Now that Gone Girl has officially hit theaters, it's safe to say that its ending is less than conclusive. And despite the many who are probably upset about that lack of "proper" resolution — as was certainly the case with the novel — that's a good thing. David Fincher's bleakly amusing marital-warfare satire closes on a purposefully vague note in order to create a haunting sense of further horrors to come. As such, it joins a long list of cinema greats that, rather than tying things up with a neat-and-tidy bow, prefer to finish in uncertainty. By leaving questions unanswered, these works compel audiences to remain engaged with their stories (and themes) long after the theater lights have come up, and as such, linger in our collective memory longer than so many other definitive finales. With everyone still arguing about Gone Girl's denouement, we present the ten best ambiguous endings in film history. (It probably goes without saying, but: spoilers follow.)

2001: A Space Odyssey

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Stanley Kubrick's sci-fi saga leaps from man's distant simian past to his intergalactic future, along the way charting the dehumanization of humanity and the chilling sentience of machines. Yet after astronaut Bowman (Keir Dullea) travels through a vortex of strange lights (in the legendary "Star Gate" sequence), he finds himself in a strange new universe, and then in a white room with an aged version of himself, and also with the monolith, and then... Is that a Star Child? In terms of climaxes that leave audiences guessing, theorizing, and heatedly debating, 2001 has no equal.

American Psycho

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Mary Harron's darkly hilarious adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis's novel charts yuppie scumbag Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) as he hacks and slashes his way through New York City, enjoying serial killing with a big smile on his face. Yet at film's conclusion, a critical question is raised, without every being fully answered: Was his rampage all in his mind?

No Country for Old Men

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Joel and Ethan Cohen's No Country for Old Men makes clear the untimely demise of Josh Brolin's main character. But much to the chagrin of many people who wanted absolute closure from this Oscar Best Picture winner, it keeps much else in doubt, including the fate of force-of-evil killer Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), who merely walks off into the sunset after surviving a car crash, as well as the meaning behind the anecdotal stories told by sheriff Tommy Lee Jones's sheriff.

Blade Runner: The Director's Cut

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Ridley Scott's seminal sci-fi noir was a rather cut-and-dried affair when first released in 1982. Yet that all changed when he revisited the film for 1992's "Director's Cut," which immediately became the definitive version of the film. While its most obvious alteration was the removal of Harrison Ford's awkward narration, the inclusion of a sequence in which Ford's cyborg-hunting cop Deckard dreams of a unicorn — especially when matched with an existing closing moment involving origami — famously intimates that the detective himself might, in fact, be a machine.

Total Recall

Arnold Schwarzenegger's Mars-set saga is kick-started by the hero's decision to go to a futuristic facility that implants vacation memories — an experience that, in a twist, seems to de-tangle his mind and expose his true identity as a secret agent. Or is that very secret-agent revelation merely part of his paid-for fantasy? Regardless of director Paul Verhoeven's own stance on the issue (which he reveals in a home-video commentary track), the question of what's real and what's not remains, even in the final moments, up in the air.

The Thing

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John Carpenter's The Thing is one of the all-time great horror movies, thanks in large part to its conclusion. With the Arctic base destroyed, the two remaining survivors (Kurt Russell and Keith David) take a seat across from each other to see which of them — before they freeze to death — will potentially reveal himself to be the shape-shifting alien that's caused so much mayhem. Refusing to show us what will become of them, it's an ambiguous climax par excellence.

A Serious Man

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Joel and Ethan Cohen's second film on this list is perhaps their most underrated. 2009's bitter A Serious Man is the story of a man whose life falls apart, piece by amazing piece, until it finally ends in a moment of impending catastrophe so over-the-top that the preceding tale's questions about faith and forgiveness are left (pun intended) hovering in the air.

Once Upon a Time in America

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Sergio Leone's 1984 gangster masterpiece recounts the saga of a group of New York City kids who form a criminal gang that endures all sorts of highs and lows over the course of 40 years. Yet a bookending sequence in which Robert De Niro's adult protagonist is spied narcotizing himself at an opium den suggests, teasingly, that at least some portion of the material was, in fact, just a drugged-out dream.

The Shining

Even without all the crazy theories surrounding The Shining (some of them detailed in the fan-criticism doc Room 237), Stanley Kubrick's 1980 horror masterpiece finishes with an unforgettable image open to interpretation. With Jack Nicholson's psycho-daddy having frozen to death, the director's camera zooms into an old 1921 black-and-white photograph that shows Nicholson at the center of a party, thereby implying that he had been there long before the film began — and, perhaps, forever?

Mulholland Drive

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David Lynch's neo-noir Hollywood satire is a deliriously surreal head trip about an aspiring actress (Naomi Watts) who arrives in L.A. and, alongside a beautiful amnesiac (Laura Harring), finds herself at the center of a twisty-turny mystery. As per usual, Lynch's film is a non-linear tumble down the rabbit hole, and ends with a flurry of what's-going-on action that, like the best ambiguous finales, leaves one trying to untangle its knotty enigmas even after it's over.

Nick Schager Nick Schager is a NYC-area film critic and culture writer with twenty years of professional experience writing about all the movies you love, and countless others that you don’t.

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