Confusing Horror Movie Endings Explained

We've seen everything come and go when it comes to horror flicks: aliens, werewolves, vampires, the Saw films, Asian ghost stories, and even killer dolls. After all the crazy things that have haunted our nightmares over the years, there are still a handful of scary movies whose endings left us scratching our heads. We've already explained a bunch of other confusing movie endings, but this time we're in for some frights and fears as we explain some of the horror genre's more detabable and obscure closing scenes.

Warning: Some of the videos below feature NSFW language and content. 

For a small indie '70s horror flick, Phantasm left a lasting impression. Director J.J. Abrams is a huge fan, which can be seen in The Force Awakens, as Captain Phasma's name and silver armor are both tributes to the franchise. The 1979 original film featured a lot of surreal imagery, and if you follow the course of events in terms of what happens to its main characters, things just don't make a lot of sense.

Jody Pearson, his 13-year-old brother Mike, and their good friend Reggie investigate the local mortician, who they call "the Tall Man" and is responsible for a lot of deaths and disappearances in the area. The Tall Man is super strong, has an army of dwarf minions, and commands an anti-gravitational silver sphere that is filled with all kinds of weapons and death traps. The trio find out that the Tall Man comes from some kind of other world and Reggie shuts down the mortician's teleportation device which warps away the local mortuary, but he's killed by the Tall Man on the way out. Mike and Jodi trap the unkillable Tall Man at the bottom of a mine shaft and cause a rockslide to leave him stuck. Just when they thought everything was okay, Mike wakes up and it was all a dream. Reality is completely changed: Jody supposedly died in a car crash, Mike is staying at Reggie's place, and the movie ends with the Tall Man appearing yet again, proving it wasn't a bad dream. Reggie obviously didn't die, since he goes on to star in the other sequels, so what happened?

As explored via a series of sequels that span nearly 40 years, this series has to do with alternate realities and parallel worlds. The Tall Man figured out how to jump from world to world, and each time Reggie, Mike, and Jodi eliminate him, another version of him comes out of a teleporter to replace the one that died. In one reality, Jodi died; and in another, Reggie died. By the time we hit Phantasm V, there's one reality where Reggie is continuing his fight against the Tall Man decades later, another where he died, and another where he's an old man in psychiatric clinic.

A huge influence on the Silent Hill video game franchise, Jacob's Ladder is a psychological horror flick that features Tim Robbins as a Vietnam War vet. The movie starts off with him being stabbed with a bayonet; then we see him years later in New York. Robbins' character, Jacob Singer, remembers the life he had prior to the war, where he had a wife and three sons, the youngest of whom—Gabe—died before he deployed. He now lives with his girlfriend, Jezzie, and suffers visions of demons, people trying to kill him, faceless monsters around him, hallways and subway lines abruptly/randomly leading to dead ends, and all kinds of other surreal imagery.

Jacob occasionally bounces back and forth between life with Jezzie and his wife and kids before the war, making things even more confusing as he believes he's experiencing some kind of after-effect from a chemical war agent he was exposed to in Vietnam. The whole thing turns out to be in his mind, as all the espionage, hauntings, confusion, distrust, and government coverups Jacob thought he was experiencing were psychologically triggered by the comrade who wrongly bayoneted him in Vietnam. Even worse, the events of the movie were happening in his mind while he lay dying from the stab wound. Coming to terms with his death, Jacob then goes home to his apartment before the war. He reunites with Gabe, who leads his father up their home's staircase into a bright light, presumably meaning that Jacob is finally at peace.

The last entry of John Carpenter's Apocalypse Trilogy (the other two being Prince of Darkness and The Thing), In the Mouth of Madness lives up to its namesake by going off the deep end in a very H.P. Lovecraft sort of way. This film Inceptions itself with a story-within-a-story that dabbles into psychological horror and metafiction. Jurassic Park alumni Sam Neill plays John Trent—an insurance investigator sent to look for a famous record-breaking horror author named Sutter Cane, whose name is obviously a play on Stephen King. Cane has gone missing as his next bestseller (take a wild guess what it's called) is expected to break world records. Trent goes to New England to search for the author, but ends up reliving many parts of Cane's stories.

