The twists, time loops, and surreal head trips which left viewers wondering "What the..."
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00:00 Some sci-fi movies are almost impossible to understand.
00:02 Sure, there are plenty of Star Wars and Star Treks to go around, but outside of the genre's
00:07 more approachable side, there are always more strange, thoughtful and downright surreal
00:11 offerings which defy all explanation.
00:13 With that in mind then, despite the fact that we don't know what's going on, spoiler
00:17 warnings are in full effect, because I'm Sci for WhatCulture.com and these are 10 Sci-Fi
00:22 Movie Endings No One Understands.
00:25 10.
00:26 12 Monkeys
00:27 What was the point of time travelling?
00:29 Set in 1995, Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys may be one of the perpetually studio-stifled
00:33 former Pythons' most beloved films.
00:36 However, like his equally acclaimed earlier effort Brazil, it's also one of the filmmakers'
00:40 bleakest hours.
00:41 The film follows our potentially insane hero Cole after an epidemic wipes out much of the
00:46 world.
00:47 Sent too far back in time and ending up in an asylum, he attempts to inform himself of
00:51 the danger in order to stop the tragedy ever occurring.
00:53 However, Cole is soon stuck being bounced back and forth between intersecting timelines
00:58 in a story which becomes more bizarre and Byzantian the further it progresses.
01:02 By the end of the film, our nominal hero is dying in front of his younger self, embodying
01:06 a nightmare he's had throughout the whole movie.
01:08 But why?
01:09 Why send him back if he was doomed to repeat this fate?
01:12 What would have happened if he hadn't gone back?
01:14 What was the whole point?
01:15 This complex film posits that you can change what you take from the past, even if you can't
01:19 alter what happened back then through an uncompromisingly bleak and convoluted plot.
01:24 9.
01:25 Coherence
01:26 What will M do next?
01:27 Coherence's story can technically be followed on first viewing, but requires numerous spreadsheets
01:32 to successfully untie every knot.
01:34 This underrated 2013 sci-fi follows a group of friends at a dinner party who are besieged
01:39 by odd occurrences, only to discover that they are accidentally able to walk into an
01:42 alternate, simultaneously occurring reality alongside their own.
01:46 By the time the film's surreal ending rolls around, you may well be lost, as the friends
01:50 have encountered and clashed with so many versions of themselves that it's impossible
01:54 to remember which reality the film has settled in.
01:57 Not only is the cause of this temporal anomaly never explained beyond one mention of a passing
02:01 comet, our heroine is now stuck with a group of people who have no idea about the emerging
02:05 multiverse realities.
02:07 So good luck explaining whatever the mind-eff that was that viewers just witnessed to these
02:11 versions of your friends, M.
02:13 8.
02:14 The Quiet Earth
02:15 Where is the beach?
02:17 Released in 1985, this New Zealand sci-fi film is still an underrated slice of post-apocalyptic
02:22 action.
02:23 The Quiet Earth follows the fate of three survivors after the end of the world - a scientist,
02:26 an aboriginal man, and the love interest who the pair are soon competing for the affections
02:30 of in a love triangle that turns metaphysical fast.
02:33 At first, the film's tense and interesting action is fairly easy to follow, with the
02:37 unlikely trio attempting to survive as well as trying to understand what happened to their
02:41 devastated planet.
02:43 Then comes the film's infamously strange ending wherein our hero crashes a truck rigged
02:47 with explosives and wakes up on a dark beach, watching cloud formations as they emerge from
02:51 the ocean in front of him.
02:53 The imagery in this one may feel impossible to decipher, but the director insists it's
02:56 a pretty easy-to-uncover metaphor for purgatory.
02:59 Maybe it helps if you share his lapped Catholicism, but luckily said director also conceded that
03:04 enigmatic is good.
03:06 Just as well he'd think so, given the fact that almost no viewers understand what's
03:09 happening here the first time they see it.
03:11 7.
03:12 Stalker - Was the Wish Granted?
03:15 Released in 1979, the deeply confusing and complex Stalker is often singled out as the
03:19 finest film from Solaris director Andrei Tarkovsky.
03:23 The body of the film's action sees the titular guy bring a heartbroken writer and their disagreeable
03:27 professor companion through The Zone, a space which is said to contain a room that grants
03:31 the wishes of its visitors.
