10 Greatest Cut To Black Movie Endings EVER
6. No Country For Old Men
Much like Paul Thomas Anderson, the Coen brothers love a sudden cut-to-black ending, and though A Serious Man comes in at a close second, they've never done it better than in their Best Picture-winning masterpiece No Country for Old Men.
The film ends with the apparent "hero," Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), dying off-screen before the villainous assassin Anton Chigurh (an Oscar-winning Javier Bardem) kill Moss' wife (Kelly Macdonald), survives a heinous car accident, and then disappears into the night.
The expected showdown between Chigurh and the lawman left standing, Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), never happens.
Instead, the final scene simply sees a now-retired Bell recounting two strange dreams he had to his wife, seemingly reflecting both his failure to stop Chigurh and his own impending demise.
Bell then tells his wife, "And then I woke up," and after a beat the scene cuts to black, signalling the end of the movie.
It's an ending that pissed a lot of people off upon release, yet ultimately feels like the perfect moment at which to halt the story in service of the movie's themes and title.