10 Movie Endings That Left You Speechless
5. There Will Be Blood
Despite its suggestive title, Paul Thomas Anderson's Oscar-winning masterpiece There Will Be Blood is actually a relatively bloodless film for the most part.
That is, until its phenomenal closing sequence.
The film's epilogue takes place in 1927, where industrious oil man Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day Lewis) is now an alcoholic recluse holed up in his lush California mansion.
While drunk, Daniel is visited by Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), who wishes to sell him property rights to a piece of land said to be oil-rich. Daniel agrees if Eli renounces his faith, but when Eli does so, Daniel reveals that the land has already been drained of oil, making his renunciation worthless.
As a financially strained Eli becomes increasingly agitated, Daniel continues to taunt him, calling him an "afterbirth" and loudly making the now-iconic boast, "I drink your milkshake! I drink it up!"
At this point Daniel launches a violent assault on Eli, culminating in him beating Eli to death with a bowling pin from his personal alley.
Daniel's butler then comes downstairs to check the noise, finding an exhausted Daniel sat next to Eli's corpse as he makes the amusingly ambiguous declaration, "I'm finished."
Oddly upbeat classical music then plays us out as Anderson cuts to the end credits.
Between Day-Lewis' mesmerisingly volcanic performance in those final moments, the unexpected burst of violence, and the blackly comedic musical choice, this is one hell of an exclamation point on which to end the story.