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Don't expect any help figuring these movie endings out.
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00:00While films that refuse to commit to a hard ending can absolutely come off as cowardly or unimaginative,
00:06when it works, it really works.
00:08And so we come to these 10 films, each of which eschewed a more conventional, defined ending,
00:14in favour of one you were left to figure out for yourself.
00:17So I am Gareth here from WhatCulture.com and here are 10 movie endings you can only work out for
00:22yourself.
00:2410. Martha Marcy May Marlene
00:27Martha Marcy May Marlene stars Elizabeth Olsen in her stellar film debut as Martha.
00:33A young woman who has been living with a cult for two years, and upon deciding to leave, struggles to
00:38pull herself away entirely.
00:40Even when exiting the cult and living with her sister Lucy, Martha has PTSD-induced delusions that the cult members
00:47are pursuing her,
00:48leading to a climax where Martha finally agrees to be taken to a mental hospital.
00:52As Lucy and her husband Ted drive Martha there, however, Martha notices a man she spotted earlier in the day
00:58get into his car and seemingly follow them.
01:01Martha looks out the back window of the car and then the film just ends.
01:05The whole point of Martha Marcy May Marlene is its ambiguity, namely that Martha is an unreliable narrator,
01:12and we as the audience have no idea if her perspective is correct or delusional.
01:16Whether you believe she's reacting to a fantasy or is indeed being followed by the cult,
01:21they're both completely valid reading sufficiently backed up by everything leading up to that point.
01:279. The Gift
01:28In Joel Edgerton's outstanding debut, married couple Simon and Robin Callum run into Simon's old high school classmate Gordo,
01:37an eccentric but seemingly well-meaning man who begins intruding on their personal life.
01:41Simon quickly grows uncomfortable with Gordo's presence, while Robin is more accommodating, and eventually Robin becomes pregnant.
01:48It's later revealed that in high school, Simon made a false report that Gordo had been molested by an older
01:54boy,
01:54resulting in him being bullied and almost murdered by his own father, who believed he was gay.
01:59This revelation drives a wedge between Simon and Robin, who, after giving birth to their son, decides to separate from
02:06him.
02:06But at film's end, Simon finds a gift box left for him by Gordo, containing a video which implies he
02:12may have drugged and raped Robin,
02:14and may therefore be the father of her child.
02:16The movie concludes without Gordo confirming the agonizing truth to Simon one way or another,
02:21in revenge for Simon refusing to own up to his own horrific act years prior.
02:26The gift of the title ultimately is the doubt that Gordo plants in the mind of both Simon and the
02:31audience,
02:32and if both outcomes weren't equally plausible, the ending wouldn't really work.
02:368. Shame
02:38Steve McQueen's Shame is a terrifically crafted depiction of sexual addiction,
02:42as executive Brandon struggles to quell his overpowering urges.
02:46The film opens with Brandon travelling to work on the New York City subway,
02:50when he makes flirtatious contact with an engaged woman,
02:53who eventually grows uncomfortable and disappears into the crowd.
02:56Throughout the film, Brandon is forced to confront the self-destructive nature of his addiction,
03:01and at the end, he once again crosses paths with the engaged woman on the subway,
03:05who this time appears far more interested in him.
03:08As the train pulls to a stop, McQueen cuts to black,
03:11leaving the audience to decide whether or not Brandon succumbs to his urges and follows the woman.
03:16The film gives you basically nothing one way or another to decisively determine what Brandon does.
03:21Him successfully turning the implied invitation down,
03:24or giving in to his addiction are both 100% believable outcomes,
03:28and it's really down to individual viewers whether they perceive the scene optimistically or not.
03:337. Horse Girl
03:35Netflix's Horse Girl stars Alison Brie as Sarah,
03:39a shy, awkward young woman who begins to have strange dreams and unaccounted for lapses of time in her memory.
03:45Those around Sarah believe her to be going through a mental health crisis,
03:49given her own mother's recent suicide.
03:51But Sarah becomes convinced she was abducted by aliens and may in fact be a clone.
