10 Most Confusing Movie Endings People Don't Understand

7. Donnie Darko

Despite being one of the biggest cult classics of the last 20 years, Donnie Darko is also an extremely obtuse and impenetrable film at times.

The movie begins with Donnie (Jake Gyllenhaal) being woken up by a man in a rabbit costume, who informs him that the world will end in 28 days. He later discovers that a jet engine has crashed into his bedroom, and had he not been summoned out of his room, he would've been killed by it.

What makes Richard Kelly's film especially confusing is that much of the key information lies in supplementary materials released alongside it - namely a fictional book featured in the movie, The Philosophy of Time Travel, the cliff notes of which Kelly made available online.

To cut to the chase, Donnie's initial survival created a parallel universe which the rest of the movie takes place in, and in order to prevent a cataclysmic event which destroys the original "primary" universe, he voluntarily allows himself to be killed by the falling jet engine at the end of the 28 days.

This protects the original universe, including his girlfriend Gretchen (Jena Malone), though the tragic irony is that by dying as originally intended, Gretchen and him never end up meeting.