Movies can create a lot of reactions. Joy. Terror. Sympathy. Complete bewilderment. For those that elicit that last one, we've got a comprehensive guide to what the heck happened.
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00:00Movies can create a lot of reactions — joy, terror, sympathy, complete bewilderment. For
00:05those that elicit that last one, we've got a comprehensive guide to what the heck happened.
00:11In 2001, teen angst got a new name when Donnie Darko first released. Richard Kelly's cult
00:16classic stars Jake Gyllenhaal as the title character, a troubled suburban boy who's told
00:21by a mysterious rabbit man on a golf course that the world will end in 28 days, 6 hours,
00:2742 minutes, and 12 seconds. He returns home to find that a falling jet engine has completely
00:32crushed his bedroom, and things start to get even weirder in the weeks that follow as he learns the
00:37truth about time travel. The ending, which finds him back at the start of the movie's timeline,
00:41is much more difficult to parse.
00:43I can only hope that the answers will come to me in my sleep.
00:48Reams have been written about the true meaning of Donnie Darko's ending,
00:51but the nugget-sized version is essentially this. Donnie is a sort of locus point for a
00:56tear in the space-time continuum. Although he spends much of the film unaware of it,
01:00his actions during most of his screen time take place in an alternate universe,
01:05where he needs to set the universe straight. The only way he can do this is by returning to
01:09the day he received the prophecy and allowing the jet engine to crush him to death.
01:14Jake Gyllenhaal loves a good mind-bender. Enemy follows the actor as Adam, a history professor
01:19who discovers that he has an exact double. The story feels like a particularly menacing dream,
01:25and at no point is this more evident than when the movie ends with Gyllenhaal walking
01:29into his bedroom to find that his wife has turned into a giant spider.
01:32The ending leaves a whole lot unexplained. As director Denis Villeneuve put it,
01:37"[It's a movie that is set to a game. It's not something that gives answers.
01:41It creates a lot of questions in your mind, but it's set like a puzzle."
01:44To solve this puzzle, focus on two keys — Adam's opening lecture on dictatorships
01:49and the meaning of the spider. Villeneuve has hinted that the real enemy in Enemy is what he
01:55calls the dictator inside ourselves. The opening monologue is about how dictators distract subjects
02:00from their problems with the entertainment of bread and circuses.
02:04And it's important to remember this, that this is a pattern that repeats itself throughout history."
02:11Coupling that with Villeneuve's suggestion that both protagonists are two parts of a single
02:15persona suggests that the double may in fact be an invention of the dictator in Adam's mind.
02:21And what problems are he distracting himself from? The women in his life,
02:24represented in his mind by spiders.
02:28Based on a novel from Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho is a satirical horror story
02:33about the inner life of Patrick Bateman, a high-paid investment banker in 1980s New York.
02:38He's also, if you believe his inner monologue, an unhinged serial killer and sadist. But the
02:43final scene of the film calls everything into question. Bateman's powerful position is no
02:48coincidence, as his status allows him to get away with things that most people would go to prison for.
02:52That said, the executive's body count is called into question as the story progresses,
02:57and he starts to see things that clearly aren't real. It's impossible to know exactly what's real
03:02and what's a delusion, as the only thing that's truly clear is that Bateman is utterly insane.
03:07Following a night of murder, a police manhunt, and a confession to his lawyer,
03:11Bateman attends a social occasion to find that nothing's changed. Either he's done nothing at
03:16all, or his crimes have been of so little interest to his peers that they haven't caused a single
03:21ripple. By the end, the question of whether or not Bateman's murders really happened is irrelevant.
03:26No one would have gone after him either way.
03:29No new knowledge can be extracted from my telling. This confession has meant nothing."
03:37The Silent Hill series of movies and games presents the idea of an other world beneath
03:42our own, where physical spaces remain mostly the same except they're run down and populated by
03:47demons. Separating the real world and the other world is a misty in-between, where humans and the
03:53monsters can cross paths. This realm is seemingly confined to the town of Silent Hill — at least,
03:58at first. In the movie version, Rose and her adopted daughter Sharon remain in the mist
04:03even as they leave town and return home. Christopher, Rose's husband, seems to sense
04:08their presence, but they occupy different planes of reality. The implication is that a part of the
04:13force that corrupted Silent Hill followed them home, keeping mother and daughter in their cloudy
04:18purgatory. It's probably because Sharon was a part of the spirit Alessa, who had been burned as a
04:23witch by the people of Silent Hill and sought vengeance from beyond the grave. Now that the
04:27two halves of the spirit have reunited, the world beneath reality has followed Alessa beyond the
04:33borders of the town. Director Christophe Gans explained his take on the series' mythology in
04:382006, saying,
04:39"...here we are dealing with a character who has the capacity to split,
04:43and when you realize that Alessa is no longer one character but many, it explains the story
04:47of the town. It's interesting, because the town itself mirrors this fractured psychology,
04:52different dimensions, different doubles of the same person."
