Blog Classics: Twists, Cliffhangers, and Open Endings

During the pandemic, both my career and personal life crashed and required a reboot. I lost my entire website during this time. This series contains fragments I've edited and pieced back together.

Sometimes people use the wrong word for something so often that it drives writers nuts —or even worse, causes Merriam-Webster to surrender and change the meaning of the word in question (RIP, literally). So let’s talk about the difference (omg THERE IS ONE) between three non-traditional story endings: the twist ending, the open ending, and the cliffhanger.

Before we jump in, I want to note that this post includes spoilers for the movies Ghostbusters, The Sixth Sense, The Thing, and Inception…because if you haven’t seen those by now, come on, what are the chances you’ll make the time?

Anyway. Let’s talk “cliffhanger” first, because that’s the term I see thrown around with abandon, and about 80% of the time people are using it wrong.

A little background: You may or may not be aware that the term “cliffhanger” originally comes from the old serial short films that were shown in front of feature films back in the 30s and 40s. These were quick movies that told a quick story, and usually ended with the hero in extreme, unresolved danger.

For example, Pauline in The Perils of Pauline (1914) would sometimes end her short film literally hanging off a cliff, which is where the name comes from. Or perhaps the film ends with her tied to train tracks while an oncoming train approached. She’s screaming for help, the train is creeping toward her ever so slowly, and then suddenly— roll credits.

Will Pauline make it? Will she escape the train tracks? Tune in next week!

The entire format of the serials was designed to get people to come back for more of the story. The cliffhanger ending, then, was designed to pull readers/viewers back for another installment by leaving the A storyline unresolved. 

Okay, like the train that was just about to squash Pauline, let’s back up. Every book or movie has several different storylines in play, and the biggest one is commonly called the A story. There is also a B story (or main subplot), and most of the time there are also smaller subplots that you might call C, D, E, etc.

For example, the A story in Ghostbusters is our four guys stopping the supernatural threat from Gozer. The B story is probably Venkman trying to romance Dana. Then there are a number of smaller subplots, such as Janine’s misguided flirtation with Egon and the sad life of the little accountant, Louis. As in most great movies, all of these stories interact and intertwine with each other (Louis has a huge crush on Venkman’s love interest Dana, Dana is being controlled by Gozer, etc), but at the end of the day it’s all at the service of the A storyline. That’s the most important plotline, and therefore it’s the one our filmmakers must resolve.

You can actually get away with not resolving some of the minor subplots in a movie (for example, Janine never really “gets” that Egon isn’t interested in her, and we don’t really care), but the A storyline is the Big Deal. It is the log line, the elevator pitch, the Thing That Must Be Explained in the movie trailer.

A cliffhanger, then, is when the A storyline is simply not resolved/left in great danger— like when the serial ends with Pauline dangling.

Cliffhangers aren’t done much in film anymore, and when they are, it’s often because everyone knows there’s going to be a sequel. These days, cliffhangers are more often found on television, because it’s the perfect format for this device. Soap operas, for example, are all about cliffhangers, because ending the main storyline on a life-or-death threat will get viewers to come back tomorrow. One of my favorite examples was on Arrow, when the main character Oliver Queen was stabbed multiple times and then pushed off the edge of a cliff. (Get it? Cliffhanger?)

Of course, when that episode aired we were all pretty sure the Green Arrow wasn’t dead —the show is called Arrow and he’s the main character—but we always knew Pauline would survive, too. But…what if they didn’t? The point was to cut the story off before its resolution and make viewers nervous enough to stay invested in getting more. That’s the essence of a cliffhanger.

Now, I said earlier that a lot of people mistakenly believe things are cliffhangers when they’re not. This is usually because they’re confusing a cliffhanger with a twist ending. I understand why —both devices can leave the audience flummoxed, wanting more, but there is a distinct difference.

A cliffhanger is when story A is left unresolved. A twist ending is when story A is completely resolved, but then something we believed turns out not to be true. Roll credits.

