There’s nothing quite like an unbelievably satisfying ending to a film that will remain with you for a long time. Most movie endings these days like to leave things for you to figure out for yourself, with either the director opening it up to your interpretation, or you needing to go find an explainer online due to unnecessary confusion.
Throughout cinema history, the greatest storytellers know how to write a terrific ending that will either tug at your heartstrings, horrify you, or deliver a special and memorable experience. Not all the endings below can be described as happy ones, but they are the most one-of-a-kind and well-executed.
Discussion of the movie endings below will contain spoilers.
10 Dark City
- Director: Alex Proyas
- Released: 1998
- Rotten Tomatoes Score: 76%
- IMDb Rating: 7.6
- Where To Stream: VOD
Dark City is one of those truly original and greatly underappreciated sci-fi movies. The premise is weird and mind-bending until you arrive at the main twist that puts everything into perspective. The protagonist is an amnesiac man, John Murdoch, navigating a bleak futuristic society controlled by a cabal of telekinetic Hellraiser-looking overlords called the Strangers.
The movie ends on a bittersweet note of the love story between John and his wife, Emma Murdoch, who had their memories erased by the Strangers. It also features the cool reveal of everyone traveling in an artificial city in space, and the Strangers being an alien race. After John defeats the Strangers, he and Emma reunite at ‘Shell Beach’ and start anew.
Watch the ending of Dark City.
9 Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood
- Director: Quentin Tarantino
- Released: 2019
- Rotten Tomatoes Score: 86%
- IMDb Rating: 7.6
- Where To Stream: Hulu with Live TV, Fubo TV
Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood shares fun parallels with Quentin Tarantino’s Oscar-winning Inglourious Basterds. He’s one of Hollywood’s best writers when it comes to dialogue and unpredictable storytelling, and Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood once again sees him take a huge creative swing with the ending.
The movie is set in an alternate history of 1960s Los Angeles, chronicling Sharon Tate and the Manson Family murders. The ending builds to the tragic fate that awaits Tate at the hands of the Manson cult members, but Tarantino instead has them target Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio’s characters, Rick Dalton and Cliff Booth. The Manson family intruders are then violently defeated, thereby saving Sharon Tate and her friends.
Watch the ending of Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood.
8 The Mist
- Director: Frank Darabont
- Released: 2007
- Rotten Tomatoes Score: 73%
- IMDb Rating: 7.1
- Where To Stream: Pluto TV
Stephen King’s The Mist is one of his best stories, and Frank Darabont’s film is one of the best Stephen King movie adaptations, especially due to the devastating ending. The Mist s a father and son who are trapped in a supermarket with various townsfolk, as a mist engulfs the area and sends various Lovecraftian creatures that attack them.
David eventually manages to escape the supermarket with his son and a small group, but they quickly run out of gas. Fearing there’s no hope, he decides to kill everyone and then himself, but the gun is empty when it’s his turn. Just as David steps out of the car with everyone else dead inside, the mist subsides, and the army arrives to save the day.
The film’s ending was changed from the original novella by Stephen King, creating a more impactful and heartbreaking moment than in the book, where instead, the group is alive and implied to venture to Hartford, Connecticut, as a possible safe haven.
Watch the ending of Frank Darabont’s The Mist.
7 Oldboy
- Director: Park Chan-wook
- Released: 2003
- Rotten Tomatoes Score: 82%
- IMDb Rating: 8.3
- Where To Stream: Paramount+
Oldboy is a phenomenal Korean psychological thriller. The story is about Oh Dae-su, a hedonistic man who disappears on the eve of his daughter’s birthday and is imprisoned by an unknown enemy for 15 years. When he’s released, Oh Dae-su seeks answers and revenge on his captor, Lee Woo-jin, and also takes a lover named Mi-do.
Oldboy’s major twist reveals that Mi-do is actually Oh Dae-su’s adult daughter and that they were both hypnotized into committing incest. While Mi-do remains unaware of Oh Dae-su being her father, Oh Dae-su attempts to erase his knowledge, but the pair’s final embrace demonstrates that he still remembers everything and will be tortured by his actions for the rest of his life.
Watch the ending of Oldboy.
6 Memories Of Murder
- Director: Bong Joon Ho
- Released: 2003
- Rotten Tomatoes Score: 95%
- IMDb Rating: 8.1
- Where To Stream: Tubi
Bong Joon Ho’s filmography is beautifully all over the place. He can make the Oscar-winning Parasite, Mickey 17, Snowpiercer, and also this masterpiece – Memories of Murder. Based on the actual murders that gripped the Hwaseong region and remained unsolved until 2019, Memories of Murder s fictional detectives Park Doo-man, Cho Yong-koo, and Seo Tae-yoon, who lead the investigation.
