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, Cole is soon stuck being
00:55bounced back and forth between intersecting timelines in a story which becomes more bizarre
00:59and Byzantian the further it progresses. By the end of the film, our nominal hero is dying in front
01:04of his younger self, embodying a nightmare he's had throughout the whole movie. But why? Why send him
01:10back if he was doomed to repeat this fate? What would have happened if he hadn't gone back? What was the
01:14whole point? This complex film posits that you can change what you take from the past even if you can't alter what
01:20happened back then through an uncompromisingly bleak and convoluted plot.
01:24Number nine, Coherence. What will M do next? Coherence's story can technically be followed on
01:30first viewing but requires numerous spreadsheets to successfully untie every knot. This underrated
01:352013 sci-fi follows a group of friends at a dinner party who are besieged by odd occurrences only to
01:40discover that they are accidentally able to walk into an alternate simultaneously occurring reality
01:45alongside their own. By the time the film's surreal ending rolls around, you may well be
01:50lost as the friends have encountered and clashed with so many versions of themselves that it's
01:54impossible to remember which reality the film has settled in. Not only is the cause of this temporal
01:58anomaly never explained beyond one mention of a passing comet, our heroine is now stuck with a
02:03group of people who have no idea about the emerging multiverse realities. So good luck explaining
02:08whatever the mind f that was that viewers just witnessed to these versions of your friends, M.
02:13Number eight, The Quiet Earth. Where is the beach? Released in 1985, this New Zealand sci-fi film is
02:19still an underrated slice of post-apocalyptic action. The Quiet Earth follows the fate of three
02:24survivors after the end of the world, a scientist, an Aboriginal man and the love interest who the
02:28pair are soon competing for the affections of in a love triangle that turns metaphysical fast.
02:33At first, the film's tense and interesting action is fairly easy to follow with the unlikely trio
02:38attempting to survive as well as trying to understand what happened to their devastated planet.
02:42Then comes the film's infamously strange ending wherein our hero crashes a truck rigged with
02:47explosives and wakes up on a dark beach watching cloud formations as they emerge from the ocean in
02:52front of him. The imagery in this one may feel impossible to decipher but the director insists it's
02:57a pretty easy to uncover metaphor for purgatory. Maybe it helps if you share his lapped catholicism but
03:02luckily said director also conceded that enigmatic is good. Just as well he thinks so given the fact that
03:07almost no viewers understand what's happening here the first time they see it.
03:11Number 7. 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
03:37and strange surreal imagery and of course an enigmatic ending. It's impossible to decide
03:42for certain whether our young heroine monkey is moving glasses with her mind or the passing trains
03:47soon seen by the viewer are causing them to shake along with the rest of the house. Thus the viewer is
03:51left to decide for themselves whose desire was granted and how real or imaginary The Zone's supposed
03:56power was after all. Thus Stalker leaves viewers no clearer than they were at the beginning.
04:01Number 6. A scanner darkly. What's the motive? Who would you trust more,
04:06a pharmaceutical company or the feds? No matter your answer, the ending of this Philip K Dick
04:10adaptation is likely to leave you heartbroken. A scanner darkly is likely the most personal of
04:15the many stories mined from the prolific sci-fi writers back catalogue. Its tale of an undercover
04:20cop who falls in with a crowd of drug users and grows to care for them more than his shadowy
04:23superiors was based on Dick's own experience with drugs and the gradual dissolution of his friend
04:28group through the tragedy of addiction. So, appropriately enough, the end of this dark 2006 adaptation
04:33sees Keanu Reeves' paranoid anti-hero become addicted to substance D. He appears to be
04:38blissfully ignorant of the fact that he's farming the flowers used to synthesize the drug for the
04:42mysterious and dangerous company who produce it. But then he steals a sample to provide his superiors,
04:47meaning he's still undercover, provide for himself since he's still addicted, or provide to his friends
04:52who the viewer is pretty sure are dead and gone. It's hard to tell, but whatever the answer,
04:56it's probably better than being stuck farming drugs for your enemies. Number five, Life Force.
