20 Most Abrupt Movie Endings That Aren’t Cliffhangers

Common wisdom will likely tell a filmmaker that they should take their time ending a story. A great way to make sure an ending is satisfying is to ensure it concludes everything that came before and help viewers feel like they didn’t waste time watching. Ending a movie’s story too abruptly can run the risk of feeling random and being funny, which might be okay if you’re making a comedy, but that’s not exactly desirable if that humor wasn’t intentional.

There are abrupt endings to serious movies that actually work, however, and also aren’t intended to be cliffhangers for future sequels to resolve. They’ll often be there to make some kind of thematic point, or otherwise intended to impact the viewer in some way and leave them thinking. Some remarkable movies all used intentionally sudden endings for dramatic effect and were mostly successful in doing so, even if these endings are sometimes frustrating on first watch. It can help make a real impact or leave the viewer shaken and on edge leaving the movie they’ve just watched, which can be a feeling that some filmmakers do indeed want to provoke. The following movies are generally successful with their abrupt ending, making the unsatisfying feel oddly fitting, and perhaps even unconventionally satisfying.

20 ‘First Reformed’ (2017)

Directed by Paul Schrader

Although a severely underrated A24 drama film, Paul Schrader’s First Reformed features one of if not the best Ethan Hawke performances. The movie sees a minister of a small congregation in New York grappling with despair brought on by tragedy and his own demons, tackling thought-provoking themes of environmental destruction and personal redemption.

Considering the emotionally charged topics it tackles, First Reformed’s abrupt and ambiguous ending is powerful and certainly striking, leaving audiences in suspense and wondering what the resolution is to Toller’s tumultuous story. Ultimately, it perfectly mirrors the narrative’s uncertainty and the protagonist’s existential crisis; by not providing clear and comforting answers, as probably expected by viewers, Schrader’s movie rises as a provocative exploration of doubt and search for meaning. – Daniela Gama

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19 ‘The Blair Witch Project’ (1999)

Directed by Eduardo Sánchez and Daniel Myrick

Anyone who enjoys found footage horror movies knows that The Blair Witch Project is an essential watch. Known for its pioneering role in the genre and unique marketing approach (it genuinely got people believing it was a real story), Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez’s movie follows three film students who vanish after traveling into a forest to film a documentary on a local Blair Witch legend.

This frightening watch features an abrupt finale that mirrors the movie’s commitment to realism, sending a spill down the audience’s spine and making the whole film even more unsettling and disturbing. Although The Blair Witch Project ultimately counts on many psychological horror elements that amplify its already frightening narrative, its haunting and sudden ending helps elevate it. Therefore, it definitely deserves a stop on the list. – Daniela Gama

18 ‘Uncut Gems’ (2019)

Directed by Ben Safdie and Josh Safdie

Adam Sandler is the big highlight of Uncut Gems, as he steps out of his comedic roles and delivers a top-notch dramatic performance as its central character: a New York jeweler who puts everything in line in hopes of staying afloat and alive, with its debts mounting and angry collectors closing in.

This anxiety-inducing drama is guaranteed to have audiences on the edge of their seats up until its ending. Although many have felt that its closure was abrupt, others agree that it was fitting considering the movie’s core tension and chaos. Despite its jarring finale that has caught some by surprise, the Safdie brothers movie is very much worth checking — it builds up to the climax quite well and solidifies it as an unforgettable cinematic experience. – Daniela Gama

17 ‘The Mist’ (2007)

Directed by Frank Darabont

Based on Stephen King’s novella, The Mist is a thrilling monster horror film that has garnered a cult following over the years. The Frank Darabont picture sees a thick fog descending upon a rural community and killing anyone caught outside, with survivors desperately seeking refuge in a local store.

Several viewers were surprised by The Mist’s ending, considering that it was extremely shocking and unexpected, providing no further explanation following such devastating events. Although shock value is also at play, the bleakness of this film’s closure underscores themes of hopelessness evident throughout the movie, suggesting how humankind often goes to great lengths in the face of despair and makes terrible choices during extreme, terrifying circumstances. – Daniela Gama

16 ‘Burn After Reading’ (2008)

Directed by Ethan Coen and Joel Coen

Starring John Malkovich as a jobless CIA analyst whose misplaced memoirs are found by a pair of gym employees (Frances McDormand and Brad Pitt) who see a chance to make enough money for cosmetic surgery, Burn After Reading is a clever Coen brothers satire on self-importance and media mismanagement.

Featuring the Coen brothers’ signature style and trademark dark humor, this absurd story makes for a clever and entertaining picture, albeit not universally loved like some of their work. Although intentional, Burn After Reading’s ending is undoubtedly abrupt and subverts expectations, with the fates of two major characters being left unresolved; its ending mirrors the movie’s satire, including the futility and pointlessness of its character’s actions. – Daniela Gama

15 ‘The 400 Blows’ (1959)

Directed by François Truffaut

While The 400 Blows does have a series of sequels that see its main character, Antoine Doinel, grow from an adolescent to a young man, it’s not accurate to call its abrupt ending a cliffhanger. In one of the best movies of the 1950s, the 12-year-old Antoine is shown to have a chaotic and unstructured lifestyle, with the ending reflecting this by having a sudden freeze-frame during a chase scene, leaving Antoine’s immediate safety up in the air.

