No Ending / Live-Action Films

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No Endings in Films — Live-Action

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• The 400 Blows famously ends with Antoine looking exhausted in a Freeze Frame in the middle of an unresolved chase scene.
• 28 Hotel Rooms: The plot has no clear resolution. At the end, the man and woman seem to be considering rekindling their relationship, but how it will all work out (or not) is left hanging.
• À l'aventure: The film has no resolution. Sandrine just has one last conversation along with the man from the park, then the scene fades out.
• All the President's Men ends abruptly with a teletype reporting Nixon's resignation & Gerald Ford's inauguration (chronologically; two teletypes before that, dated 1975, report on the outcome of the trials against Haldeman & Mitchell).
• Already Tomorrow In Hong Kong has two strangers meeting and falling for each other in the course of two nights. Ruby reveals that she's actually engaged and will be moving back to America next week. They acknowledge that they've been emotionally cheating on their spouses, but are unsure what to do next. The film cuts off before either of them decide whether they'll part now or start a relationship.
• American Psycho. The ending throws into question everything we saw happen in the film and we never get an answer as to what really happened.
• A.W.O.L.: Joey walks off toward the border after Rayna leaves her in tears, then the film ends after an offscreen border guard asks for her passport.
• Bad Apples: At the end of the movie, a woman is checking outside her house on the off-chance she's being targeted by the girls. She goes back inside and closes her door... and then sees it slowly creak open... Roll Credits.
• The Banshees of Inisherin ends with the two main characters simply standing on a beach, the emnity between them neither forgiven nor resolved. While it's implied the conflict of the Irish Civil War is winding down offscreen, the main characters' lives are both materially worse and they're both stuck on the island with each other.
  Pádraic: Some things there's no movin' on from. And I think that's a good thing.
• The Birds: The titular bird attacks on the town are never explained, nor are they stopped. During one of their "calm" periods, a tense peacefulness which also is unexplained, the protagonists get to their car and evacuate the town. Cue the end of the movie.
• Being a So Bad, It's Good homage to The Birds, Birdemic ham-fistedly hits all of the films' major points, including the sudden ending. The sequel also apparently decided to forgo any kind of proper ending to make a Sunset Boulevard reference instead.
• Blame (2017): The film ends before we learn what becomes of the protagonists and the plot is just left unresolved once Melissa claims Mr. Woods raped her. However, given its parallel with The Crucible the result is probably not good.
• Blood Debts ends with the main character shooting the villain with some sort of rocket derringer, causing him to explode. The film ends the instant he detonates, with a title card essentially acting as the entire dénouement.
• Breaker! Breaker! ends with JD landing the finishing blow on Strode, a fade out to the burning remains of West Texas... Then credits. This brings up What Happened to the Mouse? on a near total scale. We don't even know if the last blow on Strode killed him or merely knocked him out.
• With Cake being a Slice of Life about a woman dealing with chronic pain, this is expected. The final scene of the movie has Claire and Silvana laying some flowers on Nina's grave and then getting back into the car to drive home. Showing how this can still be used positively Claire - who for the rest of the movie had preferred to ride in the car lying down - chooses to ride in the car sitting up. This at least hints that she's making progress.
• Cast Away. At the very end Chuck is literally at a cross-roads in a large open area.
• The Castle, adapted from the Franz Kafka novel by Michael Haneke, emulates the novel's abrupt ending by cutting to black in mid-narrative and offering no resolution to the story.
• The Cavern: Towards the end of the film, the caveman Petr brutally kills one of the remaining survivors and rapes the other, and the film just ends right there in the middle of the rape scene.
• The Mary Tyler Moore movie Change of Habit famously ends this way, with MTM trying to decide whether she will remain a nun or leave the order to pursue True Love with Elvis Presley.
• Closet Land: We never find out if the Author is innocent or if the Interrogator really is her childhood abuser. The movie ends with the Interrogator leading the Author out of the room in handcuffs, through the corridor she's visualized her freedom to be. It's left ambiguous whether she's freed, executed, or simply tortured more.
• At the end of Cross of Iron, Sgt. Steiner and Capt. Stransky are fighting together for survival during the final Soviet assault. When they cross the railroad tracks, Stransky shoots two Soviets, emptying the magazine of his MP-40. He trips and falls, and Steiner shouts at him to get up. Stransky panicking at his empty gun, begs Steiner to tell him how to reload. A Soviet boy soldier shoots at him and knocks of his helmet as Steiner begins to laugh manically. The screen freezes with a shot of Stransky putting his helmet on backwards, then cuts to the boy soldier trying to fire a jammed MP-40 and shaking his head in disgust, and finally to Steiner limping away laughing hysterically. The film ends rather ambiguously with a shot of an explosion and Steiners maniacal laugh continuing into the credits. This abrupt ending was due to budget issues demanding improvisation and rewrite of the final scene.
