10 Sci-Fi Movie Endings No One Understands

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The twists, time loops, and surreal head trips which left viewers wondering "What the..."

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00:00Some sci-fi movies are almost impossible to understand. Sure, there are plenty of Star Wars

00:04and Star Treks to go around, but outside of the genre's more approachable side, there are always

00:09more strange, thoughtful and downright surreal offerings which defy all explanation. With that

00:14in mind then, despite the fact that we don't know what's going on, spoiler warnings are in full

00:18effect because I'm SciForWhatCulture.com and these are 10 Sci-Fi Movie Endings No One Understands.

00:25Number 10, 12 Monkeys. What was the point of time traveling? Released in 1995, Terry Gilliam's

00:3112 Monkeys may be one of the perpetually studio-stifled former Python's most beloved films.

00:36However, like his equally acclaimed earlier F at Brazil, it's also one of the filmmaker's

00:40bleakest hours. The film follows our potentially insane hero Cole after an epidemic wipes out

00:45much of the world. Sent too far back in time and ending up in an asylum, he attempts to inform

00:50himself of the danger in order to stop the tragedy ever occurring. However,

00:54Cole is soon stuck being bounced back and forth between intersecting timelines in a story which

00:58becomes more bizarre and Byzantian the further it progresses. By the end of the film, our nominal

01:03hero is dying in front of his younger self, embodying a nightmare he's had throughout the whole movie.

01:08But why? Why send him back if he was doomed to repeat this fate? What would have happened if he

01:13hadn't gone back? What was the whole point? This complex film posits that you can change what you

01:17take from the past even if you can't alter what happened back then through an uncompromisingly bleak and

01:22convoluted plot? 9. Coherence. What will M do next?

01:27Coherence's story can technically be followed on first viewing, but requires numerous spreadsheets

01:32to successfully untie every knot. This underrated 2013 sci-fi follows a group of friends at a dinner

01:38party who are besieged by odd occurrences, only to discover that they are accidentally able to walk

01:42into an alternate, simultaneously occurring reality alongside their own. By the time the film's surreal

01:48ending rolls around, you may well be lost as the friends have encountered and clashed with so many

01:52versions of themselves that it's impossible to remember which reality the film has settled in.

01:57Not only is the cause of this temporal anomaly never explained beyond one mention of a passing

02:01comet, our heroine is now stuck with a group of people who have no idea about the emerging

02:05multiverse realities. So good luck explaining whatever the mind f that was that viewers just

02:10witnessed to these versions of your friends M. 8. The Quiet Earth. Where is the beach?

02:17Released in 1985, this New Zealand sci-fi film is still an underrated slice of post-apocalyptic

02:22action. The Quiet Earth follows the fate of three survivors after the end of the world,

02:26a scientist, an aboriginal man, and the love interest who the pair are soon competing for

02:30the affections of in a love triangle that turns metaphysical fast. At first,

02:34the film's tense and interesting action is fairly easy to follow with the unlikely trio attempting

02:38to survive as well as trying to understand what happened to their devastated planet. Then comes

02:43the film's infamously strange ending wherein our hero crashes a truck rigged with explosives and wakes

02:48up on a dark beach watching cloud formations as they emerge from the ocean in front of him.

02:53The imagery in this one may feel impossible to decipher but the director insists it's a pretty

02:57easy to uncover metaphor for purgatory. Maybe it helps if you share his lapped catholicism but luckily

03:03said director also conceded that enigmatic is good. Just as well he thinks so given the fact

03:07that almost no viewers understand what's happening here the first time they see it.

03:117. Stalker. Was the wish granted? Released in 1979, the deeply confusing and complex Stalker is

03:18often singled out as the finest film from Solaris director Andrei Tarkovsky. The body of the film's

03:24action sees the titular guide bring a heartbroken writer and their disagreeable professor companion

03:29through The Zone, a space which is said to contain a room that grants the wishes of its visitors.

03:33All manner of metaphysical arguments proceeds from here as well as plenty of stunning scenery and

03:38strange surreal imagery and of course an enigmatic ending. It's impossible to decide for certain

03:42whether our young heroine monkey is moving glasses with her mind or the passing trains soon seen by

03:47the viewer are causing them to shake along with the rest of the house. Thus the viewer is left to

03:51decide for themselves whose desire was granted and how real or imaginary The Zone's supposed power was

03:57after all. Thus Stalker leaves viewers no clearer than they were at the beginning.

04:016. A Scanner Darkly. What's the motive? Who would you trust more, a pharmaceutical company or the

04:07feds? No matter your answer, the ending of this Philip K Dick adaptation is likely to leave you

04:12heartbroken. A Scanner Darkly is likely the most personal of the many stories mined from the prolific

04:17sci-fi writer's back catalogue. Its tale of an undercover cop who falls in with a crowd of drug users and

04:22grows to care for them more than his shadowy superiors was based on Dick's own experience with drugs and the

04:26gradual dissolution of his friend group through the tragedy of addiction. So appropriately enough,

04:31the end of this dark 2006 adaptation sees Keanu Reeves's paranoid anti-hero become addicted to

04:36substance D. He appears to be blissfully ignorant of the fact that he's farming the flowers used to

04:41synthesize the drug for the mysterious and dangerous company who produce it. But then he steals a sample to

04:46provide his superiors, meaning he's still undercover, provide for himself since he's still addicted,

04:51or provide to his friends who the viewer is pretty sure are dead and gone. It's hard to tell,

04:55but whatever the answer, it's probably better than being stuck farming drugs for your enemies.

05:005. Life Force

05:01What's going on with the Space Vampires?

05:04Poor Tobe Hooper. The horror genius behind the Texas Chainsaw Massacre created what is

05:08undoubtedly one of the most intense horror films in cinema history with his 1974 mega hit. However,

05:14in the decades since, he never really reached the same staggering heights artistically with a string

05:18of interesting but flawed films following his initial blockbuster success.

