Making a great movie is not an easy task, but if a filmmaker succeeds in getting just about everything right, it still hinges on one thing: the ending. How are you going to let the audience out of your story? What do you want them thinking about as they leave the theater? What feeling do you want to stick with them? Getting all of this across on top of wrapping up your story can be tricky, and more often than not the ending is more of a footnote than anything—not as memorable as what came before.
But a precious few films are able to take the conclusion to new heights, offering up a final scene or shot that viewers are unable to shake. This may come on the heels of a massive plot twist, it may be a genius visual idea that taps into the film’s thematic throughline, or it may be a frustratingly/excitingly ambiguous note that leaves a portion of the conclusion up to the viewer.
There’s no math equation that gives you a great ending. There’s no formula you can stick to in order to guarantee a brilliant conclusion. That’s part of what makes great endings so memorable—they don’t happen too often. Below, we’ve rounded up a few of our favorites from cinema history. They run the gamut from tearful to joyous to delightfully twisted, but they all have one thing in common: they’re unforgettable. Behold the best movie endings of all time.
Oh, andspoiler alert, obviously.
Psycho (1960)
BeforeM. Night ShyamalanorThe Coen Brothers, there wasAlfred Hitchcock—and boy did he know how to end a movie. Obviously the most famous Hitchcock ending of all time comes in the form ofPsycho, which not only throws the audience for a loop at the end of the first act by killing off perceived protagonist Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), but offers a doozy of a twist at the end of the film. The audience is led to believe that Norman Bates’ (Anthony Perkins) mother is the one who killed Marion in the shower earlier in the film, and thus the tension continues to play out. But when Sam (John Gavin) and Lila (Vera Miles) venture to the Bates Motel to question Norman’s mother, it’s revealed that Norman’s mother is nothing but a rotting corpse in chair. In the film’s final moments, Norman sits alone in a room at the courthouse, having been outed as the real murderer. A psychiatrist explains that Norman murdered his mother, but out of guilt exhumed her corpse and began acting as if she was still alive, sometimes pretending he himself was his mother. For the final shot, we close in on Norman’s face as the voice of his mother plays in his head, claiming she wouldn’t hurt a fly. The murders were all Norman’s doing. All the while Norman gets this devilish smirk on his face. Roll credits.
Hitchcock was a consummate entertainer, andPsychois a perfect example of the filmmaker using every trick in the book to take his audience on a thrill ride from beginning to end. The twist ending not only makes perfect sense (it was inspired by true-life serial killer Ed Gein), but leaves the audience’s jaw on the floor as the lights come up in the theater. –Adam Chitwood
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
Heartbreak is hell and memory is a cage that keeps us there, but could we ever escape the lure of love, lust, and all its perils, even if we knew for sure we were doomed to fail? Probably not. InEternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Joel (Jim Carrey) and Clem (Kate Winslet)discover just that after a devastating breakup leads the impulsive Clem to erase Joel from her memory for good via an experimental new procedure. Naturally, Joel decides to do the same and the bulk of the film follows his desperate attempts to thwart that decision as his memories of the woman he loves are stripped from his mind one by one. At the end of the film, Joel and Clem stand face-to-face, no memory of their relationship, but with the knowledge that they were once in love and the irresistible desire to give it another shot. They know they’re all but certain to end in pain, that they’re proven bad fit, and that trying again will only break their hearts. Okay. Laughing and crying and desperate not to feel lost and alone, they accept it. That’s ok. That’s the cost of putting yourself on the line for love and that’s just fine.Eternal Sunshineboasts plenty of clever camerawork and narrative innovation, but the simple, honest emotional truth of its final frames cement it as a classic. —Haleigh Foutch
Inception (2010)
The film that spawned a thousand reddit theories.Christopher Nolanis known for his twisty narratives, butInceptionpushed that to the limit as Nolan presents four stories happening simultaneously at wildly different paces, tracking a team of “extractors” incepting the mind of a corporate heir. The emotional throughline of the film isLeonardo DiCaprio’s Dom Cobb, who lives in exile as his wife framed him for her murder back in the U.S. He dreams of seeing his children again, and at the film’s end, as the team has seemingly completed its mission successfully, Dom is finally reunited with his children. The camera pans to a spinning top—the sign of whether one is still dreaming—but cuts to black before the audience ever knows for sure whether it falls over. What’s important here is not whether Dom is dreaming or not, but how he feels. That’s the brilliance of this ending—narratively it offers an ominous conclusion, but emotionally it’s 100% satisfying. Dom is happy. Whether he’s trapped in dreamland or not, he’s finally at peace. –Adam Chitwood
E.T. (1982)
E.T.isSteven Spielbergat the top of his game, and he’s a living legend. It’s not just that the ending is emotional or powerful. It’s that the entire movie earns the farewell between E.T. and Elliott, so that when it races to its climactic finish and heartfelt good-bye between its two leads, you may feel what’s been gained and lost in the moment. The scene also functions as the culmination of the film’s themes where Elliott finds some peace with his parents’ divorce, learning how he can “be good” and still loved even when someone he loves leaves him. It’s absolutely beautiful. –Matt Goldberg
Se7en (1995)
Go ahead and say it, you know you want to. We can do it together. “What’s in the box?!”Se7en’s ending has become iconic and endlessly quoted because it’s a perfectly crafted culmination of an intricately threaded film that cements John Doe (Kevin Spacey) as one of the best film villains of all time. Scripted byAndrew Kevin Walkerand directed byDavid Fincher,Se7enstarsBrad PittandMorgan Freemanas Taylor and Somerset, two detectives on the hunt for the biblical serial killer John Doe, who hunts down his victims according to the seven deadly sins. Methodical and precise, and always one step ahead, John Doe leaves behind a string of deviant tableaus inspired by his victim’s deadly sins, and he saves his best for last. Just when the detectives think they have the upper hand, Doe reveals his full hand — they were always in his trap. He wins. And they become the final pieces to complete his life’s hideous work. A box is delivered, and the decapitated head of Taylor’s wife is inside it. In that instance he becomes Rage, and falling in lock-step with the killer’s plan, he executes John Doe in cold blood – a fate Doe set for himself, punishment for his sins of Envy.