In the final scene, a now-retired Park visits the site where the first bodies were discovered. A young girl says she previously saw another man in this exact spot (implied to be the actual murderer), describing him as «ordinary.» Park takes a dramatic pause before turning to the camera, as though he’s staring down the killer who was still out there.
Watch the ending of Memories of Murder.
5 Psycho
- Director: Alfred Hitchcock
- Released: 1960
- Rotten Tomatoes Score: 97%
- IMDb Rating: 8.5
- Where To Stream: Netflix
Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho remains an undefeated classic and ‘best of all-time’ slasher whodunnit. This story takes you to the iconic Bates Motel, owned and operated by Norman Bates, who develops an infatuation with his new guest, Janet Leigh’s Marion Crane. Bates’ mother also resides in the house overlooking the motel, often appearing as an eerie silhouette.
But it’s revealed that Norman actually becomes his mother through a split personality, with his mother’s corpse rotting away in the cellar. Norman sits in a jail cell and chillingly stares into the camera as the voice of his mother takes over, saying «she wouldn’t even harm a fly» before the scene dissolves to the police recovering Marion’s car from a swamp.
Watch the ending of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho.
4 Se7en
- Director: David Fincher
- Released: 1995
- Rotten Tomatoes Score: 84%
- IMDb Rating: 8.6
- Where To Stream: VOD
David Fincher’s Se7en has the most gut-wrenching ending of any serial killer thriller. Se7en s the disturbing case of the Seven Deadly Sins killer, with Brad Pitt’s David Mills and Morgan Freeman’s William Somerset racing to stop the sadistic foe’s spree. This leads to the famous «What’s in the box?» finale, an emotionally gripping and chilling scene.
To complete the cycle, the killer wants Mills to commit the sin of wrath. He goads him by revealing that his girlfriend’s head is what was inside the box Somerset examined, and further shocks Mills by saying she was pregnant. Somerset pleads with Mills, but to no avail. Unable to control his emotions, Mills continually fires an array of bullets into John Doe.
Watch the harrowing ending moments of Se7en.
3 Sinners
- Director: Ryan Coogler
- Released: 2025
- Rotten Tomatoes Score: 97%
- IMDb Rating: 8.1
- Where To Stream: HBO Max (After theatrical release)
Sinners had the best movie ending since The Shawshank Redemption. Ryan Coogler did some masterwork with how he crafted the finale to his original vampire film that pays homage to the blues, even giving you the true ending during the mid-credits sequence, which reveals a huge twist and establishes Sammie as the main focus all along.
At the end of Sinners, Smoke saves Sammie by finally defeating Remmick, and Sammie makes it back to his dad’s church, where he must choose between music and religion. Meanwhile, Smoke kills all the KKK members and dies in the process, a beautifully framed and edited moment. You then go to 1992, and see Sammie as an old musician and Stack and Mary still together as vampires.
The older version of Sammie during the mid-credits scene is played by legendary blues singer Buddy Guy.
2 The Shawshank Redemption
- Director: Frank Darabont
- Released: 1994
- Rotten Tomatoes Score: 89%
- IMDb Rating: 9.3
- Where To Stream: MGM+
Frank Darabont and Stephen King make a powerhouse duo. The Shawshank Redemption’s ending is the opposite of The Mist’s, having one of the most perfect endings to a story, such as Andy and Red’s. In The Shawshank Redemption, Tim Robbins’ Andy is sentenced to prison for a murder he didn’t commit, soon forming a friendship with Morgan Freeman’s Red, a convicted smuggler.
Andy has a traumatizing experience in prison, but eventually escapes to Zihuatanejo, Mexico, by digging a tunnel in his cell that he concealed with a Rita Hayworth poster. After Red is paroled, he s Andy’s instructions, and the two friends end up reuniting on the beach in Mexico.
Watch the ending moments of The Shawshank Redemption.
1 Babylon
- Director: Damien Chazelle
- Released: 2022
- Rotten Tomatoes Score: 57%
- IMDb Rating: 7.1
- Where To Stream: Hulu, Disney+, Paramount+
Damien Chazelle is a filmmaker whose passion for cinema shows in everything he does. Babylon is his ultimate love letter to moviemaking and Hollywood, and, yes, while a bit outrageous in parts, particularly the party scene, and over three hours long, it’s one of the most underrated and overlooked movies in history, with a game-changing ending.
Through Diego Calva’s Manny, you get a compilation celebrating cinema in its earliest form of Sallie Gardner at a Gallop (1878), to The Wizard of Oz, Psycho, Jurassic Park, The Matrix, and James Cameron’s Avatar. Manny envisions where the future of cinema could go, and it’ll move him (and maybe you) to tears, especially with the masterful ‘Voodoo Mama’ track playing.
Watch the powerful cinematic joyride ending of Damien Chazelle’s Babylon.