05:01What's going on with the space vampires? Poor Toby Hooper. The horror genius behind the Texas
05:06Chainsaw Massacre created what is undoubtedly one of the most intense horror films in cinema history
05:11with his 1974 mega-hit. However, in the decades since, he never really reached the same staggering
05:16heights artistically with a string of interesting but flawed films following his initial blockbuster
05:21success. Case in point, 1985 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 study a trio
05:32of astronauts who appear to have transformed into space vampires, a conceit with plenty of potential
05:36provided it doesn't become needlessly convoluted. The film's problem is epitomized by its bizarre
05:41ending, one of which remains a point of contention for sci-fi and horror fans alike. So one of our heroes
05:46was a space vampire the whole time, unbeknownst to himself due to a hitherto unmentioned psychic bond?
05:52And said space vampires arrive and leave Earth based on the passing of Halley's Comet? And they simply
05:56transform our hero included into a vanishing column of energy to disappear at the end? Of course,
06:02what could have been clearer? And here this one seemed confusing for a minute. Number four, Planet of the Apes
06:072001. How did the apes change reality? It's pretty much impossible to overstate the influence of the ending
06:13featured in 60s sci-fi classic Planet of the Apes. The otherwise solid Charlton Heston vehicle became
06:18instantly iconic and spawned an entire franchise thanks to its killer twist. The reveal that,
06:23as Troy McClure would put it, it was Earth all along, was an unheralded and dazzling ending which
06:29would still make the likes of Hitchcock and M. Night Shyamalan proud. So the oddly chosen director
06:34Tim Burton's 2001 remake of the classic had pretty sizable shoes to fill in this regard. The film
06:39attempted to outdo the original bombshell twist, but instead left viewers with a brain-melting,
06:44time-twisting paradox of alternate histories to untangle. By the time this version reaches its
06:48close, our hero has returned to his own time, but the apes have gotten their first somehow. Not only
06:53that, they've gone and replaced the statue of Abraham Lincoln with a villainous future ape. Well,
06:58presumably they've done more than that whilst rewriting history, but good luck working out how they
07:02managed it on first viewing. Number three, 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 on out,
07:37trippy 70s sci-fi psychedelia takes over proceedings and maintains a stranglehold on the plot until the
07:42infamous ending. No matter the elasticity of your interpretation, all that appears to be clear is
07:47that yes, the characters enter and later leave what looks like hell through the titular black hole at
07:52the film's close. The film then sees its characters plunging towards a faraway star that might be heaven,
07:59might 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 Cameron
08:09Crowe's most underrated cinematic offerings, as well as being a major tonal departure for the
08:14almost famous filmmaker. This Tom Cruise vehicle is a surprisingly cerebral and dark thriller which
08:19sees our hero thrust into a world of mystery and intrigue. It all starts in the iconic sequence
08:24wherein he awakens to an empty New York City, a surreal sight which serves as a warning that all is not as it
08:30seems. And indeed, the viewer eventually learns that this isn't New York at all. The protagonist
08:35has been in an induced coma this entire time, and the glimpses of his real life have been glitches in
08:39the system. Well, don't expect any answers from the film's ambiguous ending anyway. So-called tech
08:44support offers the above explanation, but there's no way of knowing if they're telling the truth,
08:48if this is all a dream, or if it's a dying hallucination in the moment since his car crash.
08:52In the end, the viewer knows our hero is choosing to wake up, but whether he's dead, alive, in heaven,
08:58in purgatory, in a coma, or anywhere else, is very unclear.
09:021. Beyond the Black Rainbow
09:04Everything about it
09:06Released in 2010, Panos Cosmitos' Beyond the Black Rainbow signalled the arrival of a singular new
09:11talent in the world of psychedelic sci-fi. Garnering understandable comparisons to the work of Alejandro
09:16Jodorowsky, the film saw the visionary director turn the story of a telekinetic girl and the shadowy
09:20doctor experimenting on her into a total brain-melter. How much so? Well,
09:24the movie manages to make a shot of some carpets into a trippy, nightmarish, prolonged sequence.
09:30So its take on telekinesis, mind-melding, and new age transcendence are understandably pretty insane
09:35too. But 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 origins or intentions of
09:50the Arborea Institute outside of the eponymous doctor's attempts to achieve transcendence,
09:54a goal which ends with him maybe succeeding? Definitely becoming something more than human
09:59and very dangerous. As for our heroine, she may be free to roam the earth, but the viewer still has
10:04no idea where she came from, how she acquired her powers, or what's next for her. And that's the list!
10:10Let us know what you thought of this video down in the comments below, which of the sci-fi movie endings
10:14blew your mind the most, and of course let us know of any others that we missed. Make sure you like this video,
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10:23for more content every day. I've been Cy for WhatCulture, and have a good week!