10 Movie Endings That Left You Speechless
9. The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas
Nobody expects fun and games from a Holocaust drama, but 2008's The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas somehow elevated the grimness to near-unthinkable levels.
The film revolves around Bruno (Asa Butterfield), a young German boy whose father (David Thewlis) is an SS officer.
With the father posted to occupied Poland, the family ends up living near a Nazi concentration camp (implied to be Auschwitz), at which point Bruno develops a secret friendship with Shmuel (Jack Scanlon), a Jewish boy imprisoned there.
Oblivious to the true nature of the camp, Bruno ends up donning the camp's "striped pyjamas" uniform and sneaking in to help Shmuel locate his missing father.
However, the two boys are then rounded up for a "shower," which is of course actually a gas chamber.
Though Bruno's parents race to save him once they realise what's happened, they're too late, and the film ends with Bruno being gassed to death alongside Shmuel and the other Jewish prisoners.
Child murder is tough to watch at the "best" of times, but within the context of the Holocaust, where even an SS officer's own child falls victim to the Nazi regime, it's an ending that totally sucks the air out of any room in which it's shown.
If you saw the movie at the cinema upon original release, you almost certainly remember the gruelling silence when it ended.