• The horror movie Creature infamously not only has no ending but no third act either. The film's climax of the main character fighting the creature is done off-screen and the end credits roll after the second act. Critics called out the director (and his Small Name, Big Ego) on this and called it a ripoff to release a film that was basically unfinished.
• Cthulhu (2007). As Things Fall Apart and the Fish People stagger out of the ocean, the protagonist is offered a chance by his father to sacrifice his lover and become the immortal leader of the cult. Although we see him raising his stone cudgel angrily, the movie ends before showing us whether he kills his father or his lover.
• The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961). The Earth is hurtling towards the Sun, but a series of massive nuclear detonations in Siberia may avert the catastrophe. The last scene shows the journalists waiting in the print room with two next editions ready for printing, one saying WORLD SAVED and the other WORLD DOOMED. The American version of the film ends with church bells ringing, implying the world had been saved.
• Deranged: The film ends with the sheriff, his deputy, and Harlan Kootz finding Mary's dismembered body in the barn and Ezra at the dinner table with his collection of dug-up bodies, cackling over a bowl of blood... upon which the film ends with a freeze-frame where Simms' narration simply states that his farmhouse was burned down three days later. There is literally nothing saying what became of Ezra, if he was immediately arrested and thrown into the slammer for the rest of his life, was thrown into the nuthouse for the same length of time, if the three men were so appalled and disgusted by his actions that they gunned him down right there at the dinner table, or if they collectively pulled a Screw This, I'm Outta Here and Ezra was killed when his house was burnt down.
• The Devil Inside infamously did this. The third act is about to start, our protagonists are driving somewhere- SMASH! Car crash. Everyone's dead. A title card appears, reading, "The events of this film have never been fully explained. Visit therossifiles.com for more information on the ongoing investigation." The end. To make matters even worse, the site was taken down and now appears to be some sort of phishing page. Sucks if you bought the movie after the theatrical release.
• Doppelgänger: As the film comes to an end, when Jason Webb sees his reflection in a mirror, he rolls forward quickly, trying to touch his doppelgänger, but crashes into the mirror and dies, and then the camera cuts to zooming away from what appears to be the Sun in outer space.
• Doubt doesn't have a closure. Instead the viewer is left with the question who to believe, Father Flynn or Sister Aloysius? The resolution, as it were, is Aloysius, full of iron-clad conviction throughout the story, finally lets the cracks show in the final line:
  Aloysius: [sobbing] I have doubts!...I have such doubts!
• The Dreamers: We don't find out how their parents react to their incestuous relationship. The trio wander out into a riot and the film ends with a Bolivian Army Ending as Isabelle and Theo hurl a molotov cocktail at charging police.
• Due to this covering only the first half of the novel, Dune (2021) abruptly ends when Paul and Jessica are accepted by Stilgar's Fremen tribe, while none of the plot's threads have been resolved.
• Extinction (2018): The movie ends with Peter and his family, along with many other Androids, on a train bound for a safe underground hideout from where they hope to strike back against the invading humans, while the invasion is still going on.
• In Five Easy Pieces, after failing to achieve emotional catharsis with his estranged family, pianist-turned-laborer Robert Dupea is traveling back home with his girlfriend Rayette, whom he doesn't really love. They stop for gas. He impulsively hitches a ride on a logging truck, abandoning her. Then the movie ends.
• The Fly (1986) had several ending sequences filmed that all answered the questions of what Veronica, having put the creature who once was her lover out of his misery, would do about her potential Fetus Terrible (which she intended to abort) and whether Stathis would be part of her life or not from that moment on. None of them went over well, so the film just ends with her shooting Seth/Brundlefly and bursting into tears. The Fly II picked up the dangling plot threads.
• Friend of the World ends with the antagonist smiling and questions unanswered, leaving us to wonder what we just watched.
• Gamera 3: Awakening of Irys ends with Gamera missing an arm and severely wounded from his battle with Irys, preparing to go into battle against thousands of Gyaos.
• Most of Godfrey Ho's movies immediately end the moment the final bad guy dies.
• Grandpa's Psycho: The movie's ending is this, while also Overlapping with Downer Ending. Murry has killed Kelly, and already has another "sinner" he'll try to "save". After leaving her chained up in his basement, he goes out to meet his granddaughter at the lake, and sits with her. Roll Credits.
