10 iconic movies with shocking endings that left fans divided

Movies offer an escape from reality, but sometimes movies with shocking endings are harsher than real life. Imagine being emotionally invested in a movie with a bowl full of popcorn and eyes full of hope, only for the movie to end with the protagonist dying or the villain winning. That hurts more than a breakup.

You have to be twisted in real life to make movies with shocking endings. To sit in a room and think, "How can I make the most traumatizing script ever?" is insane. One minute you are praying for the hero to win, and the next, you get to know he was the villain all along, or worse, he was dead the whole time, or even worse, it was all a dream.

And when you are clinging to the hope that something will happen to make this alright, the credits start rolling, leaving a deep scar in your heart that you will never recover from.

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10 iconic movies with shocking endings that left fans divided

The only place more silent than a graveyard is a movie theatre where the most gut-wrenching ending has just been shown. Everyone is silent from shock, except that guy screaming, "Wait....what?" He won't accept the ending and screams as if his best friend betrayed him.

You might think this would be the end of the misery, but the real pain comes later when the existential crisis sets in once you get home. You play out every scenario in your head where the ending would have been different.

If you are into movies that batter the brain, crush souls, and feel like a hammer to the chest, then here are 10 movies with shocking endings that will make a breakup look like a boo-boo.

10) Donnie Darko (2001)

Donnie Darko is a psychological thriller about Donnie (a young Jake Gyllenhaal), a troubled teen, who escapes death when an airplane engine crashes in his bedroom. After this incident, strange things start to happen to Donnie. He is surrounded by a mysterious figure named Frank, who is dressed in a rabbit costume.

Donnie soon begins to experience visions and time loops, and he realizes that this is part of a larger reality involving time travel and inter-universe travel. He realizes that he needs to fix something in his reality to prevent a cosmic disaster. The end is unexpected and will have you crying in your bed for days.

9) Us (2019)

From the director of the superhit movie Get Out, here is another mind-blending classic starring Lupita Nyong'o. This Jordan Peele masterpiece will have you 'tethered' to your seat right till the end. It is one of the best movies with shocking endings that you will ever watch. The film follows Adelaide Wilson (Nyong'o), who returns to her childhood beach house with her husband and two kids.

Things take a turn for the worse when one night their doppelgangers suddenly arrive at their door and reveal a horrific dark secret about the government. Adelaide and her family do everything to survive, only for the movie to reveal a jaw-dropping revelation at the end. It is one of the best movies with shocking endings that will stay with you forever.

8) The Usual Suspects (1995)

Roger Kint (Kevin Spacey), a small-time con man, is being interrogated by the authorities after a ship explodes at San Pedro Harbor. He tells the police how he met four other criminals in a police lineup and how they were recruited for a job by the mysterious crime lord Keyser Soze.

What starts off with a normal job soon spirals into a pool of lies and deception. Kint's story is investigated by U.S Customs Agent Kujan, who uncovers something unexpected at the end, making it one of the best movies with shocking endings.

7) Birdman (2014)

Birdman is one of the best movies with shocking endings. It is a story about a washed-up actor, Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton), who once lit up the TV screen with his superhero persona, Birdman. After his movie star career ended, he found it hard to reclaim his relevance. So, in a bid to taste the success of his glory days, he decided to write, direct, and star in a Broadway play.

As the opening night approaches, he struggles to handle critics, self-doubt, and his strained relationship with his daughter (Emma Stone). To make matters worse, he is constantly haunted by his Birdman persona, who repeatedly tells him to accept his true identity as the superhero. After a shocking twist at the opening night, the movie ends with a cliffhanger that will make you question everything.

6) Fight Club (1999)

Fight Club is undoubtedly one of the best movies with shocking endings. Throughout the movie, you will be trying to decipher the ending, only to have your jaw drop during the climax. The movie is about an unnamed narrator (Ed Norton) who suffers from insomnia and resents modern consumer life.

He meets the charming Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), and together they form an underground club called Fight Club, where grown men come to beat each other. Soon, the club evolves into an anarchist group, called Project Mayhem, and the narrator starts to lose control of the group and of Durden. In a desperate attempt to stop a catastrophe, he discovers an ugly truth about Durden and tries to stop him with little time remaining.

5) The Prestige (2006)

When two fellow magicians turn their passion into a race to become the greatest magician in the world, it ends with chaos, loss, destruction, and death. In 19th-century London, rival magicians Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) and Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) try to outdo each other all the time.

But things take a serious turn when Borden comes up with his highly successful "Transported Man" trick, and Angier becomes obsessed with learning the trick and even perfecting it. In a bid to make the trick better, Angier crosses every ethical line to the point where he loses his sense of right and wrong. In the end, a shocking twist 'reveals' itself, making your heart break into a million pieces, and that's why it's among the best movies with shocking endings.

4) The Sixth Sense (1999)

Whenever there is a list of movies with shocking endings, The Sixth Sense is always among the top five contenders. It was directed by M. Night Shyamalan, the master of making movies with shocking endings. It follows Dr Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis), a child psychologist, who begins treating Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment), a traumatized child who 'sees dead people.'

As Malcolm starts treating Cole and the kid learns to cope with his unique abilities, a gut-wrenching twist at the end still haunts everyone who saw the movie.

3) Shutter Island (2010)

Stepping away from his usual gangster genre, Martin Scorsese surprised the audience by directing one of the greatest mind-numbing movies with shocking endings that has cemented itself among the top films in his legacy.

U.S. Marshal Edward "Teddy" Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his partner Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) arrive at the Ashecliffe Hospital for the criminally insane, located on Shutter Island, to investigate the disappearance of a patient, Rachel Solando.

Strange things begin to happen to Teddy as soon as he arrives and which leads him to uncover deep secrets about the hospital. The movie's ending has left a scar on everyone who has watched it, with many still having a hard time living with the heartbreak.

2) Inception (2010)

Another Leonardo DiCaprio banger that dropped in 2010 was Inception. It is directed by the great Christopher Nolan and stars a group of talented actors including Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Michael Caine, Cillian Murphy, Elliot Page, and Marion Cotillard. Inception is not only regarded as one of the best movies with shocking endings, but also among the best movies ever made in modern times.

It follows Dom Cobb (DiCaprio), a skilled thief who specializes in 'extraction', a process of extracting information from targets via their dreams. He is offered a chance to get his criminal record expunged and return home if he performs an 'inception' on a target's (Murphy) subconscious. In the end, when all seems well, a plot twist occurs that has left fans in a delirium for the past 15 years.

1) The Mist (2007)

The Mist tops the list of movies with shocking endings because it has the most shocking and heartbreaking endings of all time. The film is about a group of survivors who get trapped in a supermarket because a mysterious mist engulfs the town. The mist carries deadly creatures ready to tear anyone out there into pieces. As uncertainty grows, the group starts to fall apart, and many start to lose their minds.

Eventually, a small group of people led by David (Thomas Jane) flee the supermarket, and just when everything is about to come to an end, the most heartbreaking plot twist appears on screen.

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So, that was the list of movies with shocking endings. If you haven't seen any of them yet, get ready to pick your jaw up from the floor. And for the people who have seen these movies, don't spoil it for the newbies, let them also face the heartbreak the rest of the fans are living with every day.