The 10 greatest cliffhanger endings of all time
So, you’ve made a masterpiece, the characters effortlessly fit together, the story is complex and emotionally engaging, but you just don’t know how to end the rotter. Indeed, a great ending can be the cherry on top of the cake of an all-time classic, but it also has the ability to crumble any movie; just look at Martin Scorsese’s weird horror Shutter Island, Danny Boyle’s sci-fi Sunshine or David Fincher’s thriller The Game.
But, if you’re not too sure how to end your film, you could always opt for the cliffhanger, a conclusion that cuts to black after the protagonist is faced with a life-or-death choice or is stuck in a perilous position. Sure, they have the ability to make the audience scream in rage at the screen as they are forced to live in permanent limbo concerning the fate of the characters, but they can also conjure some genuine artistic mastery.
In our list of the ten greatest cliffhanger endings of all time, we’re focusing on the very best films that leave the drama on a knife edge. Notably, we’re purposefully leaving off movies that feel resolved, yet have minor unanswered questions, such as the Coen brothers’ No Country For Old Men, which never reveals what happens between Chigurh and Carla, and Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation, where the whispered words aren’t made apparent.
Take a look at our picks for the greatest cliffhanger endings below, including films from Quentin Tarantino, Alfred Hitchcock, Richard Linklater and John Carpenter. Sorry, there was no space for Marvel’s Avengers: Infinity War, which admittedly leaves the action on a knife-edge.
The 10 greatest cliffhangers endings:
10. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (George Roy Hill, 1968)
Too often forgotten in the conversation of the greatest western movies of all time, George Roy Hill featured the iconic acting duo of Paul Newman and Robert Redford as two outlaws on the run after a botched train robbery. Thanks to a wondrous script from William Goldman that fuses emotional drama with sleek action sequences, the film earned a ‘Best Picture’ nomination and four Academy Awards in total.
Whilst the complete film is an utter gem, there’s no doubt that it’s best known for its final scene in which the titular pair are stuck in a barn with countless armed lawmen outside. They’ve got out of so many sticky situations, they’ll surely get out of this one too, or will they? Hill immortalises the characters in western folklore forever with a final freeze frame, bursting out the doors all guns blazing. Live or die, the legacy of the pair is immortal.
9. It Follows (David Robert Mitchell, 2014)
The 2014 David Robert Mitchell horror flick It Follows had an intriguing premise, telling the story of a young woman who is followed by a creepy supernatural force after a sexual experience, but it wasn’t without its problems. Despite several moments of genre mastery, the film splutters to its finale, featuring a number of questionable decisions that one almost forgets after the quality of its final cliffhanger shot.
Thinking that she has ridden herself of the strange supernatural shadow that incessantly follows her, we finish the film seeing her walk hand in hand with her new lover. Yet, in the background, there’s a figure who’s walking with the same uncanny swagger as her supernatural stalkers. Has she really shaken her demons? Has the nightmare merely stalled? The paranoia is anxiety-inducing.
8. 45 Years (Andrew Haigh, 2015)
We can’t give Andrew Haigh’s 45 Years enough praise at Far Out; in fact, we consider it something of a modern-day masterpiece. Adapted from David Constantine’s short story In Another Country, the film follows a married couple soon to be celebrating their 45-year wedding anniversary and the rediscovery of the body of the man’s long-lost lover, which causes a large rift in the pair’s life.
The finale sees the pair dance to the same first song from their wedding, ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’ by The Platters, during their anniversary, but things are not the same, and the morbid discovery leads the wife, Katya (Charlotte Rampling) to question whether her true love is indeed ‘true’. Once the song ends, so does the film, with the relationship of the troubled lovers in the balance.
7. Before Sunrise (Richard Linklater, 1995)
When it comes to films of swooning romance, Richard Linklater has made three of the very finest in the form of his Before trilogy, which tells the story of a pair of lovers celebrating youthful spontaneity in a number of idyllic locations. All three movies are masterpieces in their own right, but for our money, the best of the lot is the very first, Before Sunrise, which too features a dazzling cliffhanger finale.
Having enjoyed a serendipitous evening together in Vienna, eating food and enjoying its musical offerings, the pair reluctantly go on their separate ways, but not before making a vow to meet up with each other again in the near future. Is this the kind of empty promises passing friends make to each other on a regular basis? Or the start of a flourishing relationship? The delicate cliffhanger of Linklater’s film is utter perfection.
6. Inception (Christopher Nolan, 2010)
Christopher Nolan’s complex dreamscape thriller Inception isn’t for everyone, but we think it’s an innovative sci-fi that remains one of the most visionary of the 21st century. Telling the story of a thief who steals corporate secrets using technology that allows him to control other people’s dreams, the story is a wild showcase that features the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio, Elliot Page, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tom Hardy and Cillian Murphy.
