Unpacking the secret meanings behind horror's most infamous "WTF" closing scenes...
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00:00The scariest thing in the horror genre is the unknown, and the very best horror movies
00:04know that the audience's lack of control is a tool to be used to disarm them and, yes,
00:10absolutely scare the willies out of them as well.
00:13For good or bad then, all of the following horror movie moments left the audience scratching
00:17their heads.
00:18I'm Josh from WhatCulture.com and these are 8 Horror Movie Moments Nobody Understands.
00:238.
00:24What does the ending mean?
00:26Martyrs.
00:27Martyrs is one of those classic horror movies that's been talked about to death, which
00:30is why it's even more impressive that nobody has been able to come down conclusively on
00:36its ending one way or another.
00:38Though the film starts off relatively simple with a woman invading a house to murder the
00:42people responsible for keeping her captive as a young girl, it quickly moves into the
00:47surreal as the woman is killed off and her friend Anna is recaptured and subjected to
00:52torture.
00:53Her captors have a pretty nuts goal behind her suffering too, to figure out once and
00:59for all whether there is life after death.
01:02In order to achieve this answer, they need to create a martyr, someone who is tortured
01:07so extremely that they essentially become a being caught between two worlds, in a frightening
01:13liminal space of being not quite dead, not quite alive.
01:18After being gruesomely flayed then, Anna achieves this liminal state and whispers the secret
01:23of the afterlife she discovers into the ear of the organisation's leader, who then promptly
01:30kills herself.
01:31Without being privy to what that secret actually was though, audiences are left to ponder what
01:36does come after death, if anything.
01:397.
01:40What does the picture mean?
01:42The Shining.
01:43A classic of the genre, The Shining's ending will be debated for all time.
01:47We know the story of this movie by now.
01:49In a snowed-in old hotel in the mountains, family man Jack Torrance torments his wife
01:54and son with an axe, driven mad by the spirits, both the drinking kind and the ghostly kind,
02:01housed within the building's walls.
02:03Eventually outsmarted by the quick thinking of a five-year-old boy, Jack freezes to death
02:08after becoming lost in the hotel's garden maze.
02:11That's not the end though, as we then cut back into the building and zoom in on a particularly
02:16e-reframed photograph hanging on the wall.
02:20As we get a close-up of what turns out to be a photograph of a dinner party, we see
02:23that Jack is actually there in the image, front and centre.
02:28The only issue is, well, this picture was taken in 1929 and the movie takes place 50
02:35years later and Jack hasn't aged a day.
02:38So what's the deal here?
02:40Was Jack reincarnated?
02:41Was he a ghost the whole time?
02:43Was he assimilated by the hotel after dying?
02:46It's an ambiguous note that's been hotly debated for years, with no official answer
02:51coming either way.
02:536.
02:54What is The Doppelganger Annihilation?
02:56Annihilation is a truly underrated sci-fi horror film from Alex Garland.
03:00A pretty dense flick, all things told, it follows a group of scientists as they venture
03:06into the Shimmer, an alien environment-changing phenomenon that causes a break in reality
03:12itself.
03:13Inside the Shimmer, pretty much anything can happen, as the world mutates and births some
03:18terrifying creatures, with one bear in particular guaranteed to keep you lying awake for weeks
03:24on end.
03:25While there are concrete explanations for virtually everything in the novel that the
03:30movie is based on, Garland actually decided to pretty much rip those details up for the
03:35movie and opted for a more metaphorical film rather than hard sci-fi.
03:41As a result, the ending has left anyone who's seen it scratching their heads.
03:45And that ending sees the only scientist who hasn't succumbed to the Shimmer, Natalie
03:49Portman's Lena, encountering a shimmering humanoid in a lighthouse.
03:55This being mimics every move Lena makes, before she ultimately manages to escape after hitting
04:01it with a grenade.
04:03Exploding it with a grenade!
04:04Whichever one works, and they tell me I'm a writer apparently.
04:08Anyway, back at the base, it's unclear what has actually happened to Lena, who has now
04:12taken on characteristics of the other scientists she was with.
04:16Exactly what the Doppelganger was and how Lena had been changed by her experience is
04:21never truly explained.
04:27The first, but certainly not last, Nicolas Cage movie on this list is a solid HP Lovecraft
04:32adaptation.
04:33Leaving the colour out of space, a family becomes tormented by a strange otherworldly
04:38purple light that infects and mutates their bodies, with each passing day birthing increasingly
04:44strange sights.
04:46With this being based on a HP Lovecraft story though, an author who was famous for using
04:51the Get Out Of Jail Free horror card of just describing monsters as being so scary the
04:55human mind can't even comprehend them and then just letting the readers do all the legwork.
05:01Though much of the story is left intentionally ambiguous.
05:05As a result, audiences leave the film none the wiser about what the titular colour actually
05:10was or how it really works.
05:12Hell, the wiki for the story quite literally describes it as a quote, force of unknowable.
05:17So when it takes the characters in the film away towards the end, nobody has any idea
05:22where they're actually going.