04:56Near the beginning of Christopher Nolan's Tenet, the protagonist is told something that can
05:00definitely apply to the movie as a whole.
05:02Don't try to understand it. Feel it.
05:06That said, it's definitely possible to understand what's going on once you fully comprehend the
05:11nature of inverted time. In an effort to prevent a third world war, the protagonist links up with
05:16fresh-faced agent Neil, and the two eventually embark on a temporal pincer movement, along with
05:22some Tenet troops. By sending one team forward and the other backward, they're able to save the
05:27day, but as the action unfolds, we see two different versions of Neil. As it turns out,
05:32Neil isn't exactly a rookie — he'd previously been recruited by the protagonist in the future,
05:36even if the protagonist doesn't necessarily realize it in the present.
05:40The second Neil is his future self, uninverted in time.
05:44You've known me for years.
05:47For me, I think this is the end of a beautiful friendship.
05:51But for me, it's just the beginning.
05:53To make things even more confusing, it's also revealed that the protagonist was the one who
05:57founded the Tenet agency in the future, and has been communicating with the past. It was him who
06:02set the entire chain of events in motion by recruiting himself from the past into the
06:07organization that he would later create, forming a temporal causality loop.
06:11Speaking of temporal causality loops, Predestination takes it to the extreme.
06:15Ethan Hawke plays a time-traveling Temporal Bureau agent on the hunt for a terrorist called
06:20the Fizzle Bomber while undercover as a bartender in the 1970s. He strikes up a conversation with
06:26a writer named John, and the two find out that they have a lot in common. That's because the
06:31agent is actually a future version of John, who was born Jane and later underwent gender reassignment
06:38surgery after childbirth. However, Jane only got pregnant in the first place because during one of
06:43the agent's first assignments, he romanced his younger self and she had a baby. After that,
06:48the agent steals the child and delivers it to the doorstep of the orphanage he grew up in as Jane.
06:53The agent isn't just a future version of Jane, but he's also his own father — and mother.
06:58But wait, there's more. When Hawke's agent tracks down the Fizzle Bomber,
07:02he's shocked to find that it's his own future self, having gone mad from too much time travel.
07:08If the agent is going to stop him, he'll have to kill his future self,
07:11which, ironically, will cement his transformation into the Fizzle Bomber.
07:15All of the movie's major characters end up being a single person,
07:18whose paradoxical creation was seemingly orchestrated by the Temporal Bureau.
07:23Blade Runner may not have been so confusing when it was first released in 1982.
07:28Famously the victim of studio interference, its original version was a pretty straightforward
07:33cyberpunk thriller about future cop Rick Deckard, who's tasked with hunting down
07:37fugitive androids called Replicants. Over the next two decades, though,
07:41expanded versions of the film added elements that make the ending much more cryptic and rewarding.
07:46Beginning with one of those expanded editions, new footage was included that suggested that
07:51Deckard was far more than just a future law enforcer. In a newly added sequence,
07:55Deckard dreams about a unicorn, and when Gaff leaves an origami unicorn behind,
08:00it suggests that he's been able to access Deckard's memories,
08:03which would mean that Deckard is actually a Replicant himself.
08:07You know that Voight-Kampff test of yours? Did you ever take that test yourself?
08:12Over the years, the film's director, movie critics, and even star Harrison Ford have
08:16all weighed in on what the new ending really meant and whether Deckard was a human or not.
08:20The long-awaited sequel, Blade Runner 2049, glosses over the question,
08:24leaving fans to continue the debate of Deckard's identity. While 2049 director Denis Villeneuve
08:30prefers to leave the interpretation up to the viewer, the franchise's creator Ridley Scott
08:34answered the question himself in an interview with Digital Spy, saying in no uncertain terms,
08:39he is definitely a Replicant.
08:42Before he helmed Blade Runner 2049, director Denis Villeneuve sat behind the camera for the
08:46psychological sci-fi drama Arrival. The movie takes a linguistic approach to the concept of
08:52first contact, as it centers on grieving language professor Louise Banks as she tries to figure out
08:57how to talk to creatures from beyond the stars. Banks teams up with physicist Ian Donnelly and
09:02other scientists to try and come to understand the seven-legged visitors. As she deciphers the
09:07strange language, visions of her daughter's untimely death plague her, but she presses
09:12onward anyway. When communication with the aliens turns into an arms race between the visited
09:17countries, Banks comes to an important understanding — being able to read the circular
09:21script changes the way a person perceives time. She's able to use this knowledge to stop a massive
09:26war before it begins, but more importantly, the truth about her daughter is revealed.
