12 Disturbing Sci-Fi Movie Endings That Haunt You
5. Ex Machina
It
wouldn’t be a list of the genre’s most brutally unfair twists if we didn’t stick
this dark gem in there—yes, writers such as this very author have questioned
whether Alex Garland’s 2014 AI thriller even needed its last second reversal of
fortune, but there’s no denying that it’s a vicious gut punch worthy of Charlie
Brooker and Rod Serling’s meanest morality tales.
As Domhnall Gleeson’s gormless hero interrogates the almost-human android invented by an eccentric Oscar Isaacs, it soon becomes clear that he’s a pawn in something larger, being manipulated by both Isaacs and the droid alike. Of course, the question of whether Gleeson himself is even human is rendered irrelevant by the flick’s savage ending wherein, robot or otherwise, he’s left to slowly waste away, trapped inside the inventor’s mansion by the very bot he was attempting to liberate.
Well, at least it’s equally crushing regardless of your chosen interpretation—that has to count for something, right?