10 Movies That Only Make Sense Until the Very End

When it comes to crafting a film, having a plot the audience can follow is of the utmost importance. Such a plot will usually either be simple and understandable without much effort from the audience, a la Transformers, or will be more complicated and require the audience to pay very close attention for the entire runtime, a la Inception.

However, some plots make complete sense for the entire runtime until the last few moments. In these cases, the sudden shift in plot can leave the audience confused at best or derail the entire movie at worst. For example, if a film is primarily grounded in reality, then abruptly introducing fantastical elements can create a sense of tonal whiplash by going against the established rules that have been laid out beforehand, like the bookshelf dimension at the end of Interstellar. With that in mind, these 10 movies go against everything they’ve previously built up in their final scenes.

10 ‘Shazam! Fury of the Gods’ (2023)

Directed by David F. Sandberg

The sequel to the hit 2019 superhero movie Shazam!, Shazam! Fury of the Gods follows Billy Batson and his newfound family as they deal with the threat of the newly unleashed Kalypso and Hespera. For the most part, Shazam! Fury of the Gods is a completely standard superhero movie. With magically-powered superhero action mixed in with MCU-style humor, the focus seemed to be on the battle between the aforementioned forces of good and evil. Keeping on this track, the film didn’t seem like it was going to have any seriously unexpected moments throughout its entire runtime.

That is, until the last minutes of the film. After Billy Batson sacrifices himself during the final battle, he is buried by his family, leading to a heartfelt moment of grief for both said family and the audience. Said moment then gets ruined by the sudden appearance of Wonder Woman, who then proceeds to revive Billy just as suddenly as she appeared. Instead of leaving the audience with a profound sense of grief for the loss of a beloved character, they are instead left with a forced happy ending brought on by someone whose inclusion wasn’t even remotely hinted at beforehand.

Shazam! Fury of the Gods is available to stream on Max in the U.S.

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9 ‘Lady in the Water’ (2006)

Directed by M. Night Shyamalan

Despite being known as the master of twist endings, M. Night Shyamalan‘s films are highly inconsistent in regard to their endings. For every Sixth Sense there’s another The Happening. And for every Unbreakable, there’s the 2006 fantasy flick Lady in the Water. Lady in the Water follows a building superintendent named Cleveland Heep as he tries to protect a magical woman named Story from evil forces.

The film spends most of its runtime on the relationship between Cleveland and Story as he does his best to protect her. In doing so, Cleveland slowly uncovers the truth behind Story’s mystical nature, as well as tries to use this newfound knowledge to figure out how best to protect her, going so far as to consult a variety of characters, including author Vick Ran, film critic Harry Farber, and even a child named Joey Dury. However, it ends on a rather confusing note, with M. Night Shyamalan’s character, Vick Ran, becoming a prophet-like figure and Farber emerging unscathed after having been killed off earlier. In addition, most of the characters simply looked on, leaving very little conclusion beyond that.

8 ‘Phantasm’ (1979)

Directed by Don Coscarelli

Phantasm follows a boy named Mike as he tries to expose an evil undertaker called the Tall Man who is turning the dead into an army of dwarf-like henchmen. It has a surreal atmosphere to it, adding to the sense of unease permeating throughout. For example, when Mike finds himself in the Tall Man’s domain, he ends up in a world in which the only color is red. Most of the film centers on the conspiracy surrounding the Tall Man and Mike’s attempts to thwart him.

However, it is revealed at the end that Mike’s older brother Jody has been deceased the entire time, leading the viewer to believe that everything depicted so far has merely been the result of Mike’s grief. But then in the final scene, the Tall Man appears in Mike’s bedroom, leaving the audience to ponder if the events shown had really happened at all or if it truly was just in Mike’s imagination. What made these last scenes even more surprising is that the film hadn’t put forth the idea that Mike might be an unreliable narrator up to this point, enhancing the impact of this possibility that the adience is now forced to consider.

7 ‘Planet of the Apes’ (2001)

Directed by Tim Burton

It’s no secret that Tim Burton‘s 2001 remake of Planet of the Apes is generally considered to be one of the worst entries in the long-running science fiction franchise. In spite of this, the ending is completely nonsensical even by the standards of this film. The plot focuses on astronaut Leo Davidson who, after crash landing on a future Earth ruled by hyper-intelligent apes, tries to make it back to his spacecraft to return to his own time.

After making it back to his spacecraft, Leo earns the respect of the apes thanks to a chimp that was also on board when he landed. Leo turns on his spacecraft and enters the same wormhole that had brought him to the apes’ time. Just as it seems like he has successfully returned to his own time, he lands in front of the Lincoln Memorial only to find that the visage of Abraham Lincoln has been replaced with that of the villainous ape, General Thade. This ending is completely contradictory to everything that had happened up to this point, not only because actions in the future should not affect the past, but also because Thade had been trapped by a dislodged part of the spacecraft before Leo left for the past.

6 ‘The Tingler’ (1959)

Directed by William Castle

The Tingler follows a scientist, played by Vincent Prince, as he studies a centipede-like creature called the tingler that exists inside of humans. The tingler lies dormant on the spinal cord until it is awakened by the body’s fear response, but it can be killed by screaming. The scientist tries to extract a tingler from the nonverbal wife of an acquaintance, who dies after suffering from a fear-induced hallucination. Her tingler escapes and goes on a rampage.

