I think it should have just ended when the tv blew up and the guts flew out, leaving it up to interpretation what happens next if anything. I think showing him repeat it makes it too pat rather than ambiguous.
If I didn’t talk the way I talk I wouldn’t know who the hell I am, Sean Connery on his accent
leaving it up to interpretation what happens next if anything.
I felt the repeating made the ending just a tad creepier, because it really drove home the point of how much of a marionette he'd become, that he literally had no will at all to resist whatever he was instructed to do. It's especially poignant because the common convention in movies about brainwashing (The Manchurian Candidate, Star Trek II, etc.) is that the person eventually summons up the will to resist his tormentors. You're half expecting that to happen in this final scene, and when he doesn't, and when he actually acts exactly according to the suggestion with a verbatim repeat of the quote, it's really effective.
In any case, there are a lot of things you can accuse this film of, but being insufficiently ambiguous isn't one of them.
Cronenberg actually shot a few different endings. One involved Max and Nicki on a sitcom set and shown via the TV that is in the end scene.
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