10 Most Infuriating Movie Cliffhangers

6. Who Was The Alien? - The Thing

1982's The Thing is one of the rare remakes that manages to outdo its source material; it's a completely taut, suspenseful, horrifying film that boasts state of the art visual effects as well as excellent performances across the board. Its inconclusive ending is the brilliantly infuriating capper to what preceded it; the two remaining men, Childs (Keith David) and MacReady (Kurt Russell) end up coming across each other, but each believes that the other is, in fact, the shape-shifting alien creature.

With the base exploded and neither sure which is The Thing, they simply sit out in the cold, sipping from a hipflask, awaiting a mutual death from exposure that will at least ensure that the alien does not escape the base. It's among the most fantastically bleak endings in all of cinema, albeit one that has kept cinemagoers guessing for decades as to who the alien was after all.

The Thing video game released in 2002 does offer an explanation - that Childs froze to death and MacReady somehow made it out alive - but it's by no means the canonical answer, and moreover, it's really damn stupid.