10 Greatest Cut To Black Movie Endings EVER
2. The Matrix
This list is mostly full of provocative, unexpected, and affecting endings that made viewers think a lot about what they'd just seen, but a cut-to-black ending that's just straight-up awesome has no less value.
Case in point, there's perhaps no better instance of this than The Matrix, where after villain Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) is defeated, we see hero Neo (Keanu Reeves) back in the Matrix, triumphantly vowing to free its prisoners before Rage Against the Machine's iconic "Wake Up" blares out.
Neo looks up to the sky, at which point the Wachowskis cut to a bird's eye view of the city, and Neo suddenly comes flying past the screen - literally flying - before we cut to black.
This is about as fist-pumping as endings get. "Holy s**t!" Neo can fly!?," we all said to ourselves on that glorious first viewing.
It's an excellent example of subverting the audience's expectations at the very last second, while leaving them to ponder quite what Neo would get up to with this insane power set - a question that, for better or worse, the sequels answered.