As we’re not willing to write the hundreds of words necessary to explain the plot, to make a long story short, the finale sees DiCaprio’s Cobb getting everything he wanted, returning home to his kids. Walking to embrace them, he spins his totem on the table, an object that allows him to tell if he is dreaming or living in the real world, but Nolan cuts to black before we find out a definitive answer. All in all, it’s an extremely satisfying conclusion.
5. Kill Bill: Volume 1 (Quentin Tarantino, 2003)
Quentin Tarantino’s violent Kill Bill saga wasn’t originally intended to be split into two parts, with the director himself confirming: “Technically, we released it as two movies, and there is a closing and an opening credits [on each movie]…But I made it as one movie, and I wrote it as one movie, [so it’s one movie]”. We’re thankful for this fact, too, as the first movie in the story features one of the greatest cliffhanger endings of all time.
Tarantino fans were probably pretty confused when the titular ‘Bill’ barely showed up in the first volume, but there was no doubt at all that he would appear in the sequel, with the final shot promising an epic follow-up film. Uma Thurman’s Bride pens her ‘Death List Five’ on the plane, whilst it is revealed that her baby, whom she earlier thought was dead, is actually still alive. The shocking reveal is all scored to the thrilling sound of ‘The Lonely Shepherd’ by James Last & Gheorghe Zamfir, too; it’s exquisite stuff.
4. The Birds (Alfred Hitchcock, 1963)
We said in the introduction to this article that we wouldn’t be including any endings that feature minor unanswered questions, but Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds has some major mysteries that merely go unsolved. In one of Hitchcock’s most undervalued masterworks, a wealthy young woman heads to Northern California to find a potential boyfriend, only for her trip to take a strange turn when the birds start randomly attacking people.
It’s a terrifying concept, and to make matters worse, we never actually find out why the birds start attacking people and indeed why they stop at the end of the film. Eerie, hopeless and quite terrifying, Hitchcock leaves us in the realm of the unknown, vulnerable to the mysteries of life. It’s a real gem of a cliffhanger that leaves us with as much anxiety as the world of the film.
3. The Italian Job (Peter Collinson, 1969)
It would have been genuinely rude of us not to have included Peter Collinson’s beloved crime flick The Italian Job on our list of the ten greatest cliffhanger endings of all time; after all, the film helped to popularise the term by taking a very literal interpretation. A comedy crime caper that tells the story of a group of Mini-riding crooks trying to steal a shipment of gold by implementing a traffic jam, the Michael Caine-starring flick is considered a classic of British cinema.
Their dastardly plan manages to work, but as the crew are escaping on a coach, the vehicle suddenly loses control with the booty on board, and they find themselves literally balancing on the edge of a cliff. “Hang on a minute lads, I’ve got a great idea,” Caine’s Charlie Croker quips before Collinson pulls away and we leave the gang in their time of need, so close but so far from their golden jackpot.
2. La Haine (Mathieu Kassovitz, 1995)
There’s a reason why the rather simple lines of “So far so good, so far so good” have become so iconic in Mathieu Kassovitz’s French monochrome masterpiece La Haine; they are part of one of cinema’s finest cliffhanger endings. Heart in mouth, the film ends with the trio of young lads in a major predicament with the cops, one of them has been fatally shot, one is being held at gunpoint, and the other is witness to the chaos.
Undoubtedly one of the all-time greatest endings, the film draws to an ambiguous cliffhanger that leaves the viewer in limbo as to the ultimate fate of the beloved characters. A deeply important film that speaks to police violence, racial injustice and class inequality in Paris, France, the ending bottles up these debates and adds a violent punctuation mark onto each one.
1. The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982)
You shouldn’t ever be allowed to talk about the greatest cliffhanger endings in cinema history if you’re not willing to at least include John Carpenter’s sci-fi masterpiece The Thing, a film we’ve chosen for our top spot. Starring Kurt Russell, this Lovecraftian horror tells the story of a cosmic being who torments a group of researchers living on an Antarctic base with its ability to mimic the physical and psychological attributes of the human form.
A tense, anxiety-inducing thriller, the story comes to a close once the large majority of the crew has been killed off by this obscene monster, and the threat appears to have been quelled thanks to Russell’s MacReady and his trusty flamethrower. Yet, we can’t be sure that MacReady isn’t an alien in disguise, nor do we know whether the only other survivor, Keith David’s Childs, is an assimilated extraterrestrial either.
The worst part is, not only do we not know, but the characters don’t either, leading to cinema’s creepiest and most disturbing cliffhanger endings of all time.