03:33 All manner of metaphysical arguments proceed from here, as well as plenty of stunning scenery
03:37 and strange surreal imagery, and of course an enigmatic ending.
03:41 It's impossible to decide for certain whether our young heroine monkey is moving glasses
03:45 with her mind, or the passing trains soon seen by the viewer are causing them to shake
03:48 along with the rest of the house.
03:50 Thus, the viewer is left to decide for themselves whose desire was granted, and how real or
03:54 imaginary The Zone's supposed power was after all.
03:58 Thus, Stalker leaves viewers no clearer than they were at the beginning.
04:01 6.
04:02 A Scanner Darkly - What's the Motive?
04:05 Who would you trust more, a pharmaceutical company or the Feds?
04:08 No matter your answer, the ending of this Philip K. Dick adaptation is likely to leave
04:11 you heartbroken.
04:13 A Scanner Darkly is likely the most personal of the many stories mined from the prolific
04:16 sci-fi writer's back catalogue.
04:18 Its tale of an undercover cop who falls in with a crowd of drug users and grows to care
04:22 for them more than his shadowy superiors was based on Dick's own experience with drugs
04:26 and the gradual dissolution of his friend group through the tragedy of addiction.
04:29 So appropriately enough, the end of this dark 2006 adaptation sees Keanu Reeves' paranoid
04:34 anti-hero become addicted to Substance D. He appears to be blissfully ignorant of the
04:39 fact that he's farming the flowers used to synthesise the drug for the mysterious
04:42 and dangerous company who produce it.
04:44 But then he steals a sample to… provide his superiors, meaning he's still undercover?
04:49 Provide for himself, since he's still addicted?
04:51 Or provide to his friends, who the viewer is pretty sure are dead and gone?
04:54 It's hard to tell, but whatever the answer, it's probably better than being stuck farming
04:58 drugs for your enemies.
05:00 5.
05:01 Life Force - What's Going On With The Space Vampires?
05:03 Poor Tobey Hooper.
05:05 The horror genius behind the Texas Chainsaw Massacre created what is undoubtedly one of
05:09 the most intense horror films in cinema history with his 1974 mega-hit.
05:13 However, in the decades since, he never really reached the same staggering heights artistically
05:17 with a string of interesting but flawed films following his initial blockbuster success.
05:22 Case in point, 1985's sci-fi vampire horror Life Force has a killer premise which soon
05:26 becomes drowned in overly complex plotting.
05:29 The movie follows a set of scientists as they attempt to study a trio of astronauts who
05:32 appear to have transformed into space vampires, a conceit with plenty of potential provided
05:37 it doesn't become needlessly convoluted.
05:39 The film's problem is epitomised by its bizarre ending, one of which remains a point
05:42 of contention for sci-fi and horror fans alike.
05:45 So one of our heroes was a space vampire the whole time, unbeknownst to himself due to
05:49 a hitherto unmentioned psychic bond, and said space vampires arrive and leave Earth based
05:54 on the passing of Haley's Comet, and they simply transform our hero included into a
05:58 vanishing column of energy to disappear at the end.
06:01 Of course, what could have been clearer?
06:03 And here this one seemed confusing for a minute.
06:05 4.
06:06 Planet of the Apes 2001 - How Did The Apes Change Reality?
06:10 It's pretty much impossible to overstate the influence of the ending featured in 60s
06:14 sci-fi classic Planet of the Apes.
06:16 The otherwise solid Charlton Heston vehicle became instantly iconic and spawned an entire
06:20 franchise thanks to its killer twist.
06:22 The reveal that, as Troy McClure would put it, "it was Earth all along" was an unheralded
06:27 and dazzling ending which would still make the likes of Hitchcock and M. Night Shyamalan
06:32 proud.
06:33 So the oddly chosen director Tim Burton's 2001 remake of the classic had pretty sizeable
06:37 shoes to fill in this regard.
06:39 The film attempted to outdo the original bombshell twist, but instead left viewers with a brain-melting,
06:44 time-twisting paradox of alternate histories to untangle.
06:47 By the time this version reaches its close, our hero has returned to his own time, but
06:50 the apes have gotten there first somehow.