09:31It turns out that Banks' visions aren't from the past, but from the future. After successfully
09:36completing their mission, she and Donnelly are destined to get together and have a child,
09:40whose premature passing will tear their relationship apart. Despite knowing exactly
09:45how tragically things will eventually turn out, Banks decides to let fate play out in the way she
09:50saw it.
09:51Martin Scorsese usually isn't the type of director to put a massive twist at the end of his movies,
09:56but Shutter Island was the exception. This psychological thriller stars Leonardo DiCaprio
10:01as Edward Daniels, a U.S. marshal in search of a killer who may or may not be suffering from
10:06delusions. However, the perpetrator ends up being the person Daniels least expected — himself.
10:12Daniels, whose real name is Andrew Leydes, murdered his wife in a fit of rage after she
10:16killed their two children. To cope with the tragedy, Leydes invented an alternate identity
10:22and false reality that saw him investigating a hospital for the criminally insane. The truth
10:27is that the man he believes to be his crime-fighting partner is actually the doctor
10:31treating him at the institution through role-playing therapy. Unconvinced that Leydes'
10:35psyche is fully healed, doctors suggest that he may be required to undergo a full lobotomy,
10:41prompting Leydes to ponder a difficult question.
10:44"'Which would be worse? To live as a monster or to die as a good man?'
10:51While the author of the book the movie is based on, Dennis Lehane, insists that Leydes
10:56wouldn't allow the lobotomy of his own free will, the film's psychiatric advisor James Gilligan
11:01sees it differently. While speaking with The Guardian, Gilligan said he believes that Leydes,
11:05consumed with guilt for what he's done, would indeed volunteer for the lobotomy
11:09as penance for his crimes.
11:12Adapted from the short story, We Can Remember It For You Wholesale by sci-fi luminary Philip K.
11:17Dick, Total Recall ditched the source material's more cerebral story in favor of action spectacle
11:22once Arnold Schwarzenegger was cast in the lead role. That doesn't mean it's not without its
11:26more thought-provoking elements, though, as the ending leaves audiences with plenty to think
11:30about. It all starts when blue-collar worker Douglas Quaid decides to pay for implanted
11:35memories of an exciting adventure on Mars where he plays the role of secret agent. The problem is,
11:41before he can undergo the procedure, he suddenly realizes that the spy stuff
11:45might actually be for real. Throughout the adventure, Quaid doesn't know what to believe.
11:49Is he actually an undercover operative working for a ruthless tyrant,
11:53or is he experiencing a complex delusion? There's evidence for both sides of the debate,
11:58but when you take a closer look, it becomes clear that the entire film is actually just
12:02an implanted memory. In addition to plenty of on-screen clues, director Paul Verhoeven,
12:06in his commentary on the DVD release, confirms his belief that the adventure was all a false reality,
12:12by saying,
12:13The dream really starts at the moment that he falls asleep, so the next scene,
12:16which seems to be a malfunction of the machine, is part of the dream.
12:20I just had a terrible thought. What if this is a dream?
12:25Well, then kiss me quick before you wake up.
12:28A dark and surreal romantic comedy, The Lobster is set in a world where single people have 45
12:33days to find a mate, and if they don't, they face the strange consequence of being turned
12:38into an animal of their choosing. A group of loners has defied the system, and the government
12:43offers extra days to singles who capture these misfits. Here, we meet David, whose wife has
12:48recently left him. Singles can't pair up at random, though. They have to have something in common,
12:53whether it's frequent nosebleeds or a nice smile. David is short-sighted,
12:57and when he runs away from his hotel and joins the loners, he meets a woman who's short-sighted,
13:01too. They're a perfect match, but love is forbidden amongst the loners. So as punishment
13:06for their affair, the loner leader has the woman blinded so they no longer have a shared
13:11characteristic. The final scene depicts David deciding if he should blind himself to keep
13:15their relationship going, but it cuts to black before his choice is revealed. Audiences and
13:20critics have debated whether or not David actually goes through with it. Colin Farrell,
13:24who played David, has his own opinion. He told Entertainment Weekly,
13:27"...part of me thinks he does it." However, he wasn't willing to rule out any possibility,
13:32and director Yorgos Lanthimos has kept his mouth shut on the subject.