• None of the five vignettes in The Great New Wonderful have a definite ending. We also never learn the fate of Charlie Burbage.
• Halloween (1978): Famously ended with Dr. Loomis looking down to discover that Micheal Myers body has disappeared, implying that he somehow survived being shot six times and his rampage isn't over yet. Though the sequel does pick up immediately afterwards.
• Halloween III: Season of the Witch ends with Tom Atkins' character calling up the local cable company and demanding they stop showing the "commercial" that would turn the Silver Shamrock masks deadly. He is able to get all but one of the stations blocked, and the film ends with him screaming "Stop It!" over and over into the phone. We never find out if the signal is indeed stopped, or the fate of all the kids watching that night.
• Hiroshima Mon Amour is a story of a Japanese man and his French lover, in which she tells him much of her life story, including her doomed wartime romance with a German soldier. The woman gets upset while telling the man this story and leaves him for a while. Finally, they meet again in her hotel room. The woman, sitting on the bed in her room, tells the man that his name is Hiroshima. The man tells the woman that her name is Nevers (her home town in France, where she met the soldier). The End. No resolution as to whether she will stay in Japan with him or go home.
• Horrorvision: The movie ends with Dez wandering off into the desert with Bradbury's list of people who are immune to Horrorvision, possibly beginning the hunt for them.
• The Hug: Aiden's hand bursts out of Pandory's mouth. Roll credits.
• The Ides of March ends on a scene designed to resonate with the film's message, but cuts it off right before the protagonist answers a specific question. The scene hints at an Author's Saving Throw to come, but the film as a whole suggests a stick to the status quo.
• Into the Forest: The film ends with the sisters and their newborn camping in the woods, without a home or a clear idea of how they'll survive. There is no indication of whether the Big Blackout will ever end.
• In The Italian Job (1969), the films ends with the robbers in a Literal Cliff Hanger, with their bus hanging halfway over a cliff. Croker then says, "Hang on, lads. I've got a great an idea." Then the film ends before we find out what the idea is, if it works, and if anyone survives, much less gets the gold. This was in deference to the production codes of the time, which still would not allow criminals get happy endings. Rather than show them punished, the film simply lets you imagine what happens. Many theories have been floated around as to exactly how they are supposed to get out of their situation and possible theories as to how the plot would continue.
• At the end of Jason and the Argonauts Jason has defeated the skeletons and the Argo is about to sail away from Colchis with the Golden Fleece, but even assuming they're not attacked by Thessalian warships they still have to find a way back through the Clashing Rocks, navigate all the way back to Thessaly and kill King Pelias. Zeus says "For Jason there will be other adventures", but they were never filmed. This is probably for the best, because Jason becomes a total Jerkass in the original myth.
• Ju-Rei: The movie is shown in chapters presented in reverse order, counting down from "Chapter 10" to "Chapter 1" and finally to a "Prologue." The prologue does not show the origin or cause of the curse, or lend any special significance to the chronologically final chapter (the first one shown), or really resolve anything; it just shows an event that had already been mentioned in an earlier (later?) chapter. Again.
• Kill List: In the last twenty minutes of this Kitchen Sink Drama/thriller hybrid, the film undergoes a radical Genre Shift and becomes a modern Folk Horror. The cult that the movie has been building force the protagonist, Jay, to fight a figure only defined as the Hunchback. After he kills it, it's revealed that the Hunchback was his wife carrying their son on her back. Jay is crowned by the cult (now revealed to be other characters in the movie), and as they applaud and Jay stands over the bodies of his family, the movie ends.
• Killer/saurus ends with Professor Peterson and Kayleigh abandoning the project and starting to flee the facility. Then the screen cuts to black and the credits roll.
• John Sayles' Limbo ends with the three main characters on an island, waiting for a plane to come and either rescue them or kill them. Before you find out which, it fades to white. According to John Sayles, ending the movie with either a rescue or a killing wouldn't have felt right.
• Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels. Tom decides to dispose of the shotguns that are the only evidence of the crime he and the other protagonists have committed. As he prepares to dump them off a bridge into the Thames, his buddies discover that the weapons are rare antiques, each worth a fortune. The movie ends with Tom hanging over the side of the bridge, poised to drop the guns in the river, and his cell phone clutched between his teeth (put there to avoid it falling into the river while he is hanging over the edge) - and it rings.
• In Lone Star (1996), Pilar and Sam learn they're half-siblings after falling in love and consummated their relationship; Pilar says, "Forget the Alamo", hinting that they will continue even though they know they're related.
