10 Greatest Cut To Black Movie Endings EVER

The final 10 minutes of Damien Chazelle's Whiplash are a nerve-shredding, sweaty-palmed masterclass in gut-wrenching suspense, no matter that there's no gun-totting bad guy to be found, but simply an ambitious jazz drummer, Andrew Neiman (Miles Teller), reaching the peak of his powers.

In the climax, Andrew's abusive instructor Terence Fletcher (an Oscar-winning J.K. Simmons) attempts to publicly embarrass Andrew in the middle of a performance by conducting a song he doesn't know.

However, Andrew returns with a vengeance and cues the band to play the jazz track "Caravan."

And at song's end, Andrew surges into a jaw-dropping improvised drum solo to Fletcher's surprise, yet Fletcher can't deny how impressed he is at Andrew's skill and so continues to conduct the performance.

As Andrew reaches his crescendo, Fletcher gives him an approving smile, much to Andrew's twisted glee, as the song comes to an end and Chazelle suddenly smashes to black.

There was really no better time to end the movie, sending audiences home on a euphoric high but also leaving them to consider what it truly cost Andrew to finally push himself to the top of his game.

A lesser filmmaker would've stuffed an epilogue onto the end of the movie that answered this question, but in line with the film's generally sublime, Oscar-winning editing, that final cut is the shrewdest and smartest of all.