If a movie is likened to a poem, then the ending is like a poem.
Some endings are cleverly conceived like a key step in a nine-lock chain, and until the last second, it will never be known what story the director is telling.
Some endings have the opposite effect, disrupting all your first ninety minutes or so and casting a layer of fog over the story.
Some endings are too abrupt, like lizards that protect themselves after a sudden danger, leaving the audience with a bloody broken tail and mischievous taunts.
Some endings are deeply charming, like the last note of a symphony, the vibrato that still echoes in people's minds, and cannot be dissipated for a long time.
Let's take a look at how many tricks the writers and directors can play in the five minutes before the subtitles of the movie appear.
V. "Extraordinary Suspects"
Directed by Brian Singer, the film won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor and Best Original Screenplay. Kevin Spacey played a key role in it, the crippled Gingt.
He was one of two survivors of a case involving fifteen lives at the docks a few days earlier, and he was naturally taken to the police station for cross-examination by the police. But beforehand, he made an agreement with the police that if he told the whole story, the police would not be able to continue to pester.
Then, he began his performance with a lot of words. A thrilling, thrilling, and fascinating "crime story" is shaped in Günter's saliva: six weeks ago, an accidental crime brought Kinte and four other "different strengths" into a gang of bandits and made a beautiful few votes.
With the appearance of a ghostly man named Caesar, their nightmares begin.
The five people who collided with the evil spirit died for various reasons, and Kinte himself escaped this "cruise ship attack" because of his good luck. The whole "story" made the detective and FBI agent listen happily, thinking that he could catch a big fish, and even if the gushing "little cripple" slipped away, the other clues he provided would be enough to make a big achievement for himself.
They even opened their minds to various possible versions of Kint's story, trying to find the truth of the case.
The smug detective suddenly notices that the objects in his office seem to have a wonderful connection to the crippled Kint story, and can't help but break out in a cold sweat...
Kent said he had joined the male quartet, and the "QUARTET" under the bulletin board in the office meant the quartet. Baritone is a super big fat guy, and the bulletin board has a picture of a black fat woman. The side of the fat woman's photo is marked with "REDFOOT", and the person who sells the stolen goods in the story is "Redford"...
It turned out that this "crippled Kinte" whose IQ and psychological quality were far beyond ordinary people, fabricated his own "crime story" only by playing on the spot and relying on the information provided by the surrounding environment.
That is to say, he has been lying seriously since he entered the office. The two experienced agents were led by Ginter's nose from beginning to end.
At this moment, another survivor with severe burns also identified "Lame Kinte" as the villain behind the "Dock Massacre", "CaesarSus".
Another detail in the film is also amazing. That is, after leaving the police station, Kint's originally limp foot instantly improved, and he walked like an enclave to the car waiting to pick him up.
IV. "Deadly ID"
Directed by James Goldman and starring John Cusack and Pruitt Taylor Vince, this psychological thriller is yet another typical work with a reversal of the ending.
The film adopts a two-line parallel narrative approach, but there is a distinction between primary and secondary.
One clue is that Markham Rif is a suspect who has committed multiple atrocious crimes. Prosecutors wanted to prosecute him, but defence counsel tried to exonerate the defendant on the grounds that he had schizophrenia.
A large number of manuscripts and recordings of Markham Riff's notes were provided, and those notes and words were clearly not from a single person.
Another clue was that on a dark rainy night, ten strangers were trapped in a desert motel by heavy rain.
Among them were celebrities, a family of three, couples, police officers and prisoners. Due to bad weather, all means of communication were blocked. They had to stay here for the rainy night.
However, the passengers who stayed began to be murdered one by one. Everyone is suspicious, and at the same time it is possible to be the next victim.
The ending of the film not only combines the previous two seemingly completely out-of-tune narrative threads, but also greatly improves the depth of the entire film.
The serial murders in the Desert Hotel are no longer ostensibly confined space homicides, but "infighting" between personalities in the mind of the murder suspect, Markham Rif.
Do you think this is the end?
Eventually we discover that the most evil personality in Markham's mind is his childhood self.
After killing the prostitute Paris, he gained complete control of Rif's body.
And then in the real world, Riff kills the driver of the car with a chain of handcuffs in the back seat of the police car, and the police car overturns on the side of the road... The bright ending that was about to come out was swallowed up by black despair.
III. "Island Horror"
Jersey in The United Kingdom after World War II.
Grace, played by Nicole Kidman, is a devout Christian on the island, and her husband went to the battlefield during World War II, leaving Grace with two children, sister Anna and brother Nicholas.
In order to take care of two children who are allergic to sunlight and clean the large villa, she hired three other servants.
However, the villa with only five people still seemed too empty, and in order to avoid the children being harmed by the sun, the curtains in all the rooms were tightly drawn.
This makes the atmosphere of the whole house even more eerie.
A series of strange things began to happen, the doors and windows that closed automatically, the curtains that had just been closed and pulled open in the blink of an eye, the piano that no one played but made a sound, and the strange men who appeared from time to time.
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Eventually, when the mystery of everything is revealed. Grace, like the audience, cannot accept such a harsh reality - in fact, they are the "uninvited guests" in this house, the ghosts that linger in the world.
The audience followed the Grace family and watched the whole story for the first time from the mysterious "ghostly point of view" of the past. The novelty and thriller of such a reversed ending is extraordinary.
2. "Chainsaw Horror"
Wen Ziren's "Chainsaw Horror" series can be said to be a well-known horror series.
The first part opened the series jackpot, and the most brilliant part of the first part was the ending.
Photographer Adam and doctor Lawrence are locked in a heavily machined toilet. In order to survive they had to follow the whole cause behind the planners - vertical saws, fighting wits and courage. But the two victims were not as lucky as they were in the clichéd kidnapping story of escaping ascension.
In the end, Dr. Lawrence, with a strong belief in reuniting with his wife and children, sawed off his right foot (the picture is uncomfortable and unsatisfactory) and crawled out of this hell.
But the other victim, Adam, was not so lucky, because he missed the key to the shackles and did not have the courage to saw off his own limbs, so he had to be trapped there forever.
And when the final mastermind of everything, the vertical saw, finally reveals his true identity, I believe that the audience must be as stunned as the male protagonist Adam who is locked in the toilet. It turned out that he had always been at the side of the two protagonists, that is, the man who had fallen into a pool of blood.
He has been listening to the conversation between the two protagonists, and he wants to see how desperate it is for human beings to realize the preciousness of their lives.
I. "Horror Story"
Released in 1960, Horrors was Hitchcock's triumphant work.
It is the undisputed originator of modern thrillers.
The film tells the story of Marianne, a beautiful woman who is greedy for money, who comes to the car hotel with a huge amount of money to take shelter, and is brutally killed in the bathroom.
Her sister Lyra follows her sister's trail to the inn and engages with norman, the owner of the place...
In the end, when the heroine Lyra is forced into a corner by norman's murderous mother, the hotel owner, and is about to hang up, her sister's boyfriend Sam arrives in time to save her.
After the danger, the private investigator explains to Lyra and Sam that Norman's mother does not exist at all.
The black shadow dressed in women's clothing was just another "mother personality" of Norman. It is another personality that Norman splits after suffering a mental illness after the death of his mother.
It is only at this moment that the protagonist and the audience suddenly realize that everything is nothing more than the fantasy of this schizophrenic.
The final shot at the end of the film is a monologue of Norman's "motherly personality". The smile on his face made the audience shudder...
(Rotten Tomatoes Movie Editorial Department: Gradient Painting)