The final image of Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 psychological horror classic The Shining continues to drive filmgoers online in search of answers, according to a recent study measuring viewer confusion.
Researchers analyzed YouTube view counts for "ending explained" videos across dozens of major feature films. The study calculated total audience interest by aggregating views on top video breakdowns dedicated to clarifying narrative twists, ambiguous final frames, and unresolved plot points.
Kubrick’s adaptation of the Stephen Kingnovel landed at No. 9 on the list, accumulating nearly 9.9 million views on videos dissecting its conclusion. The film ends not with an easy explanation, but with a slow camera pan down a hallway inside the snowbound Overlook Hotel. The shot settles on a black-and-white photograph from a July 4, 1921 ball, showing caretaker Jack Torrance, played by Jack Nicholson, smiling in the center of the crowd, decades before his character was born.
Christopher Nolan’s 2014 sci-fi epic Interstellar claimed the top spot on the list by a wide margin, generating 31.5 million views for its five-dimensional tesseract sequence and time-dilation mechanics. Todd Phillips’s 2019 drama Joker followed in second place with 16.3 million views as audiences tried to parse reality from hallucination, while Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island took third with 13.1 million views for its famous asylum twist.
Alex Garland’s surreal sci-fi thriller Annihilation drew 11.3 million views to claim fourth place, just ahead of the Coen brothers’ No Country For Old Men, which earned 10.3 million views for its abrupt, dream-focused final scene. Nolan appeared again in the sixth spot with The Dark Knight Rises at 10 million views, followed closely by Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival at 10 million views.
Inception landed at No. 8 with 9.9 million views, driven by over a decade of debate surrounding its closing shot of a spinning top, sitting just ahead of The Shining.Jordan Peele’s 2019 film Us rounded out the top 10 with 9.4 million views, joining The Shining as the only other pure horror entry in the top tier following its late-film revelation regarding dopplegängers Adelaide and Red. Nolan also saw his 2020 time-inversion thriller Tenet land just outside the top tier at No. 12 with 8.3 million views.
Other notable entries on the 30-film ranking include satire American Psycho at No. 11 with 9.1 million views, David Fincher’s Fight Club at No. 13 with 8.2 million views, and John Carpenter's 1982 classic The Thing at No. 15 with 5.4 million views. Sci-fi staples likeRidley Scott’s Blade Runner took No. 19 with 4 million views, while Terry Gilliam’s Brazil and 12 Monkeys closed out the bottom of the list at No. 29 and No. 30.
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