If you thought Prince of Darkness' story was off the wall, Madness takes the ball and runs with it. Cane's novel is so embraced by the masses that his stories actually free a bunch of Lovecraftian deities from another dimension, intent on taking things over. Neill's character finds out that he's actually just one of the characters written in Cane's story, which doesn't make sense to him. Cane turns out to be the portal from which the monsters emerge and Neill's character eventually wakes up in a rundown psychiatric ward. Turns out the world is descending into hell, suicides and murders are widespread, monsters are roaming the Earth, and Trent finds a movie theater playing the theatrical version of Cane's newest book, In the Mouth of Madness. The film Inceptions itself yet again as Trent watches the movie relive his previous experiences, indicating that he really was a Sutter Cane character all along and only became real as the story unfolded.

Was Patrick Bateman a Wall Street serial killer or was it all in his head? Most of American Psycho seems to suggest the former, but the final events of the film leave you questioning just how much of it really happened. Sure, this movie lets you see what Warner Bros. saw in Christian Bale before making him Bruce Wayne, but it ends on a rather open-ended note. Bateman loves analyzing corporate rock, living the high life, and killing homeless people, co-workers, and prostitutes—although we're still unsure just how much of any of it was real.

During the climax of the film, Bateman goes on a public rampage, killing bystanders, security guards, police, and more—leaving a crazed confession message on his lawyer's answering machine (remember those?). To his dismay, one of his assumed victims, Paul Allen, isn't dead, and his apartment isn't filled with Bateman's victims as we were led to believe.

Jean, Bateman's secretary, finds his office journal, which is filled with drawings of murder and other unspeakable horrors. This is the major hint that all of the movie's butchery is happening in Bateman's imagination, especially when his lawyer claims he met with Paul Allen after Bateman supposedly killed him. The worst part is that Bateman is still being mistaken for someone else, so we're left unsure as to whether he's killed anyone.

Arguably the best of John Carpenter's horror movies after Halloween, The Thing tells the story of a shapeshifting alien parasite stalking an American research station in the Antarctic and taking the forms of its victims. After Kurt Russell's R.J. MacReady loses all of his friends and ultimately defeats the last morphing alien, he's left in a weary standoff against the only other survivor, Childs (played by Keith David). The movie ends ambiguously, with both men leery of one another, likely freezing in the subzero temperatures as the compound's fires start to die. Even worse, we're left unsure whether MacReady or Childs is a converted alien or human. Fortunately, multiple viewings and a mindful eye help narrow down our choices.

When Mac and fellow survivors Nauls and Garry left the compound to search for their incarcerated scientist, Blaire (who was unknowingly set free and possessed by the Thing), Childs was left at the compound's main door keeping a lookout. We find out that Blaire/Thing was in the generator room the whole time, which was really close to where Childs was keeping lookout. Since Childs was watching from the window to see Mac and company go, Blaire could've easily sneaked up on him from behind. More importantly, the dark blue jacket Childs wore when he was keeping lookout changed to a beige/brown by the end of the movie (like Kubrick, Carpenter was heavy into details), which suggests the alien tore through his coat and he took another one from the extras by the exit door.

Even more important is the exchange between Childs and MacReady at the end. During this scene, Kurt Russell was clearly wearing a flamethrower on his back, covered by a cloak, though it's never mentioned. He's also seen carrying a bottle, which he doesn't drink but shares with Childs, who was the most distrusting member of the group and normally wouldn't touch it. Mac was a heavy drinker and always boozing whenever he had that bottle with him, but he and other members of the team filled all the liquor bottles with gasoline to destroy the compound, which could suggest why he wasn't drinking from it.

Carpenter himself has said that Mac's breaths are visible, whereas Childs' aren't, and he's also pointed out the "gleam" that's always present in the true humans' eyes in the film. Referring back to the chess game at the beginning of the movie, where Mac loses a match against a computer (an artificial "Thing," standing in for a human), he ultimately gets the last laugh by pouring alcohol into the computer, shorting it out. Here, we can imagine Mac getting the last laugh in a similar manner: He lost the game (all of his friends are dead, the compound is destroyed, and he'll inevitably die out there), but gets the last laugh by giving Childs (presumably the Thing standing in for a human) a drink from what is likely a gasoline-filled bottle, before blowing him away with the hidden flamethrower. Of course, the Thing wouldn't really know what whiskey is supposed to taste like, right?