03:55Sarah's beliefs only become more rigid as the story progresses,
03:59even after a stay in a psychiatric hospital.
04:01The film ends with Sarah being discharged, laying down on the ground,
04:05and suddenly being levitated into the air and seemingly abducted by a UFO.
04:10This is one of those endings you're free to take literally or not.
04:13It's entirely possible Sarah was indeed seeing reality the entire time,
04:17and was abducted at the end.
04:18But it's also entirely probable she's in the midst of a delusional episode,
04:22and the abduction could even represent her suicide.
04:25The film makes no attempt at all to come down on one side or the other,
04:28and as such it's left viewers baffled and divided ever since.
04:326. Crash 1996
04:35David Cronenberg's Crash is a fascinatingly twisted erotic thriller
04:39about a group of individuals who are sexually aroused by car crashes.
04:43Following a brutal car accident,
04:45protagonist James Ballard enters this strange subculture,
04:49where those who partake in fetishizing car crashes
04:52often end up killing themselves in accidents.
04:54At the end, James and his wife Catherine
04:56embark on a consensual vehicular chase with one another on the freeway,
05:00with Catherine unbuckling her seatbelt
05:02and being rammed violently off the road by her husband.
05:05However, James finds that Catherine is largely unharmed,
05:08and as the pair begin having sex on the ground,
05:10he tells her, maybe the next one.
05:12There are certainly conclusions which can be drawn from this ending.
05:15Most notably, that James may be referring to death
05:18being the only realistic outcome of their fetish,
05:20a fate which befalls several other car crash fetishes in the film,
05:24and that it just may come to fruition next time.
05:27It's worth mentioning, however, that Catherine utters this same line
05:30near the start of the film,
05:31when James openly discusses an unsatisfying
05:33extra-marital sexual encounter he had.
05:36It's certainly possible that Cronenberg's film is simply speaking more broadly
05:40about the unending pursuit of an unattainable,
05:42ultimate pleasure which continues to elude the pair.
05:45It's possible Cronenberg intended audience to pick up on all of this,
05:49and yet he leaves it ambiguous enough for viewers to decide for themselves.
05:535. Doubt
05:54John Patrick Shanley's Doubt, adapted from his own Tony Award-winning play,
05:59is centred around the possible guilt of Father Flynn,
06:02a priest who may or may not be abusing a young altar boy.
06:05On one hand, there's sister James, who is more willing to believe Flynn's innocence,
06:09and on the other, sister Aloysius, who is convinced of his guilt.
06:13Aloysius eventually convinces Flynn to move to another church under the threat of blackmail,
06:18before it's revealed that the blackmail was entirely fabricated.
06:21Yet Aloysius reasons that it wouldn't have worked unless Flynn were guilty.
06:25At film's end, Aloysius sees Flynn's resignation as proof of his guilt,
06:29while James maintains his innocence.
06:31In the final scene, Aloysius declares to her,
06:33I have doubts, I have such doubts, as she breaks down in tears.
06:38There's a lot for the audience to consider for themselves here.
06:41First and foremost, whether Flynn truly was guilty,
06:43and then precisely what Aloysius has doubts about.
06:46Is she doubting her accusations against Flynn,
06:49her faith, the presence of God around her, or all of the above?
06:52Exactly what that final scene means has sparked fierce debate among audiences
06:56ever since the original play made its debut.
06:594. Burning
07:01Lee Changdong's mesmerizing thriller, Burning, follows a young man, Zhong Su,
07:06who runs into a childhood friend, He Mi, with whom he becomes infatuated.
07:10He Mi soon enough heads off on a trip and returns with Ben,
07:13a man she met on her journey,
07:15an initially affable yet mysterious man who may or may not harbor a dark secret.
07:20Ben eventually confides in Zhong Su that he periodically burns down abandoned greenhouses
07:25in order to feel alive, with the implication being that Ben may or may not be using
07:29burning greenhouses as a euphemism for murdering young, lonely women.
07:34Thereafter, He Mi goes missing and Zhong Su comes to believe that Ben is the culprit,
07:39resulting in him murdering Ben at the very end of the movie.