Toward the end of the film, it is revealed that the fatal hallucination that had killed the wife had not only been real, but perpetrated by her husband. In the final scene, the wife’s corpse sits up and screams until her husband, now mute, is seemingly killed. Up to this point, the wife had been fully silent and dead for about half the runtime, so her sudden screaming made no sense. In addition, her husband, who had been perfectly capable of speech before that point, is suddenly rendered mute and comes out of nowhere, adding further confusion to this rather unusual ending.

The Tingler is available to stream on Tubi TV in the U.S.

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5 ‘Superman’ (1978)

Directed by Richard Donner

Superman is often considered by many to be among the definitive depictions of the iconic DC superhero. Despite the larger-than-life nature of said character, the plot remains surprisingly grounded for most of the runtime, with Superman mainly taking on street crime as well as performing standard boy scout-level good deeds such as rescuing a cat from a tree. Even his fight against Lex Luthor is more of a battle of wits than anything else. This makes the ending even more baffling.

After successfully preventing the missiles fired by the nefarious Lex Luthor, played by Gene Hackman, from devastating the United States, Superman, played by Christopher Reeve, rushes to save reporter Lois Lane, played by Margot Kidder. He arrives too late, finding Lois buried under debris and no longer breathing. In response, he reverses the Earth’s rotation, turning back time and saving her. This ending is so absurd compared to everything else before, not only because Superman pulls out a brand-new power out of nowhere, but also, up to this point, the film introduced any new powers gradually, so Superman’s abrupt time reversal powers would have been many more alarming introduction to any unaware viewers.

4 ‘War of the Worlds’ (2005)

Directed by Steven Spielberg

Being based off a classic science fiction novel and a remake of a classic sci-fi flick, Steven Spielberg‘s 2005 version of War of the Worlds had a lot to live up to. Most audience members probably expected a story of humanity desperately trying to survive an extraterrestrial invasion. And for the ost part, that’s what they got, with Tom Cruise‘s Ray Ferrier attempting to keep his family safe amid the onslaught of vicious tripods relentlessly descending on Earth from beyond the stars, devastating both said family and humanity as a whole in the process.

What most audience members probably did not expect, however, was one of the most frustrating endings of all time. Like in the original book, the invaders are defeated and humanity is saved. So far, so good. What’s not so good, however, is that several characters who were shown dying, including protagonist Ray Ferrier’s son, are seen alive at the very end. This ending not only contradicts everything that had been shown beforehand, but also results in everything before feeling pointless due to the sudden removal of stakes in the final minutes.

3 ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ (2012)

Directed by Christopher Nolan

The final entry in The Dark Knight trilogy, The Dark Knight Rises, sees Batman take on the enigmatic Bane as he tries to take over Gotham City. Hiding in the shadows, Bane slowly manipulates the city’s inhabitants into facilitating his plan, even going so far as to break Batman when he starts getting too close to the truth. At the same time, Batman also deals with the emergence of a thief named Catwoman. The climax sees Batman finding the bomb Bane planted and flying it out of the city, seemingly sacrificing himself as the bomb detonates over the ocean.

In the final scene, Alfred is eating at a restaurant in Italy, just like he said he imagined himself doing earlier in the film, only to then notice Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle sitting at the table in front of him dining happily. Although it may bring some relief to the audience to discover Batman survived, that still doesn’t change the sudden and unexpected nature of this revelation, nor the saccharine happy ending contrasted with the gritty realism of the rest of the series.

2 ‘Interstellar’ (2014)

Directed by Christopher Nolan

Interstellar is a 2014 science fiction film that aimed to focus more on the science aspect of the science fiction genre in order to create a realistic depiction of space travel. One way it did this was by including the time dilation that is an element of real space travel as a key component of the plot, with those that had been left on Earth having aged significantly by the time the film reaches its climax, while the astronauts have barely aged at all since the beginning of their mission in space. The heavy use of scientific terminology throughout also helps maintain this sense of realism. That is, until the ending.

The ending sees astronauts Cooper and Brand, played by Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway respectively, along with the robot TARS, attempt to maneuver around a black hole, only for Cooper and TARS to fall into said black hole. They then end up in another dimension, with the explanation the movie provides being love, essentiallythrowing away the previous scientific realism that had dominated the film up to that point.

1 ‘Grease’ (1978)

Directed by Randal Kleiser

Grease, first released in 1978, is one of the quintessential movie musicals, widely beloved by many for its catchy songs and its intricate dance numbers. Additionally, many found an abundant amount of charm in the rocky romance between its two leads, a greaser gang leader and a prim and proper transfer student. It’s also infamous for its nonsensical ending.

The finale sees John Travolta‘s Danny and Olivia Newton-John‘s Sandy ultimately get together. This is a fairly standard happy ending for the young couple. This is also consistent with the film so far, as the infectious chemistry between Danny and Sandy leads to the audience rooting for them to end up together. In addition, the characters and the events of the story were fairly grounded in reality, with the only real exception to this being the musical numbers themselves. But then the car starts flying. In a movie with an utter and distinct lack of any fantastical aspects whatsoever aside from the aforementioned musical numbers. It’s no surprise then that this ending comes outside of left field more so than any other.