One great example of a twist ending is, of course, The Sixth Sense. Story A is about Malcolm (Bruce Willis) finding redemption for his past mistakes by helping Haley Joel Osment’s character Cole coming to terms with his gifts. And that storyline gets completely resolved: Cole learns to listen to what the ghosts actually want, and learns that he can help them move on. This brings Cole peace, which is all Malcolm ever wanted. Full resolution.

Then, just when we, the audience, feel that the story was all wrapped up, we suddenly get the twist: Malcolm was dead all along. He is one of Cole’s ghosts, and his quest to help Cole is his unfinished business.

Something we thought to be true—Malcolm is a living psychologist in an unhappy marriage—turns out not to be true at all. HOWEVER, this does not mean that story A isn’t wrapped up. It still is. This is the brilliant thing about that screenplay, and a well-used twist ending: the twist doesn’t take away from story A; it enhances it. So the audience gets to have the resolution and the surprise, which is pretty damned brilliant.

My own first novel, Dead Spots, has a twist ending. Obviously I’m about to mention a spoiler, so if you haven’t read it, I’d be really grateful if you skipped down two paragraphs. Seriously, skip down. You’ll thank me later. For the rest of you: the A story in Dead Spots is Scarlett and Jesse trying to figure out who is killing supernatural figures in Los Angeles. In one sense, the book is a pretty typical whodunit: the two investigators run around LA questioning people and looking for clues. By the end, they learn who is responsible and they stop that person.

This A story is completely wrapped up — but then we get the twist: Scarlett’s dead mentor Olivia, the woman who killed her parents and ruined her life, is not only still alive-ish, but she is a vampire, which shouldn’t be possible. So not one, but two things we thought were true aren’t: Olivia survived and a null has become a vampire. Whaaaaat?

Dead Spots is not a cliffhanger, because we find out who the main killer is. The “whodunit” is resolved.

Which brings me to the third non-traditional ending: open. An open ending is one in which story A is pretty much resolved, but the resolution is intentionally ambiguous. In other words, the plot could go one of two (or even more) ways, and the audience must choose which one to believe.

For example, at the end of American Psycho, audiences have to decide how much of Patrick’s killing spree was real, and how much was just fantasies in his head. You can watch that whole movie and walk away thinking Patrick Bateman is the world’s most prolific serial killer…or you can walk away thinking Patrick is an incredibly creepy wimp who acts out murder fantasies in his head but never actually commits a crime. Either answer is right. Neither answer is right. The filmmaker leaves it this way on purpose, to allow the audience to make up their own minds.

I don’t personally care for open endings that much, but my biggest complaint with them is that they’re way overused. When it comes to open endings, horror movies in particular are guilty of too much of a good thing. They LOVE to end with the “Carrie”-style open ending: is she really alive after all? Or was that just a nightmare from one of her victims? We don’t knoooooooooow! Open endings are one of those devices that should only be used very sparingly, or they lose all their power, like flashbacks or dream sequences.

But there are cases where open endings work well. In The Thing, none of us really want to see MacReady and Childs die of cold, or reveal that they were actually aliens. Ending around the campfire works much better. And there’s even a movie where I thought an open ending was pretty damned great: Inception.

At the end of Inception, Leo DiCaprio’s character leaves his special is-this-reality detector spinning and goes off to join his children. The audience is left to decide if the top keeps spinning, (meaning Leo is still inside of a fantasy), or if it stops (meaning this is reality and Leo gets his happy ending).

This is one of the rare cases where an open ending feels both brilliant and organic to the story, because it makes its own very meaningful point: it no longer matters. Leo no longer cares whether or not the world around him is “real” —for him, being with his kids in any layer of reality is all that matters.

This adds a whole other dimension to the film’s message. No other ending would work as well here.

And there you have it: cliffhanger, twist ending, open ending. Yes, the differences between these endings can get confusing, and they can be subtle. The end of Blade Runner, for example, could be considered both a twist ending and an open ending: story A about catching Roy Baty and the replicants does get resolved, but we get to decide whether or not we think Deckard and Rachel will escape (open ending) AND we have to consider whether Deckard was a replicant all along (possible twist ending).

But the whole point of having terms like this is to be able to use them when discussing film theory and criticism, so diluting them all together annoys the crap out of me. Thanks for listening.