It’s disturbing and expertly crafted, and it’s easy to see why it’s become one of the most famous “twist” endings of all time. It’s also easy to see why the studio mandated the brief coda that follows, that delivers a salve in the form of a Hemingway quote. Fincher fought for the film to end in blackness; he wanted the audience to sit with the brutality. But he needn’t have worried, becauseSeven’s ending sits with you for years. —Haleigh Foutch
There Will Be Blood (2008)
This is what’s called a “mic drop.”Paul Thomas Andersonalready crafted one pretty terrific (andbig) ending withBoogie Nights, but when it came to closing out his 2008 opusThere Will Be Blood, he took no prisoners. After spending over two hours withDaniel Day-Lewis’ Daniel Plainview, the audience comes to understand what makes this bad dude tick. We see his life ebb and flow, and the film’s final act shifts forward in time to when Plainview is a wealthy—if lonely—oil tycoon. But a visit fromPaul Dano’s Eli Sunday lifts his spirits in the most nefarious way, and the long-held tension between these two characters comes to a bloody end. “I’m finished!” still stands as one of the best—and most striking—closing lines in cinema history –Adam Chitwood
The Social Network (2010)
One of the most expertly constructed films in recent memory,The Social Networkpacks a punch from beginning to end. While many balked atDavid FincherandAaron Sorkintackling “a Facebook movie,” the finished film is a prescient narrative of power plays in the 21st century—movers and shakers are not fiftysomething men, they’re teenaged geniuses thrown into the deep end without the emotional maturity to handle such dangerous waters. As the film concludes withJesse Eisenberg’s Mark Zuckerberg rich and powerful, the camera lingers as he refreshes (and refreshes, and refreshes) the Facebook page of his former girlfriend. The one whose breakup may or may not have spurred something inside him to create one of the most successful ventures in history. He may have all the money and power in the world, but at what cost? To what end? –Adam Chitwood
Les Diaboliques (1955)
Les Diaboliquesis an OG of movie twists, and an essential thriller that set the stage for generations of mysteries and film noir that would follow.Henri-Georges Clouzot’s 1955 French feature starsMichel Delassalle(Paul Meurisse) as a bitter, tyrannical headmaster hated by his wife (Vera Clouzot) and mistress (Simon Signoret), who conspire to murder him. But his body goes missing, hijinks ensue, and it turns out Michel was never dead at all; instead, he and his mistress were conspiring the whole time, setting the stage to trigger his wife’s weak heart and literally scare her to death. At the time,Les Diaboliques' ending was revolutionary and mind-blowing (and it still packs quite a punch today), and it’s become the basis for countless twisting tales of deception to follow, from countless film noir classics toWild Things. —Haleigh Foutch
Vertigo (1958)
Arguably Hitchcock’s most twisted film, the culmination of his fascinating examination of the male gaze (James Stewart’s Scottie is the epitome of the male gaze and yet Hitchcock is just as guilty of this obsession) ends when our hero seemingly gets everything he wants—the woman he loves is alive, he’s conquered his Vertigo, he’s solved the mystery—and yet through dumb luck and circumstance, she falls to her death. His obsession and guilt will never end, and he will always be consumed. It’s a powerful metaphor for the nature of cinema, both as a viewer and an artist. –Matt Goldberg
Scream (1996)
Slasher movie endings had become so predictable and paint-by-numbersCarol Cloverwrote a whole book about it (Men, Women and Chainsaws) and coined the phrase “final girl”; a horror trope that’s still in effect to this day. Penned by screenwriterKevin Williamson,Wes Craven’s 1996 meta-slasher Scream was constructed by a creative team who knew those tropes in and out, embracing them and subverting them in just the right measure, culminating in a final act reveal that layers on the surprises and sticks the landing with subtle, smart deconstruction of your standard slasher standoff. Not one killer, but two! Including the final girl’s supposedly dead boyfriend! Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) is the “final girl”, but in her movie, she gets to break the rules and live anyway, givingScreama refreshing distance from the inherent puritanical leanings of horror’s traditional moral metrics, and genuinely surprising the audience in turn. Slasher movies have never been the same afterScream, and the surefire ending is proof in the pudding that self-reflective horror can be more than a gimmick – in fact, it can change all the rules. –Haleigh Foutch