05:25The ending of The Thing is another classic, and leaves viewers with a question that nobody
05:31has been able to concretely answer one way or another.
05:34That of course being, is Childs the Thing?
05:37But okay, let's back up for a second.
05:39After being terrorised by an alien shapeshifter at a research base in Antarctica, only two
05:44survivors remain by the end of The Thing, Childs and MacReady.
05:49The latter has assumedly just blown the alien creature to kingdom come, destroying the whole
05:54base in the process.
05:56Sitting by the fire and slowly freezing to death, he's then greeted by Childs, who
06:00has miraculously survived and somehow caught up to him.
06:05Both understanding that they're totally done for either way, they tentatively offer
06:08each other a drink, uncertain whether one of them is The Thing.
06:12Now there have been a ridiculous amount of theories attempting to get to the bottom of
06:16this mystery over the years, analysing everything from the visibility of the actor's breath
06:21to the subtitles, but none have ever provided a real answer.
06:25That of course is kinda the point though.
06:28At this point in the story, it doesn't really matter either way if one of them is The Thing,
06:32they're both dead meat once that fire goes out.
06:36What Happened to the World?
06:37Resident Evil
06:38Paul W.S.
06:39Anderson's Resident Evil movie franchise did not care for such things as continuity
06:44or story or characters, and it laughed in the faces of everyone who assumed that it
06:50would.
06:51It had a big throaty laugh as well, like the one the Grinch does where he goes, HA!
06:55As a result, the franchise played fast and loose with coherency and made a laughingstock
06:59of anyone trying to piece together a proper timeline or a stable mythology for the whole
07:03story.
07:05The biggest headache in the series though regards the state of the world.
07:09While the zombie outbreaks initially started small in the first two movies, the third movie
07:14establishes that the T-Virus responsible for that has somehow gone airborne and devastated
07:19the entire world.
07:21Not only has most of the population been killed, but the virus has actually dried up the oceans
07:26and transformed the world into a Mad Max style desert wasteland.
07:31Which is all well and good, that is a very cool aesthetic, but then the fourth movie
07:36reins all of that back and transports our characters to locations with lush environments,
07:42huge bodies of water and nary a speck of sand in sight.
07:46So what gives?
07:48Well, nobody knows, this is just the beauty of this franchise I guess, continuity does
07:53not matter.
07:54The change is actually never even directly addressed in the movie, so audiences are just
07:59supposed to rely on their own imagination to fill in the blanks as to why the world
08:04changes states so dramatically.
08:062.
08:07Is it just a drug trip, Mandy?
08:10Mandy was a big part of the Nick Cage resurgence, and you can totally see why.
08:15It plays to the actor's madcap memeable strengths without falling into total parody,
08:20and straddles the line between being an art house horror and a batched bit insane dark
08:25comedy.
08:26Essentially, the general thrust of the narrative sees Cage attempting to avenge the death of
08:31his wife at the hands of a sinister cult.
08:34It's easier said than done though, as Cage's character is forced to fight against demonic
08:39bikers and later suffers through apocalyptic visions, with his sanity well and truly slipping.
08:46The film is quite upfront as well, with the fact that drugs play a heavy part in what
08:51audiences see on screen.
08:53Hell, much of the story hinges on characters being dosed up on LSD, so surely the wider
08:58moments can be chalked up to that right?
09:00It's all just one bad trip.
09:02Well, it's not really clear.
09:05The movie goes so mad and blurs the line between characters tripping and full-on supernatural
09:10shenanigans that nobody can really parse what's going on.
09:141.
09:15Were the Bugs Real?
09:16Bug
09:17Bug is a horror movie all about delusions and paranoia, so it's no surprise that it keeps
09:22the reality of its story closely guarded.
09:25Ostensibly, it's about two troubled lovers, one of whom is convinced that he's been
09:29infested with microscopic bugs by the military.
09:33He claims that during his time in the service, he was experimented on and is now being monitored
09:38by some unforeseen force, and that the motel room he's staying in is littered with these
09:44creepy crawlies.
09:46The only issue is though, the audience never actually sees any of the bugs in question.
09:52In fact, his lover initially doesn't see them either, until she also starts to buy
09:56into his story and starts to spiral into paranoia with him.
10:00Interestingly, while the movie pushes you into thinking that this dude's story is
10:04clearly nuts, it does also make you second guess whether or not he might actually be
10:10onto something.
10:11There's some confirmation bias purposefully left in there, some coincidences that do line
10:16up, which makes you leave the movie wondering, were they actually right, or have I been sucked
10:21into their conspiracy as well?
10:23So that's our list.
10:24I want to know what you guys think down in the comments below.
10:26Which other horror movie moments are you totally confused by, and do you think you
10:30know the answer to any of these?
10:32Let us know, and while you're down there, could you also please give us a like, share,
10:36subscribe, and head over to WhatCultureHorror for more lists like this on the regular.
10:40Even if you don't though, I've been Josh, thanks so much for watching, and I'll see
10:43you soon.