2. The Shining
The Ending: Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) has become a murderous psychopath, Hell-bent on murdering his son and wife with an axe. Jack eventually freezes to death in a snowy maze while chasing his son, and the final shot of the film provides one last provocation; it is an image of Jack in the Overlook Hotel dated 1921.
Why It's Infuriating: One of the most ambiguous and fervently discussed final shots in the history of cinema, it's difficult to know what to take away from this final glimpse of Jack, and that's why it's so frustrating. Kubrick added the scene of his own volition - it wasn't in King's novel - and while it provides a creepy jolt to an already supremely unsettling film, it seems to sacrifice coherence and logic for the sake of mood and atmosphere. Does this mean Jack had been a ghost the whole time? Or is there a distinctly more strange explanation that only Kubrick knew? Unlike the binary uncertainty of, say, Inception - where there is clearly one of two outcomes that is the right one - here we're left to debate the nature of this flourish forever more.