money or the citizenship isn’t worth a damn if they aren’t alive to claim it. Towards the end, one of the men, Jackie (Roy Scheider), has tripped out visuals about his past as he walks with the box of explosives in his hand.
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7 Breathless (1960)
Les Films Impéria
In one of Godard’s most iconic films, Michel (Jean-Paul Belmondo), an impulsively petty thief goes on a stealing/killing spree while simultaneously pursuing his love interest, Patricia. As the heat on Michel rises, so does his plea to Patricia to escape with him. Breathless has a very peculiar ending which is more open than definitive, Patricia, hands Michel over to the police in an attempt to get rid of the sordid affair. With the cops on his heels, Michel makes a dash to escape but gets shot in the process. As he’s on the ground in a pool of blood, he looks up at Patricia and cryptically says “Ch’uis vraiment dégueulasse,” translating to “I’m a real scumbag”.
6 Psycho (1960)
Paramount Pictures
Based on Robert Bloch’s 1959 novel of the same name, Psycho is Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece that’s responsible for spawning parallel storylines to this date. The film tells the story of the disappearance of a woman and her connection with the infamous Bates Motel, owned by Norman Bates. As the detective gets closer to unraveling the mystery of the disappearance, he realizes there’s much more than meets the eye. Towards the end of the film, in one of the most iconic twists in cinema history, Norman Bates is diagnosed with MPD (Multiple Personality Disorder), which forces him to assume the identity of his dead mother, to take over his life in certain situations and events that involve other people.
5 Requiem For A Dream (2000)
Summit Entertainment
At this point, Requiem For A Dream can be viewed as a cinematic advertisement for young people to not take drugs. The film successfully shocked an entire generation into the darker side of drugs and addiction. Exploring broader themes of addiction and urban loneliness, the film just doesn’t focus on an age-related addiction; rather, it spans multiple age groups and realities. Requiem For A Dream also throws light upon the different intentions and expectations that addicts hope to gain from the experience of using. Towards the end of the film, these initial intentions of consumption come crashing and the exact opposite starts happening.
4 Incendies (2010)
micro_scope
Incendies starts with a search for answers and truth and eventually culminates into a humble acceptance of familial trauma that changes relational dynamics forever. The narrative revolves around a dying woman who leaves separate letters to her children only to be opened after she has passed away. The letters stir a fire in her daughter, which puts her on a quest to seek answers and retrace history. The film ends on an intense note where Jeanne, the daughter, realizes that she’s the child of her half-brother.
3 Shutter Island (2010)
Paramount Pictures
Martin Scorsese’s masterpiece starts off with a very self-assured detective Teddy Daniels (DiCaprio) investigating a psychiatric facility on Shutter Island after one of its patients goes missing. Soon the hunter becomes the hunted. As Daniels deep dives into the island and its past, the loopholes in the detective’s own sanity start to come to the surface. The climax of the film works because it provides closure, but in an open-ended sort of way. The film concludes by posing a question on Daniels’s sanity versus the Doctors Cawley’s reality.
2 Oldboy (2003)
Show East
When Oh Dad-su, is let out after being imprisoned in a hotel room after 15 years, he begins seeking answers and vengeance. Tracing back to a rumor that killed his sister, Woo-jin, Dae-su’s captor, engineers a torture plan to put Dae-su through the exact same emotional duress that he went through. Not satisfied with the imprisonment faced by Dae-su, Woo Jin goes on to hypnotically manipulate Dae-su into sleeping with his daughter, who he thought was a prostitute. Towards the end of the film, Woo-jin kills himself, leaving Dae-su with the trauma that he slept with his own daughter.
1 The Usual Suspects (1995)
Bad Hat Harry Productions
Who is Keyser Söze? Right from the onset, this theme has been present throughout the film. Cinematically rendering the cultural prophecy of the devil’s existence against the backdrop of crime, The Usual Suspects masterfully expresses similar motifs in different ways. The film revolves around five ‘suspects’ with one of them being the infamous underworld don, Keyser Söze. As the bodies fall and the chase for Söze intensifies, the realization kicks in that the man isn’t a some long-haired Turk who came walking out of the fire. He’s just a guy with a widow’s peak who no one takes seriously until it’s too late.
