10 Best Sci-Fi Movie Cliffhangers
4. The Thing (1982)
John Carpenter’s The Thing - the remake of the 1950s monster movie, The Thing from Another World - is one of the best sci-fi movies ever made, and the rare occurrence of a remake that surpasses the original.
Like the original, this remake centres on a research base in remote Antarctica, where the researchers are hunted by a shape-shifting alien. The Thing kills them all off, leaving only MacReady (Kurt Russell) and Childs (Keith David), while Nauls (T. K. Carter) disappears, never to be seen again.
And like Inception, the film ends on an ambiguous note, in which MacReady and Childs share a bottle of scotch, and they slowly begin to suspect that the other one could be The Thing. It's a moment that has been endlessly debated.
Like the film itself, the ending is wonderfully dark, cold and harsh - I mean, if you think about it, if MacReady and Childs are not killed by The Thing, they most likely freeze to death anyway. Not only that, but by this ending, we understand that The Thing can probably never be killed, and this means it will go on to destroy humanity. So, yes, a grim ending, indeed.