Reading the ending as a comment on Antoine feeling lost could be reaching, and some may instead feel like The 400 Blows is just trying to be artistic and unconventional by having essentially no resolution. Either way, it is memorable, whether you like it or not, and is a big reason for The 400 Blows being one of the best-known of the French New Wave.

14 ‘The Thing’ (1982)

Directed by John Carpenter

Rightfully standing as one of John Carpenter‘s best-known movies, The Thing is classic 1980s horror through and through. It reworks the premise of 1951’s The Thing from Another World into something more suspenseful, dark, and violent, being about a shape-shifting alien who targets a group of researchers in Antarctica, taking their lives and identities one by one.

The suddenness of the ending might have been one of the things that made the film so critically divisive upon release. Things conclude with two men from the team left sitting beside each other, with little to no hope for rescue, and each still unsure of whether the other is who he says he is. It’s chilling (pun intended), and leaves the viewer feeling uneasy even after the credits have started rolling.

13 ‘No Country for Old Men’ (2007)

Directed by Ethan and Joel Coen

No Country for Old Men starts off feeling like a relatively straightforward Neo-Western/crime thriller, but takes great delight in subverting more and more of the genre’s conventions as it goes on. The sheriff seems too old and out-of-the-loop to do much, the villain appears unkillable no matter how much damage he sustains, and the guy who seems like the protagonist dies off-screen a while before the movie ends.

It all concludes with a mysterious scene where Tommy Lee Jones‘s sheriff character is explaining a dream he had, shortly after the villain, Anton Chigurh, seems to have made a clean break. He finishes explaining his dream and then the credits roll, and it almost feels like a scene or two is missing. However, the empty feeling of dread conveyed, as a result, makes the movie’s story all the more strong, and while frustrating at first, feels suitable once you sit with it for a bit.

12 ‘The Birds’ (1963)

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

Alfred Hitchcock was unafraid to challenge audiences whilst also providing them with accessible entertainment, and his 1963 film The Birds demonstrates this well. It is a fairly straightforward horror movie about people in a small town trying to avoid swarms of deadly birds, but it’s paced in an interesting way, lacks a traditional music score, and deliberately has no concrete conclusion.

This sense of bucking convention can also be seen in the ending, where the birds cease attacking people, allowing the surviving characters to cautiously exit the house they were holed up in. It creates a sense of unease, because it’s uncertain if or when they’ll start attacking again, and whether the characters will be able to stay alive if/when they do. The ending certainly contributes to the film’s reputation as among Alfred Hitchcock’s best movies.

11 ‘Safe’ (1995)

Directed by Todd Haynes

Featuring a commanding lead performance from Julianne Moore, Safe is a movie that’s as strange and cold as it is unexpectedly engrossing. It’s a bleak drama about a woman who develops an intense sensitivity to chemicals, with her physical symptoms getting progressively worse throughout the film’s first half.

The second half of Safe sees the protagonist staying at an odd retreat called Wrenwood, which may well be some sort of cult that wants to exploit her or worsen her life, rather than help her condition. The film leaves Moore’s character, Carol, at this retreat, ensuring audiences will never know if she got better, or what her condition exactly was in the first place.

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10 ‘Mean Streets’ (1973)

Directed by Martin Scorsese

Martin Scorsese is best known for his crime movies, and Mean Streets is one of his most significant within the genre. Though his later films that dealt with criminal lifestyles and gangsters might’ve been more refined and intricately plotted, Mean Streets has charm for how loose and scrappy it can feel, which makes scenes come across as in the moment and genuinely grounded.

It features early performances from Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel, and mostly revolves around a group of young men living within the mob to some extent, all dreaming of bigger things. The way it generally stays away from having too concrete a story is also demonstrated by its jarring ending, which sees numerous major characters get shot at while in a car, causing an accident where certain fates are left unknown because the film simply ends.

9 ‘Clerks’ (1994) – Original Ending

Directed by Kevin Smith

Clerks is a beloved Gen X movie about feeling lost in life, and doing the best you can to pass time at a dead-end job. Its ending leaves a few things up in the air (enough for two sequels at least), but it originally had a planned ending that was far darker and more abrupt than what viewers ended up getting.

Clerks was planned to end with an armed robbery which would feature main character, Dante, being shot and killed right before the movie suddenly cut to credits. It would have clashed with the consistently comedic tone of what came before, and the ending as it stands is abrupt and thematically appropriate enough, without being as bleak or needlessly violent.

8 ‘An American Werewolf in London’ (1981)

Directed by John Landis

Plenty of classic horror movies end very abruptly. If the main monster is dead, for example, it might well be for the best that epilogues are kept to a minimum, or even excised altogether. Such is the case with An American Werewolf in London, which has a bloody and then quite sad ending that still feels very abrupt, and leaves some things hanging.