05:22Case in point, 1985's sci-fi vampire horror Life Force has a killer premise which soon becomes

05:27drowned in overly complex plotting. The movie follows a set of scientists as they attempt to

05:31study a trio of astronauts who appear to have transformed into space vampires, a conceit with

05:36plenty of potential provided it doesn't become needlessly convoluted. The film's problem is

05:40epitomized by its bizarre ending, one of which remains a point of contention for sci-fi and horror fans alike.

05:45So one of our heroes was a space vampire the whole time, unbeknownst to himself due to a

05:50hitherto unmentioned psychic bond? And said space vampires arrive and leave Earth based on the

05:54passing of Halley's Comet? And they simply transform our hero included into a vanishing column of

05:59energy to disappear at the end? Of course, what could have been clearer? And here this one seemed

06:04confusing for a minute. 4. Planet of the Apes 2001

06:08How did the apes change reality? It's pretty much impossible to overstate

06:12the influence of the ending featured in 60s sci-fi classic Planet of the Apes. The otherwise

06:16solid Charlton Heston vehicle became instantly iconic and spawned an entire franchise thanks to

06:21its killer twist. The reveal that, as Troy McClure would put it, it was Earth all along, was an

06:27unheralded and dazzling ending which would still make the likes of Hitchcock and M. Night Shyamalan proud.

06:32So the oddly chosen director Tim Burton's 2001 remake of the classic had pretty sizable shoes to fill

06:38in this regard. The film attempted to outdo the original bombshell twist, but instead left viewers

06:43with a brain-melting, time-twisting paradox of alternate histories to untangle. By the time this

06:48version reaches its close, our hero has returned to his own time, but the apes have gotten their first

06:52somehow. Not only that, they've gone and replaced the statue of Abraham Lincoln with

06:56a villainous future ape. Well, presumably they've done more than that whilst rewriting history,

07:00but good luck working out how they managed it on first viewing.

07:033. The Black Hole. What's in The Black Hole?

07:07Now, most of the entries on this list do have explanations which can untangle their initially

07:11impossible-to-decipher meanings, but your guess is as good as ours on 1979's The Black Hole and its

07:17strange surreal closing coda. Your interpretation is also as good as the director's too, as the film's

07:22creators admitted they never had an ending in mind when working on this Disney flop. All that can be

07:27said for sure is that yes, our heroic captain finds her father's long-lost spaceship near a black hole and

07:32decides to board the vessel in order to solve the mystery behind his disappearance. But from there

07:36on out, trippy 70s sci-fi psychedelia takes over proceedings and maintains a stranglehold on the

07:42plot until the infamous ending. No matter the elasticity of your interpretation, all that appears to

07:47be clear is that yes, the characters enter and later leave what looks like hell through the titular

07:52black hole at the film's close. The film then sees its characters plunging towards a faraway star that

07:58might be heaven, might be the way back home to earth, it might just be a star, who knows?

08:022. Vanilla Sky What is tech support? Released in 2001, Vanilla Sky is one of director

08:09Cameron Crowe's most underrated cinematic offerings, as well as being a major tonal

08:13departure for the almost famous filmmaker. This Tom Cruise vehicle is a surprisingly cerebral and dark

08:18thriller which sees our hero thrust into a world of mystery and intrigue. It all starts in the iconic

08:23sequence wherein he awakens to an empty New York City, a surreal sight which serves as a warning

08:28that all is not as it seems. And indeed, the viewer eventually learns that this isn't New York at all.

08:34The protagonist has been in an induced coma this entire time, and the glimpses of his real life

08:38have been glitches in the system. Well, don't expect any answers from the film's ambiguous ending

08:43anyway. So-called tech support offers the above explanation, but there's no way of knowing if

08:47they're telling the truth, if this is all a dream, or if it's a dying hallucination in the moment

08:51since his car crash. In the end, the viewer knows our hero is choosing to wake up, but whether he's

08:56dead, alive, in heaven, in purgatory, in a coma, or anywhere else, is very unclear.

09:02Number one, Beyond the Black Rainbow. Everything about it. Released in 2010,

09:07Panos Cosmitos' Beyond the Black Rainbow signalled the arrival of a singular new talent in the world

09:12of psychedelic sci-fi. Garnering understandable comparisons to the work of Alejandro Jodorowsky,

09:16the film saw the visionary director turn the story of a telekinetic girl,

09:20and the shadowy doctor experimenting on her into a total brain melter.

09:24How much so? Well, the movie manages to make a shot of some carpets into a trippy,

09:28nightmarish, prolonged sequence. So its take on telekinesis, mind melding,

09:32and new age transcendence are understandably pretty insane too.

09:35But as confusing as the bulk of this film's action is, the ending truly takes the biscuit,

09:39with a wild and impossible to decipher psychedelic odyssey, which makes Kubrick's 2001 look easy to

09:45follow in comparison. Suffice it to say that the viewer never learns the mysterious

09:48origins or intentions of the Arborea Institute outside of the eponymous doctor's attempts to

09:53achieve transcendence, a goal which ends with him maybe succeeding? Definitely becoming something

09:58more than human and very dangerous. As for our heroine, she may be free to roam the earth,

10:03but the viewer still has no idea where she came from, how she acquired her powers,

10:07or what's next for her. And that's the list. Let us know what you thought of this video down in the

10:12comments below. Which of the sci-fi movie endings blew your mind the most? And of course, let us

10:16know of any others that we missed. Make sure you like this video, share it with your friends,

10:20subscribe and hit that notification bell. Head over to whatculture.com for more content every day.

10:24I've been CypherWattCulture and have a good week.

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