• Love (2015) ends with Murphy breaking down holding his toddler son in the bathtub, hallucinating that he's holding his ex, Electra. He then says or thinks "I will love you until the end" and immediately afterwards 'THE END' flashes over the screen, followed by the credits. Electra is still missing, possibly dead, Murphy hasn't reconciled with his current girlfriend Omi, and it's not clear what Murphy's declaration of love combined with the ending card means, if anything.
• In Mean Streets, Michael, having been pushed too far by Johnny Boy, sets up a drive-by ambush as Johnny, Charlie, and Teresa are driving to Brooklyn. The gunfire from Michael's mook causes Charlie to crash the car. Johnny is shot in the neck and Charlie in the hand, but all three exit the car alive. Then the film ends.
• Meek's Cutoff: The film ends before we find out whether the pioneers found civilization or where the Native American guide was taking them. As a consequence, the film never says whether the Native American is a villain and never presents the westward expansion of the pioneers as a good or bad thing.
• Melinda and Melinda. The serious story has no ending. The Framing Device ends the film justly:
  Sy: We just got to accept it and enjoy it, because it can end... like that. (Snaps Fingers. Quip to Black. Credits Roll.)
• At the end of Mom and Dad, Carly, Josh and Damon have the parents tied up for the time being, but have no idea how to proceed from there, and they still have no idea what caused the crisis and when or if the effect will ever wear off, and then the film just ends in mid-sentence.
• Men: After a horrifying and surreal sequence where the various men the protagonist, Harper, encountered throughout the film give birth to each other one after another in a row, the last one takes the form of her husband, James. He blames Harper for his death and asks for her love but the film ends before we see her response. There is a stinger, but all it confirms is that Harper survived, and that the car crashed into the stone fixture and the trail of blood leading into the house are real, as Riley can see them.
• Monos: Very little is left resolved in the end. Did Doctora eventually find refuge somewhere? What did the soldiers do with Rambo? What happened to Bigfoot and Boom-Boom after they dove into the river? Did Lady kill those kids? Did Smurf ever escape his bonds? What's to become of the surviving Monos as a group, now that they have dwindled to so few?
• Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Just as Arthur and his newly acquired cavalry are about to storm the final castle, they're all arrested in connection with the murder of a historian that occurred earlier on in the picture, in what audiences would have assumed was just a dopey throwaway joke. There were big plans for this scene- including a full-on war between the French and Arthur's army. Unfortunately, at the end of filming, the budget and time just abruptly ran out and they opted for a joke instead in true Python fashion. It also is a Stealth Pun, as the policemen turn the ending into a literal Writer Cop Out.
• My Dinner with Andre doesn't really resolve the philosophical disagreement between Wallace and Andre or determine a winner, pretty much ending because both men had finished dinner and it was time to go their separate ways.
• In Nine Days of One Year, Gusev, a nuclear research scientist, is dying from radiation poisoning. He is in the hospital, where he's about to undergo an experimental bone marrow donation that may save his life. His wife and best friend are in a waiting room outside. Gusev has a nurse carry a note to his wife and friend, in which Gusev suggests that if his friend can find him some pants, they can all go out to dinner. The End.
• No Man's Land. One of the characters falls on a live landmine. The rest of the film revolves around how the warring parties of the Yugoslavian Civil War and the United Nations peacekeepers interact during the incident. At the end of the film, both warring factions retreat and the UN troops from Germany and France also pull out, unable to defuse the mine. The unlucky soldier is left in place, still alive and laying on the landmine at the end of the film.
• Loriot's Pappa ante portas has been mistaken for this by some. The characters meet their extended family, then Heinrich and Renate are briefly seen playing their recorders for their son and cleaning lady. The intended conclusion is that the two have realized they're not the hopeless case they thought they are, their relatives being even worse, but this is not made explicit.
• Patrick Still Lives: Lydia attempts to flee from the house, but Patrick has blocked off all the exits, forcing her to retreat to his room. There, she lets out a scream — and then the film just stops.
• Playing With Dolls: The detective is still on the run from guards, there's no sign of the Watcher, and the killer has a new victim. However, Cindy manages to hitch a ride with someone who takes her away from the danger. Roll credits.
• The Quiet Earth. Zac Hobson finds himself... somewhere. There's no explanation given, and there's no resolution to anything, just Scenery Porn.
• A Quiet Place: The family learns the monsters' weakness and kills one of them, but two more are on the way. The mother and daughter prepare for them. Cut to black.