13:36One of the most surprising horror film hits of the 2010s,
13:40Hereditary shocked audiences with a story that stuns on many levels. At first, it appears to
13:45be a simple tale of demonic possession and family trauma, but after an onslaught of horrifying
13:50revelations, it all culminates in an ending that remains both upsetting and perplexing.
13:55Hereditary begins after the death of Ellen, mother to Annie, and grandmother of teenagers
14:00Peter and Charlie. Not long after the funeral, though, Charlie is horrifically killed in a car
14:05accident, leaving the family reeling from multiple tragedies. When Annie turns to the occult to cope,
14:11she comes to believe that the ghost of her daughter is hunting them,
14:14and that leads to the discovery that Ellen was actually the leader of a coven of witches.
14:18The ending of Hereditary is a lot to take in, and it's easy to miss what's really going on
14:23through all the horrific imagery. Annie is possessed by a demon, and the surviving witches
14:28arrive to worship Charlie's rotting head. Following Ellen's death, they seek to resurrect
14:32their demon king, Paimon, and give him a male host body. This had eluded them for years,
14:38since Annie had kept Peter at arm's length from Ellen. But in the film's last scene,
14:42Peter becomes host to the demon and crowned king of the devilish witches.
14:46Hail Paimon! Hail Paimon!
14:51Looper — the movie, not the channel — is centered around Joe, a retired hitman from the future who's
14:57sent back in time to be killed by his younger self in order to close his loop. Things go awry,
15:02and young Joe reluctantly decides to work with his future self to eliminate the telekinetic
15:07mob boss known as the Rainmaker. As the story unfolds, younger Joe falls in love with a woman
15:12named Sarah and recognizes that her son Sid is the Rainmaker as a child. As a result,
15:18the two versions of Joe are forced into a showdown over the fate of Sarah and Sid.
15:22Older Joe wants them dead to undo the Rainmaker's crimes, but young Joe knows that Sid will survive
15:28and become a villain. That's when young Joe realizes that the only way to save the day
15:32is to do the unthinkable. In the end, young Joe kills himself, erasing his older self's existence
15:38entirely, saving Sarah and preventing Sid from becoming the Rainmaker in the first place.
15:43This has confused some fans. After all, if Joe dies when he's younger, how did any of the events
15:48of the film ever happen? Director Rian Johnson argues that the ending is less about the internal
15:53logic of time travel and more about character drama. As he told Gizmodo,
15:57When you're watching it, you understand what's going on, and it makes sense to you. Even if
16:01thinking about it, it seems not logical, it makes sense on a storytelling level.
16:05And that, at the end of the day, is what matters.
16:08Comedian Jordan Peele broke out as a director with 2017's Get Out, a psychological horror movie that
16:14won him an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. And two years later, he returned
16:19to the genre with Us. Lupita Nyong'o stars as Adelaide Wilson, whose family is stalked and
16:24attacked by mysterious twisted doppelgangers from under the ground, known as the Tethered.
16:29The Wilson family aren't the only ones with evil twins, though. Everyone in the United States is
16:34attacked by their own tethered duplicate. Seemingly no one is safe, but Adelaide is
16:38particularly shaken up because she had a traumatic encounter with her look-alike as a child.
16:43However, the end of the film reveals that there was more to their meeting than a simple scare.
16:48Back in 1986, the tethered version of Adelaide knocked the original unconscious and used the
16:54opportunity to take her twins' place on the surface. Adelaide, now trapped underground,
16:58rallied the rest of the Tethered to rise up against their oppressors.
17:02I needed to make a statement that the whole world would see."
17:08Inspired by the Hands Across America shirt that Adelaide was wearing when she was kidnapped,
17:13the Tethered join hands to form a massive chain of monstrous doubles. It's a powerful message to
17:18remind everyone in the U.S. that their happiness often comes at the expense of others — others
17:22that most of us never even think about, let alone see.
17:26Director Darren Aronofsky isn't a big fan of subtlety,
17:30and nowhere is this more obvious than in his 2017 film Mother. This critically panned stress
17:36fest couldn't possibly be more obvious once you start thinking about it in Biblical terms.
17:40Mother follows a writer referred to as him whose pregnant wife,
17:44Mother, isn't happy when he agrees to shelter a visiting doctor. As events progress, the doctor's
17:49wife and two adult sons arrive as well, creating conflict as the writer begins toiling on his
17:54latest work. These four represent Adam, Eve, Cain, and Abel, which becomes a bit more clear
17:59when one son kills the other. After that, it becomes a story that's hard to summarize without
18:04going beat by beat. But to make a long story short, it concludes with the writer's throngs
18:09of fans swarming the home and horrifically killing the couple's newborn son. That's when Mother sets
18:14fire to the house in a fit of rage, killing everyone inside. Her husband, who represents
18:19God, reaches into her chest cavity and removes a crystal object similar to one that had been
18:24destroyed earlier in the film, which magically rebuilds the house and couple anew. The story
18:29itself isn't meant to be taken literally. Told from the perspective of Mother Earth herself,
18:34it's a metaphor for mankind's impact on nature, with a deeply environmentalist message.
