10 Movie Endings That Leave More Questions Than Answers

An ending of a film can make or break the audience’s opinion. Many viewers like things to be wrapped in a nice little bow while others like the sense of dread that comes after a bleak ending.

No matter how the ending of a film may go, often it tends to tie up all the loose ends and unanswered questions we may have had throughout viewing it.

However, there are some movies that choose to end on a cryptic and vague note, suddenly finishing the story before any of our questions were answered. Often, these endings tend to provoke major discussions with many fan theories emerging, some even years after the film debuted.

Fans of the film start to nitpick the smallest details in order to find any sort of answer but often these theories lead to even more questions about these mysterious movies.

Many film directors have refused to answer some questions as they want to keep their endings open by letting the imaginations of their fans run wild. Here we look at 10 movie endings that left us with more questions than answers.

Oh, and SPOILERS for the ending of Jordan Peele's Nope below.

Considered by many as one of the greatest films of all time, 2001: A Space Odyssey is easily director Stanley Kubrick's greatest masterpiece.

Throughout the film, we see the start of mankind in the form of apes who learn to use tools in the presence of a strange, alien monolith, to the far future in which space travel is possible.

Two astronauts, Dr David Bowman and Frank Poole, embark on their mission to Jupiter with the ship's AI system, HAL 9000, who begins to act strangely, gaining a conscious by questioning the mission and sabotaging the two men.

During the film's final act, David Bowman reaches Jupiter only to discover another monolith in orbit. He is pulled through a mysterious stargate in a visually stunning set and finds himself in a strange bedroom where an older version of himself rests in the bed.

As old David Bowman "dies," he is transformed into a being known as the Star Child as he floats by Earth with Karl Böhm's Also Sprach Zarathustra playing triumphantly in the background... and that's it. The film ends.

For years fans have speculated what the film's ending could mean and what happened to David Bowman. Among many theories, some believe that the monolith is an alien device, while others believe that the Star Child is a sign of an upcoming apocalypse.

However, when Kubrick was questioned about the mysterious ending, he stated that people were "free to speculate" the film's conclusion as he didn't want to "spell out a verbal roadmap" for the ending.

But where did the monolith come from? Why did David Bowman turn into a giant baby? Did the monolith have something to do with Hal gaining a conscious? How long was the monolith following David Bowman for?