SPOILER ALERT! The movies in this article ARE a few years old, so we'll hold back on saying I
told you so if you continue to read on. If you haven't seen these movies you
should probably schedule some time and put them in your Netflix queue-- they’re
well worth watching, even if we don’t fully grasp the ending.
Inception (2010)
Christopher Nolan's ensemble cast film left many moviegoers
very angry, mostly because the ending left the movie’s biggest question
unanswered. In our current culture of immediate satisfaction, the obscure
ending just wasn't what the audience wanted to see. In Inception, a movie about
the layers of our dreams and how our reality influences them, we are introduced
to the concept of a token. This item lets characters know whether they are in a
dream or not. If they can knock the item down, they are in the real world, but
if the item does not fall over, they are still dreaming. Well, the movie ends
with Leo DiCaprio’s token (a top) spinning and spinning. Just as you think it
wobbles and is about to fall the movie ends, leaving you wondering if the final
happy moment between DiCaprio’s character and his family is indeed a dream or
reality.
The Shining (1980)
This Stanley Kubrick film, based on a novel by horror master
Stephen King, gave us some key pop culture quotes and scenes. Who could forget
Jack Nicholson’s crazed visage peering through the broken door and yelling,
“Here’s Johnny!” ? But believe it or not, many people have not seen the movie
in its entirety--they just know the quotes.
If you have seen the movie, the ending doesn't leave you hanging as much
as Inception’s ending, but we are still left with a big question. We discover
that Jack Nicholson's character has actually been in that hotel for a very,
very long time, appearing in photos from the 1920’s. Does that mean his wife
and child are also ghosts? Is Nicholson’s character reincarnated? Is any of it
real at all? People still debate the movie’s ending and its creepy scenes
today.
K-Pax (2001)
This movie isn't as well known as the others on our list, but
the ending is just as mysterious. In K-Pax, Kevin Spacey plays a man that
claims to be from another planet. His psychiatrist, Jeff Bridges, tries to
convince him otherwise, but starts to doubt his own knowledge of medicine.
Throughout the entire movie we are wondering if Spacey is indeed an alien from
the planet K-Pax or just a mentally ill man.
The movie explores the concept of science, psychology, and insanity, but
it also makes you wonder if people that are institutionalized are actually as
crazy as we think. Was Spacey’s character indeed from another planet? We don’t
know.
The Matrix Revolutions
(2003)
This movie brought very little closure to fans of the Wachowski
brothers famous trilogy. People had a difficult time fully understanding the
concept of The Matrix the first time around, and Revolutions didn’t seem to add
anything concrete to the situation. The characters Oracle and The Architect
didn’t clarify much of anything--instead, they seemed to have confused fans
even more. Finally, at the end, the audience is left wondering: Did Neo become
part of the I Matrix? Was he actually killed in his final battle against Agent
Smith? We have yet to find out.
2001: A Space Odyssey
(1968)
If you could even sit through this lengthy, somewhat strange
Kubrick movie, the ending will have you wondering what in the world you
actually watched. The movie has very little dialogue, and we go from apes and a
monolith to astronauts in a space ship without much of a bridge. People are
mostly familiar with Hal 9000-but if you've seen the image of the giant baby
floating in space and wondered what in the world it had to do with the
movie--join the club. We still don't know if that is the reincarnation of the
main character or something else entirely.
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