18:39Aronofsky himself has said that the entire film is about the devastating damage caused by man-made
18:44climate change.
18:46Jacob's Ladder follows the last days of a soldier-turned-postal-worker named Jacob Singer
18:51as his reality becomes invaded by demons and hellish visions. He meets a scientist who once
18:56worked with the military to experiment on soldiers with psychedelic drugs meant to put them into
19:01killing frenzies. Jacob believes this to be the reason for his visions, but the ending of the
19:06movie reveals that the truth goes even deeper. Similar to the 1890 short story, An Occurrence
19:11at Owl Creek Bridge, Jacob's Ladder is about the last dream of a dying man killed by fellow
19:16soldiers in an unexplained attack. Perhaps the reality of the film is that Jacob's mind is
19:21attempting to sort out a meaning for his senseless death. The opening of the movie wasn't a flashback
19:26of his past in Vietnam — it was the last day of his life. As the movie ends, he dies on the
19:31battlefield, his tormented journey over at last. So why the hellish visions, and why do they turn
19:37more peaceful at the end, showing Jacob ascending into heaven with his son? Jacob's chiropractor,
19:42Louis, who serves as his guardian figure in the movie, quotes a 14th-century mystic to
19:47foreshadow what might happen if one tries to resist their death.
19:51If you've made your peace, then the devils are really angels, freeing you from the earth.
19:58Vanilla Sky was definitely not the movie Cameron Crowe and Tom Cruise fans were expecting to see
20:03when they filed into theaters in December of 2001. Instead of a feel-good romance or a fun
20:08coming-of-age story, they got a moody, elliptical remake of a Spanish film. After an accident
20:13disfigures his face, Cruise's feckless playboy David spirals into depression, has reconstructive
20:19surgery, and learns some unexpected truths. Ultimately, viewers are told that much of what
20:24they've seen is a lucid dream in David's brain, which has been held in cryonic stasis for more
20:28than 100 years. The more troubling elements of the narrative are the result of a glitch
20:33in the system. He's given the choice to either reboot the dream or exit it once and for all by
20:38jumping off a building and being brought back to life.
20:40Your panel of observers are waiting for you to choose.
20:43David ultimately decides to jump, and the last shot shows him opening his eyes,
20:47presumably for real. There are lots of interpretations of Vanilla Sky,
20:50some of which were supplied by Crowe himself in the commentary track for the DVD.
20:54But the correct one might just be accepting what you see on screen as the actual events of the
20:59story. Crowe seemed to lean that direction while talking with Film School Rejects about the unused
21:04alternate ending, saying,
21:05"...you want people to understand what you're going for, so the question is,
21:08looking at both endings, did the pendulum swing too much in the direction of us explaining stuff?
21:13I think it did. The original ending was more open-ended, a little less explained."
21:18Our hero in the Matrix franchise, Neo, was the only one with enough power to break the
21:22Matrix and save humanity. He spent the first two films on an apparent collision course with
21:26a near-invincible artificial intelligence program known as Agent Smith. But when their cataclysmic
21:31fight in the third installment finally arrived, Neo...gave up? So what happened at the end of
21:35the Matrix revolutions? Neo lies on the brink of defeat until he realizes he doesn't need to
21:40beat Smith at all. Neo assimilates into the system, and Smith is wiped out while the Matrix reboots.
21:45Say what?
21:46Whoa!
21:48The dedicated fans of The Matrix 101 picked apart the scene to figure out what really
21:51went down, and here's what they discovered. Neo brokered a sort of truce with the machines,
21:56allowing the continued existence of the Matrix-free zone known as Zion, while healing
22:00the corruption in the program personified by Smith. The machines also grant every human the
22:05chance to be unplugged from the Matrix and live in the real world, or to remain living in their
22:09artificial reality. The essay concludes in a hopeful note.
22:12This is a world where eradication of the enemy is seen for what it is,
22:16a symptom of the problem, not a solution. This is a world where the creator and its
22:20creation have the potential to live fruitfully in peace and cooperation.
22:24Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain features three interlocking stories, each set hundreds of years
22:28apart, all about a couple coming to terms with death, and culminates in a wild, weird ending.
22:33In one timeline, a doctor works to cure the brain tumor of his wife, Izzy.
