MovieChat Forums > Rosemary's Baby (1968) Discussion > One of the few films that would have ben...

One of the few films that would have benefited from an ambiguous ending.

posted 9 years ago by A_Concerned_Critic
25 replies | jump to latest

I enjoyed the film a lot, especially in the way it toyed with the prospect of Rosemary not being all the right in the head. It keeps you back and forth on believing her and not believing her, which is why I think ending it right after she gives birth and sees that her husband has no mark would have been a perfect ending. I normally think ambiguous endings are a cop-out, but in the case of this film, it would actually fit thematically, as a viewer from Rosemary's perspective could never truly know what the truth was.

As it stands, I think the ending was a little bit too much for me. Showing the true motives of the cult in such immense detail kind of took away the creepiness factor, and kind of breaks the cardinal sin of horror in not leaving as much up to the imagination of the audience as physically possible.

[–] cyberbob (3488) 5 years ago

I hate endings that are too ambiguous. This movie showed just enough, IMO. Ambiguous endings are not that uncommon in Horror and Thrillers, but they're rarely done right

I feel like they're often used by lazy or not confident writers who don't want to commit to a single idea

It's kind of easy to take the cop out of "art is open to interpretation, the audience should decide what was real and what wasn't". It's why you see those endings so often in arthouse/indie Horror movies. Filmmakers with the ambition to make something great but without the talent or skill to make it happen. I think it's very easy to cross the line from ambiguity to just a straight-up incomplete movie without a satisfying conclusion. Basically asking the audience to do the work for the filmmaker

And yes, I'm generalizing, but that's how I personally feel about it. An example of an ambiguous ending done right is The Shining. I'm not a HUGE fan of it, but that last shot where Jack is in the photograph from years back is great. We don't know quite what it means, it's open to interpretation. But at the same time, even without that last shot, the story is complete. Jack has a complete mental breakdown, but Danny and his mom manage to survive. Same with The Thing. We don't know the ultimate fate of MacReady or whether Childs was actually The Thing, but it doesn't really matter at that point. Nothing more needs to be said

I can't think of too many other all-time great Horror movies with ambiguous endings. Maybe Don't Look Now and Jacob's Ladder? The Blair Witch Project, if you consider it an all-time great (I don't)