Movie Endings You Didn't Expect

The ending to the aussie film Take Away.

Night of the Living Dead (1968)
To Live and Die in L.A.
The Usual Suspects
Se7en
Get Carter (1971)
Fight Club
Identity
Planet of the Apes (1968) - watched it with my dad when I was ten, and kept asking him how it ended, but he refused to tell me. I was gobsmacked, It left a lasting impression.

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100 Favourites From The Future: REWIRED

Please remember not everyone has seen every movie and add SPOILER TAGS where needed. I just had to edit several posts in here... and now, pretty much know what happened in The Mist... which I've never seen...

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Iron Man



That was pretty unexpected by me.


And yea,the ending of The Sting is great.

No Way Out's ending was a surprise.

The reveal at the end of Memento definitely. It's not so much a twist, but a series of revelations. Sort of the same thing but not really. It's brilliant and definitely makes you reassess the entire film.


Frailty's ending shocked me too.

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The Long Goodbye has one of my favourite endings, always is a bit of a shock.

MEMENTO SPOILERS BELOW...









Is that what you think happened? Nah mate, that's cliched and would have been too easy.

A lot of people have different opinions on the ending, but they miss out on the fact that Teddy only tells most of the truth at the end. Lenny didn't kill his wife, the rape and murder actually happened. The tragedy is in Leonard's self deception, his ability to use his condition as both a curse and a gift.

He purposefully misremembers avenging his wife so that he can have a cause. He had originally killed the killer according to Teddy, but simply refused to be reminded because no matter what, he was always going t be in this perpetual cycle. His last memory was always going to be his wife dying.

Also, by writing down Teddy's licence plate, the film is indicating that Leonard knows his has been misguiding himself and is aware that he'll be able to connect with his future self by manipulating his 'facts'. By setting up Teddy (and many other innocent victims) Leonard creates a quest to give him some sort of purpose in life. That's the real twist. The fact that Leonard has become a sick, sick man while the people he has been targetting were innocent. Theres a lot more to it than that, but that'll require it's own thread.

The Mist
Burn After Reading
Superman Returns
The Exorcist

Yeah, i ain't stupid bruv. Got that bit, that was pretty obvious and like, the whole point of the film. But, well, according to my lecturer who was teaching Memento- as i'd already seen it and none of the halfwits in my class had even heard of it- i got to leave the screening but he asked if I got the twist at the end. I had to say no, and ask what he meant. Apparently, Leonard has the tattoos when he's lying in bed with his wife. It's a very implicit little clue that my lecturer suggested meant to he killed his wife. And i remember it making sense at the time, probably more to it than that though. Yeah, quick look on google, very quick because downloading is slowing it right down, came up with this http://archive.salon.com/ent/letters...to/index2.html

and remember what the tattoo says. Think you should just go and watch that last bit and read it for yourself

Presumed Innocent ( i really did not see that one coming)
Memento (great flick BTW)
The Usual Suspects (i think the ending is what really IMO made the movie brilliant... and I hate that - will discuss this some other time)
No way Out (again... NOT expecting it)
Identity
The Departed ( i guess u know what i mean)
Adaptation (not the ending per se.. just the whole last 1/3 of the movie)


I'll ponder on this for a while and come back in a few days... i know there's got to be more

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On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.

Oh right, soz i thought you were on about the general revelation. I read that link and yeah that's what I got from that too. I agree with whoever wrote that and that's more or less what was intended as the twist in the story. It's left purposefully ambiguous though, so that the audience can come up with their own theories and rationalisations. Sammy Jenkis' story wasn't a lie or the whole truth, but an incident that was misremembered from Leonard's to Sammy's. But heres were it all gets a tiny bit medical because the biggest miconception about Leonard's condition is that he can't form new memories at all. This is not true and the film indicates that many times. He is, on some level, aware of his condition and

His mind is always trying to create memories and is only partially successful. His mind takes the implicit recollection of the insulin OD and mistakenly (due to his condition) anchors it to explicit Sammy memories and which then stores it incorrectly. Therefore, when Lenny recalls the memory, he pulls up an inaccurately created memory. As a result, he truly believes that Sammy killed his own wife and when he thinks about the fact that Sammy did not have a wife, he realises the mistaken memory.


But that's what i'm saying, Teddy's revelation at the end is mostly true, but some bits he's left deliberately murky (perhaps out of the frustration of having told him many times before).

Oh, and as for the bed scene. Well, yeah, again I agree with that guy. Theres nothing I can add here. It's definitely intended as an ideal memory for Leonard.

The end of the first Friday the 13th film. Many horror films have copied it since, where the dead aren't dead.

Night of the Living Dead (B&W original)

Dead Silence, which I just finished watching (from the creators of SAW). Unexpected and a bit gruesome.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre (remake)

Grave of the Fireflies.

Godzilla Vs Destroyah.

Hostel (first).

Life is Beautiful.

Big Deal at Dodge City (which I prefer over the US title: A Big Hand for the Little Lady). It may have been a forerunner of The Sting, 7 years later.

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All secrets are safe with this man, because none are as deadly to him as his own. His secret is that he is Richard Kimble. (The Fugitive - Conspiracy of Silence)

I didn't find the ending to that un-expected.

King of California

Old Man in New Cars (danish film)
American History X
Abre Los Ojos (or Vanilla Sky for the US peeps)

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You hear that Mr. Anderson?
That is the sound of inevitability...It is the sound of your death.

Usual Suspects (who IS Keyser Soze??)
Fight Club ("ah, flashback humor")
I Am Legend (didn't expect that)
Memento (fantastic film all the way through)
The Departed (GREAT ending)
Reservoir Dogs (so rare for it to end like that)

2 of the best endings ive ever seen were:
-The Mist
-and the original of the Vanishing aka Spoorloos had a great ending that reminded me almost of a modern Edgar Allen Poe tale. Shame they changed it in the remake.

The Last American Virgin......and it pissed me off....but what a great/terrible ending.

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“The gladdest moment in human life, methinks, is a departure into unknown lands.” – Sir Richard Burton

My first times through, I never expected the endings of Joe, French Connection II, The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and Elmer Gantry. Then again, although it's the most perfect finale imaginable, I still have a hard time accepting the honest-to-God ending of Five Easy Pieces, and I've watched it about 15 times. It blows me away every time.


On the other hand, one of my other fave endings ever, Easy Rider, did blow me away initially, but now it seems to be a fait accompli.

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It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
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