22:37She's written a book in which a Spanish conquistador searches for the Tree of Life for
22:40his queen. Meanwhile, in the future, a cosmonaut heads for a distant nebula in a biosphere containing
22:45the Tree, interacting with Izzy's spirit along the way. It all ends in the cosmonaut's fiery
22:50death, the Tree's rebirth, and an ending in which Izzy's spirit hands Tom fruit from the Tree,
22:54which he plants in her grave. Uh, yep.
22:58It's all deeply symbolic, and anyone hoping for a literal explanation out of The Fountain
23:02will be somewhat frustrated. Aronofsky himself told The Washington Post,
23:06It's a Rubik's Cube of a story that's ultimately really about coming to grips with our own
23:09mortality. He elaborated further in an interview with Ain't It Cool News,
23:13It's a film that's a journey, and it's a trip,
23:16and it's an experience through the meditation of a lot of these questions.
23:19There are ideas in there that I believe, but I think I wanted to leave it open so that anyone
23:22can bring their own beliefs to the table, and that it could awaken them, and people can have
23:26a conversation. So there you have it. Your own interpretation is the right one, apparently.
23:32Christopher Nolan's sci-fi epic Interstellar is pretty cool, but it's also pretty confusing,
23:37particularly in its final act. Astronaut Joseph Cooper, on a desperate mission to find a new home
23:42for humanity, plummets into a black hole and drifts beyond the event horizon, finding himself
23:47inside a tesseract. There, he can see inside his daughter's bedroom at any point in her life. He
23:52communicates with her through gravity and Morse code, guiding her to unlock the equation that
23:55helps humanity escape Earth. By the end, Cooper is discovered floating through space by later
24:00members of the human race he's saved, brought to meet his dying daughter, who's aged at normal
24:04speed while he's been on his intergalactic travels, and is thus much older than he is.
24:08Huh? The whole film rests on the notion that time is a circle,
24:11and future humans have the ability to travel within it. But they only get there by creating
24:15this tesseract and helping past people, namely Cooper and his daughter Murph, finish their work.
24:19It's a total chicken-or-the-egg-style paradox, but just go with it. And while Cooper was off
24:23traveling through the wormholes, little Murphy was living on the surface of the circle and kicking
24:27his whole journey into gear from a science level, until her dad came back to it, like he promised.
24:32Figuring out the Babadook isn't that difficult, provided you keep up with the sudden change in
24:36perspective in the movie's final act. Much of this indie horror hit looks and feels like a
24:40supernatural home invasion picture, with the creepy Babadook creature tormenting a single
24:44mother and her six-year-old son. But there's more going on beneath the surface. In the film's closing
24:49scenes, the Babadook has possessed the mom, and she tries to strangle her son. But the boy draws
24:54the monster out of her with a tender expression of love. And a knife to the leg, of course.
24:59No, you don't love me. The Babadook won't let you. But I love you, Mom.
25:07The boy's plan works, and the mom sends the Babadook fleeing to the basement,
25:10where Mom has stored all mementos of her husband since his death.
25:14That's when we realize the creature wasn't supernatural at all. It was her years of
25:17repressed grief, which had grown so powerful it threatened to destroy the lives of everything it
25:22touched. In a perfect blend of heartwarming and gross, the Babadook's closing moments show mother
25:26and son gathering a ball of worms, which he takes into the basement to feed the vanquished beast.
25:30She'll always carry the monster with her because, after all, you can't get rid of the Babadook.
25:36In David Robert Mitchell's film It Follows, a girl named Jay has a seemingly ordinary hookup.
25:41But soon after, she's horrified to realize she's been infected with a sexually transmitted ghost.
25:46Who you gonna call? Someone else.
25:51The ghost takes various human forms, ranging from people in the victim's memories or creepy,
25:56naked strangers, that only someone affected with the disease can see. It constantly walks
26:01in the direction of the latest person infected until it grabs them and kills them. Then,
26:05the ghost starts walking in the direction of the previous person infected and continues back down
26:09the line. Your only option is to pass it off as someone else, hoping the chain keeps going so that
26:13the ghost never gets to you. If that sounds ridiculous, well, it kinda is. But it's the
26:18setup for a pretty devilish little film. Jay learns she can only escape the evil spirit that's trying
26:23to kill her by sleeping with someone else to pass it on. Ultimately, she and her friends try killing
26:27it, with generally unpleasant and ambiguous results. After the climactic battle, Jay and
26:32her friend Paul have sex, and later, Paul's seen driving past a group of prostitutes. In the film's
26:37final shot, the duo walk down a street while someone, or something, follows behind. Much of
26:43It Follows is open to interpretation, and that's exactly what Mitchell wanted. As he said in
26:47multiple interviews, he was originally inspired by a nightmare in which he knew he was being
26:51followed, knew he couldn't get away, and knew no one could help him. As for the ambiguity of that
26:55last shot? Totally intentional. Mitchell wanted viewers to decide whether it was still following
27:00Jay and her pals or not. Sleep tight, kids.