06:53 Not only that, they've gone and replaced the statue of Abraham Lincoln with a villainous
06:56 future ape.
06:57 Well, presumably they've done more than that whilst rewriting history, but good luck
07:01 working out how they managed it on first viewing.
07:03 3.
07:04 The Black Hole - What's In The Black Hole?
07:07 Most of the entries on this list do have explanations which can untangle their initially impossible
07:12 to decipher meanings, but your guess is as good as ours on 1979's The Black Hole and
07:17 its strange, surreal closing coda.
07:19 Your interpretation is also as good as the director's too, as the film's creators
07:22 admitted they never had an ending in mind when working on this Disney flop.
07:26 All that can be said for sure is that yes, our heroic captain finds her father's long-lost
07:30 spaceship near a black hole and decides to board the vessel in order to solve the mystery
07:34 behind his disappearance.
07:36 But from there on out, trippy 70's sci-fi psychedelia takes over proceedings and maintains
07:40 a stranglehold on the plot until the infamous ending.
07:43 No matter the elasticity of your interpretation, all that appears to be clear is that yes,
07:48 the characters enter and later leave what looks like hell through the titular black
07:52 hole at the film's close.
07:54 The film then sees its characters plunging towards a faraway star that might be heaven,
07:59 might be the way back home to Earth, it might just be a star.
08:02 Who knows?
08:03 2.
08:04 Vanilla Sky - What is tech support?
08:06 Released in 2001, Vanilla Sky is one of director Cameron Crowe's most underrated cinematic
08:11 offerings, as well as being a major tonal departure for the almost famous filmmaker.
08:16 This Tom Cruise vehicle is a surprisingly cerebral and dark thriller which sees our
08:19 hero thrust into a world of mystery and intrigue.
08:22 It all starts in the iconic sequence wherein he awakens to an empty New York City, a surreal
08:27 sight, which serves as a warning that all is not as it seems.
08:31 And indeed, the viewer eventually learns that this isn't New York at all.
08:34 The protagonist has been in an induced coma this entire time, and the glimpses of his
08:38 real life have been glitches in the system.
08:40 Well, don't expect any answers from the film's ambiguous ending anyway.
08:43 So-called tech support offers the above explanation, but there's no way of knowing if they're
08:47 telling the truth, if this is all a dream, or if it's a dying hallucination in the
08:50 moment since his car crash.
08:52 In the end, the viewer knows our hero is choosing to wake up, but whether he's dead, alive,
08:57 in heaven, in purgatory, in a coma, or anywhere else, is very unclear.
09:02 1.
09:03 Beyond the Black Rainbow - Everything About It
09:05 Released in 2010, Panos Cosmitos' Beyond the Black Rainbow signalled the arrival of
09:10 a singular new talent in the world of psychedelic sci-fi.
09:13 Garnering understandable comparisons to the work of Alejandro Jadorowski, the film saw
09:17 the visionary director turn the story of a telekinetic girl and the shadowy doctor experimenting
09:21 on her into a total brain-melter.
09:23 How much so?
09:24 The film manages to make a shot of some carpet into a trippy, nightmarish, prolonged sequence.
09:29 So its take on telekinesis, mind-melding, and new age transcendence are understandably
09:34 pretty insane too.
09:35 But as confusing as the bulk of this film's action is, the ending truly takes the biscuit,
09:39 with a wild and impossible to decipher psychedelic odyssey which makes Kubrick's 2001 look
09:44 easy to follow in comparison.
09:46 Suffice it to say that the viewer never learns the mysterious origins or intentions of the
09:50 Arborea Institute outside of the eponymous doctor's attempts to achieve transcendence,
09:54 a goal which ends with him maybe succeeding?
09:58 Definitely becoming something more than human and very dangerous.
10:01 As for our heroine, she may be free to roam the earth, but the viewer still has no idea
10:05 where she came from, how she acquired her powers, or what's next for her.
10:09 And that's the list!
10:10 Let us know what you thought of this video down in the comments below.
10:12 Which of these sci-fi movie endings blew your mind the most?
10:15 And of course, let us know of any others that we missed.
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10:21 bell, head over to whatculture.com for more content every day, I've been Scythe for What
10:25 Culture and have a good week!