• The 1994 Dolph Lundgren sports drama/action thriller Pentathlon stops at his character Erik finally killing his evil former coach Hutch after almost getting shot by him as he finishes first in a footrace. No show of the consequences, just roll credits.
• Robot World ends with the astronaut seeing aircrafts coming in the distance... and then the screen goes black and the credits roll.
• In the drama film Safe (1995), the main character develops the mysterious multiple chemical sensitivity disorder and goes through treatment in the second half of the film. The film ends with her having fully embraced the treatment center and being around people who accept her, but it's completely left open whether she is recovering at all or only getting worse.
• Scarred: The final shot of the movie settles on Marley having all the fish hooks pierced into her face being pulled, causing her to scream as they're ripped from her flesh. Smash Cut to black, followed by a creepy line from Tiny. Then roll credits.
• A Serious Man ends right after implicating that Larry Gopnik is very ill, with his son Danny staring at a tornado. The film has many subplots, which remain unresolved. It's another climax to all the rest of his suffering through the rest of the film.
• She Dies Tomorrow: We never find out why a growing number of people believe that they'll die tomorrow. In the morning of the day, a wide range of people await their perceived imminent demise, but the film ends before anything happens or is revealed.
• Skyline, as part of an obvious Sequel Hook, but since the movie bombed, it's probably not happening.
• In The Street Fighter with Sonny Chiba, the Anti-Hero defeats the final villain, stumbles to his feet on the brink of death, lurches off balance, and then the film freezes frame, with no indication whether he lives or dies. Subsequent sequels, however, clear that question up.
• Sleepaway Camp. After the big twist that Angela was really a boy the whole movie... the movie just kinda stops and the credits just roll. One of the sequels ends the same way.
• The Sword of Doom, a remarkably grim and nihilistic samurai movie, has the (anti)hero cornered, fighting, probably doomed — and then the film ends in mid-slash on a freeze frame. The reason for this: a sequel was intended but never filmed (but given the general aura of nihilism in the film, this no-ending actually works better than one more definitive).
• The Talented Mr. Ripley, though the existence of sequels implies that he got away with it.
• The Thing (1982) ends with the two surviving heroes still stranded in Antarctica, unsure of whether the other is actually an alien.
• The finale of They Might Be Giants features the hero, who's convinced he is Sherlock Holmes, and his love interest, who just happens to be named Mildred Watson. After escaping from a mental hospital and a climatic fight in a grocery store, the two end up waiting by a tunnel in Central Park at midnight for the infamous (and supposedly fictitious) Moriarty to emerge. There are hoofbeats, then Fade to Black. That's it.

• Two-Lane Blacktop centers around a cross-country road race from the Southwest to Washington D.C., but the movie ends with one driver entering a competition at a speedway in Tennessee while the other takes to the road again. The film stock appears to burn up and the fates of both races and all the characters are left unresolved.
• The Warped Ones. Akira is a street thug who raped and impregnated Fumiko. Yuki is a bar prostitute who had sex with Fumiko's boyfriend Kashiwagi and also got impregnated. Akira takes Yuki to the hospital to get an abortion. There they meet Kashiwagi and Fumiko. Akira pushes Yuki at Kashiwagi, grabs Fumiko, and says they should switch girls, since Fumiko's carrying his baby while Yuki is carrying Kashiwagi's. Akira and Yuki mock Kashiwagi, laughing maniacally. Cue Freeze Frame ending.
• Westworld ends with the deaths of virtually everyone except the protagonist, but it still lacks a proper ending inasmuch as the main character has collapsed in a seeming breakdown, and it is uncertain whether he can find his way out of the theme park alive.
• Wings: Nadya, missing her Glory Days as a World War II fighter pilot, is given to visiting the airfield and chatting up the pilots. When one pilot has to go back to the hangar, Nadya climbs up into his plane on a whim. The pilots, who all know her, start pushing the plane around the field. Nadya gets an odd look on her face. To everyone's surprise, she starts the engine and takes off. There's another POV shot from a plane soaring through the air. конец.
• A Woman Under the Influence is about Mabel the housewife's Sanity Slippage that eventually leads to her being committed to an asylum. She comes home, but her mean, constantly shouting husband Nick winds up provoking a relapse within hours after her return. After an ugly scene that involves Nick hitting Mabel and Mabel cutting her hand, they both calm down. He bandages the cut on her hand and they go to bed. Roll credits.
• Yakuza Apocalypse: At the end, Kageyama and Kyoko look up and see a mountain-sized version of Kaeru-kun over the town. Kageyama transforms into a human-bat monster and flies upward, presumably to engage it in combat... roll credits.