27:03There are no shortage of theories about what exactly was going on in Stanley Kubrick's 1968
27:08sci-fi classic 2001 A Space Odyssey. Rather than dive too far down that rabbit hole, let's instead
27:14offer Kubrick's own assessment of the end, in which astronaut Dave Bowman comes into contact
27:18with an extraterrestrial monolith and goes through a bizarre succession of experiences.
27:22Vast space travel, seeing himself at different ages, and finally being transformed into a
27:27floating space fetus. Kubrick explained in an interview,
27:30In a timeless state, his life passes from middle age to senescence to death. He is reborn,
27:35an enhanced being, a star child, an angel, a superman, if you like, and returns to Earth
27:40prepared for the next leap forward of man's evolutionary destiny. This is what happens
27:44on the film's simplest level. But what about the levels that aren't so simple? Kubrick pointed
27:48out that 2001 concerns itself with elements of philosophy and metaphysics that have nothing to
27:53do with the bare plotline. So whatever his summary tells you about Bowman's fate, you can
27:57trust there's more to it, and that any extra meaning is entirely up to you.
28:00I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.
28:04Kubrick's explanation continued,
28:06The film becomes anything the viewer sees in it. If the film stirs the emotions and
28:10penetrates the subconscious of the viewer, if it stimulates, however inchoately,
28:13his mythology and religious yearnings and impulses, then it has succeeded.
28:17Got all that? Great. Just beat us down to the bar once you've done stimulating your
28:21mythological and religious yearnings and impulses, or whatever.
28:28Christopher Nolan's 2010 film left audiences mind-spinning as much as the top in the final
28:34shot. Just when it looks like the top is about to spin out and tumble, the screen cuts to black.
28:39The final shot shows Dom Cobb reuniting with his kids, but we never know if it's really happening
28:45or if it's a dream. Fans debated the scene endlessly for years after Inception came out,
28:50but according to Nolan, the non-ending is actually kind of the whole point.
28:55In 2015, the director gave the commencement speech at Princeton University and told the
29:00grads to chase their reality. He used the ending of Inception as an example, saying,
29:05Cobb was off with his kids. He was in his own subjective reality. He didn't really care anymore,
29:12and that makes a statement. Perhaps all levels of reality are valid.
29:16The camera moves over the spinning top just before it appears to be wobbling. It was cut
29:21to black. In short, the ending of the movie is up to us, and we're right either way.
29:27The ending to Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy isn't quite as vague as Inception,
29:31but it still left viewers debating after the credits started rolling. After flying
29:35a nuclear bomb out of Gotham City, Batman escapes the blast off-screen. We know this because later,
29:42while Alfred is in Florence, he sees Bruce Wayne sitting at a table enjoying a meal with
29:47ex-catwoman Selina Kyle. Some fans have theorized that this is all a dream, that Batman actually
29:53died in the explosion, and that Alfred simply imagined seeing his friend taking in the Italian
29:59sunshine. But that's Bat-baloney. Before the movie's end, we learn, along with Lucius Fox,
30:04that Wayne fixed the Batplane's autopilot six months before the final showdown in Gotham.
30:10That's all the exposition necessary for viewers to know that Batman jumped out while the plane
30:15flies the bomb toward the bay. When Alfred sees Wayne in Florence, it's exactly how Alfred
30:20describes it earlier in the film, but that's not a dream. It's just the best way for Wayne to show
30:25Alfred he's alive. Moreover, Selina Kyle is there wearing Wayne's mother's necklace, which she
30:31steals at the beginning of the movie. Alfred doesn't know she and Wayne have become an item,
30:36and he'd already quit working for Bruce before Batman and Catwoman teamed up to save Gotham City.
30:41As if all that isn't enough, Christian Bale himself thinks that Bruce is alive by the end
30:46of the movie. He explains during an interview while promoting Exodus Gods and Kings,
30:50"...he was just content with me being alive and left, because that was always the life that he
30:55wanted for him. And I find it very interesting, and with most films, I tend to always say it's
31:01what the audience thinks it is. My personal opinion is, no, it was not a dream, that that
31:05was for real. And he was just delighted that finally he had freed himself from the privilege,
31:11but ultimately the burden of being Bruce Wayne."