07:41And yet, Changdong never commits to Ben's potential guilt one way or another,
07:45leaving the matter teetering so brilliantly on a razor's edge.
07:49Audiences are free to read into Ben's apparent euphemism and his possible sociopathic tells,
07:54or not.
07:55Number 3, Being There
07:56Being There stars Peter Sellers as Chance,
08:00the simple-minded gardener of a wealthy old man
08:02who hasn't ever set foot outside of the man's lush Washington, D.C. townhouse.
08:07When the man dies, Chance is sent out into the wide world,
08:10where through a series of improbable incidents,
08:13he ends up being considered to become president of the United States.
08:16In the film's famous final scene, Chance is shown walking across a lake,
08:21seemingly defying the natural laws of physics,
08:23before dipping his umbrella in the water,
08:25into which it disappears before he pulls it back out.
08:28In the closing seconds, we then hear the current president say,
08:32life is a state of mind.
08:33There's a lot to unpack here.
08:35There's very obviously a biblical connotation to Chance walking on water,
08:38which might suggest he's implied to be a savior of humanity.
08:42On the other hand, in referring to that final line,
08:45it may be saying that the blissfully ignorant Chance is able to walk on water,
08:49precisely because he didn't know he couldn't do it.
08:51Either way, it makes for one hell of an ending.
08:54Number 2, The Lobster
08:56Yorgos Lanthimos's deliriously twisted black comedy, The Lobster,
09:00takes place in a bizarre dystopia where single people are given just 45 days to find a partner,
09:06or be transformed into an animal of their choosing.
09:09Singletons are encouraged to seek out potential partners with characteristics similar to themselves,
09:13and so protagonist David eventually settles on a woman who, like him, is short-sighted.
09:18However, the woman ends up being blinded by the leader of the loners,
09:22single people who live in the forest.
09:24And so, at film's end, David is forced to decide whether to blind himself in order to remain
09:28compatible with her.
09:30At a restaurant, David goes to the bathroom and prepares to stab himself in the eyes with a steak
09:34knife.
09:35Yet the movie ends before he actually does.
09:37It's absolutely believable that David blinds himself in order to be with the woman,
09:41but at the same time, it's completely plausible he bails on her and flees.
09:45Hell, perhaps David simply pretends to have blinded himself.
09:48Lanthimos sets all three of these endings up without giving preference to any of them.
09:53Number 1.
09:53Picnic at Hanging Rock
09:55Peter Weir's brilliant mystery drama Picnic at Hanging Rock depicts, or rather doesn't,
10:01the disappearance of two schoolgirls and their teacher at Australia's Hanging Rock on
10:05Valentine's Day in 1900.
10:07The film ends without the trio's vanishing act ever being solved, while the death of the
10:12school's headmistress, Miss Appleyard, can either be interpreted as an accident or suicide.
10:17Though the movie makes it abundantly clear that something incredibly strange is going
10:20on at Hanging Rock, with the eerie presence of invisible, seemingly supernatural forces,
10:25like its source novel, it's stopped short of granting the viewer any concrete resolution.
10:30A cut final chapter from the novel would have revealed that the girls disappeared into
10:34another dimension, a revelation which was quite sensibly excised in lieu of a more provocative,
10:39ambiguous ending.
10:40Yet audiences are of course free to consider that non-ending as a possibility, or equally
10:45that there was no supernatural explanation for the girls' disappearance at all.
10:50It's down to you to decide.
10:51And that's our list, know of any other movie endings you can only work out for yourself?
10:56Let us know all about them in the comments section right down below, and don't forget
10:59to like, share and click on that subscribe button while you're down there.
11:02Also if you like this sort of stuff then please head on over to whatculture.com and find
11:05some more fantastic articles just like the one this video you're watching right now is
11:09based on.
11:10I've been Gareth from whatculture.com, thank you for checking out this video that you
11:13can work out for yourself afterwards.
11:15Now go and check out some more WhatCulture goodness and have an epic day wherever you
11:19are.
11:19See you later!
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