Various people are killed, and then the protagonist is shot and killed while in werewolf form. His love interest is devastated, but then the end credits suddenly hit. There’s little indication of whether the people killed in the climactic attack will turn into werewolves themselves, with that being something left hanging without really having attention drawn to it in a cliffhanger sort of way.

7 ‘The Sword of Doom’ (1966)

Directed by Kihachi Okamoto

An iconic samurai movie that isn’t afraid to show the more brutal side of the lifestyle, The Sword of Doom follows a lone swordsman with serious bloodlust. He kills indiscriminately and doesn’t seem to have any morals, leading to him violently clashing with just about everyone he comes across.

It abruptly ends during one large fight scene, which was originally intended as a cliffhanger to be resolved in a sequel. However, since that sequel never happened, The Sword of Doom stands as having one jarring (but effective) conclusion that maintains a sense of dread and horror beyond the film’s final gruesome images.

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6 ‘American Graffiti’ (1973)

Directed by George Lucas

American Graffiti is one of the defining coming-of-age movies of the 1970s, and is probably the most famous movie directed by George Lucas that isn’t set a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. It focuses on a group of friends enjoying the last days of summer vacation in 1962, emphasizing characters and a relaxed atmosphere over having a traditional narrative.

The ending stands in contrast to this, however, as the viewer is suddenly informed through a text-only epilogue that two of the four main characters end up dying tragically young: one while fighting in the Vietnam War, and the other in a car accident. It’s jarring and abrupt, but speaks to the unpredictability of life, and the added hardships of life as an adult versus life as a carefree teenager.

5 ‘Drag Me to Hell’ (2009)

Directed by Sam Raimi

Sam Raimi returned to horror with Drag Me to Hell; the genre that helped make him a well-known director back in the 1980s, with the Evil Dead series. It’s a frenetic and gross (and surprisingly not R-rated) horror movie about a young woman who has a horrible curse put on her after she takes part in foreclosing an elderly woman’s home.

Despite fighting for survival throughout the entire movie, the protagonist’s efforts aren’t enough, and she is indeed suddenly dragged to hell in the film’s final scene. Seeing someone go through so much and ultimately not exceed can be brutal, but then again, horror movies wouldn’t be as suspenseful if none ever ended like this.

4 ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’ (1975)

Directed by Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones

Monty Python and the Holy Grail is such an iconic comedy that it debatably ranks among the greatest movies of the 1970s, across all genres. It’s a spoof of old-fashioned fantasy while also being a relentlessly absurd and borderline surreal comedy, delivering iconic scene after iconic scene, and too many quotable lines of dialogue to count.

One of its most memorable sequences, for better or worse, is the hilariously abrupt ending. Things are set up for a climactic battle, only for modern-day police to come in, stop the battle from happening, and then arrest the main characters for the murder of a historian earlier on. It’s a comedic shrug of an ending that’s as baffling as it is oddly fitting, and is classically Monty Python in its energy.

3 ‘American Psycho’ (2000)

Directed by Mary Harron

An iconic dark comedy/crime film that’s proven influential and increasingly popular in the years since its release, it’s safe to call American Psycho a modern classic. It’s about a heartless banking executive who lives a lavish but somehow tedious life in Manhattan during the 1980s, also showing how at night, he turns to being a serial killer.

Or does he? It’s up in the air a good deal of the time whether the murders are for real or imagined, and it becomes increasingly more chaotic as it goes along, with the killings becoming more far-fetched and absurd. Then the ending comes around, not much of consequence seems to happen, lead character Patrick Bateman has an internal monologue, and it suddenly finishes on an unsettling and uncertain note. It feels right, though.

2 ‘The Banshees of Inisherin’ (2022)

Directed by Martin McDonagh

The central conflict of The Banshees of Inisherin was never going to come to an easy resolution. It’s a movie about people living on a tiny island, and the consequences that come from two friends on said island feuding, seemingly out of nowhere, when one decides he no longer wants to have any contact with the other.

Things spiral out of control, and though the film starts out funny, it becomes darker as it goes along and then ends up genuinely tragic and upsetting by its final act. It ends on an uneasy note, with no true resolution and the two men still alive, and still stuck on the island, with reconciliation being unlikely. Still, nothing’s confirmed, intentionally leaving the viewer on edge even once the credits have finished rolling.

1 ‘Troll 2’ (1990)

Directed by Claudio Fragasso

Troll 2 is a notoriously silly B-movie that’s held up as one of the prime examples of a “so-bad-it’s-good” film. It follows a family who move to a new town and find themselves targeted by the apparent goblin population, with the family’s young son the only one who has any idea that they’re in danger.

To call the sudden, bleak ending scary might be a slight stretch, but it’s at least not quite as laughable as other parts of Troll 2. The protagonist’s mother is turned into green goo off-screen, with things ending right after the hero sees she’s being eaten by the not-quite-defeated goblins. There is no Troll 3 to elaborate things further, either.

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