31:14Alejandro G. Inarrito's film, about a washed-up actor trying to make a comeback on Broadway,
31:21has the kind of weird ending that puts Inception to shame. Throughout the film,
31:25Rigan Thompson is shown as having superpowers, only to have them later be explained as being
31:31all in his head. In the final scene, Rigan's daughter, Sam, enters his hospital room to find
31:36his bed empty and the window open. Sirens and voices can be heard coming from the street below.
31:41Initially, Sam looks down, but she slowly turns her head up to the sky, and she smiles.
31:47Some might think this means Rigan actually does have powers and has flown away, but...probably
31:54not. What really seems to have happened is that Rigan has successfully committed suicide,
31:58which he failed to do on the previous day. Sam, for her part, seems to start hallucinating just
32:04like her dad. The fact that she has bird tattoos on her arm and that her father played a superhero
32:09with bird-based powers suggests the strong connection between the two. Sam seems to leave
32:14the real world to enter a fantasy where her father is still alive, soaring above the clouds.
32:20The film is subtitled The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance, after all. Here,
32:25Sam chooses to ignore reality. One of Birdman's four screenwriters,
32:29Alexander Dinalaris Jr., hinted during an interview with HuffPost Live that the key
32:35to their understanding of the ending lies within Sam's relationship with her father.
32:39"...I think when we found the relationship with the daughter we started to understand
32:43what Rigan's story was. Once she got down, Emma's big monologue in the basement,
32:48we started to understand the relationship and what it was.
32:52We're not going to sit around and explain the ending."
32:55At the end of this Coen Brothers flick, tortured writer Barton Fink wanders onto a beach,
33:00where he meets a woman resembling the picture decorating his sparse, depressing hotel room.
33:05Shortly after they meet, the movie abruptly ends, potentially leaving some viewers scratching
33:09their heads, what's it mean? Here's one way to look at it. The picture represents the idea
33:14of Hollywood. It's a place of fantasy, beaches, and beautiful women. Meanwhile, throughout the
33:19entire film, Fink is subjected to the reality of Hollywood. He's had his script torn apart
33:24by an executive, he found out his hero, writer W.P. Mayhew, is a washed-up alcoholic, and that
33:31Mayhew's wife writes his novels for him, and he's fled from both a burning hotel and a shotgun-wielding
33:36maniac.
33:40You'd think that finally finding the woman on the beach would mean that Fink is at the
33:44end of his trials, having reached his reward and a place where he feels safe. But in fact,
33:49he's learned the truth about the dangerous world in which he now exists.
33:53Joel Cohen explained in a 1991 interview,
33:56"...some people have suggested that the whole second part of the film is nothing but a nightmare.
34:00But it was never our intention to, in any literal sense, depict some bad dream. And yet it is true
34:06that we were aiming for a logic of the irrational. We wanted the film's atmosphere to reflect the
34:11psychological state of the protagonist."
34:14At the end of his blood-soaked neo-Western, Sheriff Ed Tom Bell tells his wife about two
34:19dreams he has about his father. In the first dream, he loses some money his father gave him.
34:24In the second dream, Bell sees his father holding a torch,
34:28riding ahead into the darkness of a snowy mountain pass. Shortly before Bell tells the
34:32stories of his dreams, he tells his wife that his father died young — that, in a sense,
34:38his father will always be a younger man. More importantly, throughout the movie,
34:42Bell ponders the violence in the area where he's Sheriff. And since he's close to retirement,
34:48he wonders whether he's too old for the world. The title of the movie is No Country for Old Men,
34:54and Bell is one of them. It's become too violent too quickly for someone of his age,
34:59and he can no longer cope. The world needs someone younger — like his father — to light
35:04the way in the ever-growing darkness around it, exactly like the second dream Bell describes.
35:10David Lynch fans don't watch his work for straightforward narratives. But even in the
35:15context of his endearingly weird filmography, 2001's Mulholland Drive is tough to figure out.
35:21Lynch himself has steadfastly refused to help untangle the movie, which moves in jittery
35:26circles around an actress, a mysterious woman, and a film director — all of whom are mixed up
35:32in a dreamlike and frequently nonsensical series of events. Ultimately, the film's ending is every
35:38bit as open to interpretation as the rest of the film, and although viewers are welcome to
35:43delve into the many theories attempting to explain what Lynch might've meant, the best
35:47explanation was arguably posed by the late film critic Roger Ebert. According to him,
35:53"...the movie is hypnotic. We're drawn along as if one thing leads to another,
35:58but nothing leads anywhere, and that's even before the characters start to fracture
36:02and recombine like flesh caught in a kaleidoscope. There is no explanation.
36:07There may not even be a mystery."
36:09So, what's the explanation here? Uh, pretty much whatever you want.