MovieChat Forums > The Houses October Built (2014) Discussion > The ending would have been better if (sp...

The ending would have been better if (spoilers)

posted 9 years ago by mpwmorgan
9 replies | jump to latest

they all woke up inside of the RV.

It seemed like the creators didn't know how to end the movie. I agree with them that watching all the characters be explicitly murdered would have been somewhat out of place as I enjoyed the ambiguity in not knowing if it was a "haunt" or not, but the ending still felt weak. Even if Brandy watched them all get "murdered" and everyone still wakes up the in the RV the next morning would have been better. We never see the tormentors actually do anything very violent, it's all implied by sounds off camera and through the characters' own hysteria.

Anyone know why Brandy just had a plain wooden casket while everyone else had pillows and what not? She's also the only one we see get buried.

While an ambiguous ending is fine in a lot of films, it falls flat when the whole rest of the movie is leading up to that moment and there's no real pay off. Something at the end was desperately needed to explain the tormentors' motivations, but I feel a negative of the found footage genre is the filmmakers thinking it's a "get out of jail free card" in terms of story-telling.
I know in real life not everything is coherently tied together, but this is a movie first and foremost and the attempted realism should be secondary if it hurts the movie. We are fully aware that what we are watching is a fake movie (and have done our part in overlooking less realistic aspects*), so don't suddenly treat it like genuine found footage just at the moment we are all desperate to make sense of an anti-climactic ending! It comes off as lazy and I would have rated it at least 3 stars higher with any kind of fitting ending.

*Silly side note: A lot of people are saying they would have left and gone home after they find the video of themselves sleeping or at least when Brandy was cornered in the rest room. I would have been gone before either of those things happened - the moment they started banging on my expensive rented RV! I wouldn't want to pay for any more damages when I bring it back haha!
Then again, I may not have gone at all if I had a friend who was outfitting the RV we'd be basically living in for a week with hidden cameras everywhere. Haha seriously, who does that?

[–] thephoenixxx 9 years ago

Yeah, I agree. The movie ended and all I could say was "...so...that's it?".

I think what annoyed me about the ending was that this movie was supposed to be about visiting haunted houses that have "no rules" so anything can happen...but it basically turned into plain old murder. Because of that the whole story fell flat. I ended up feeling that, after all the build up about these amazing and scary haunted houses, they basically were just all murdered in a field somewhere. There was nothing to really tie it back to the "haunted house adventure" that the movie started with.

Anyone know why Brandy just had a plain wooden casket while everyone else had pillows and what not? She's also the only one we see get buried.

This bothered me also! She looked like she was buried along with some bloody body parts, in a wooden box. The guys were in nice coffins. Why?! They seriously left a lot of unanswered questions with that ending.

[–] Psychological_Gold 9 years ago

Yeah, it feels like it's building up to something pretty cool--but then you find out it's just some idiots in skeleton masks killing people.

[–] PopperTheKungFu-Dragon 9 years ago

This bothered me also! She looked like she was buried along with some bloody body parts, in a wooden box. The guys were in nice coffins. Why?! They seriously left a lot of unanswered questions with that ending.

It didn't really bother me since I was pretty bored by this point, but I did wonder why they were especially bad to her. Maybe they just didn't like women 

Poorly Lived and Poorly Died, Poorly Buried and No One Cried

[–] KurganNJ 9 years ago

Agreed on all points. The ending was very "meh". No payoff, no good.

[–] !!!deleted!!! (56207245) 9 years ago

You are right. I don't mind if they are even killed of and tortured to death. But the ending you suggested where they wake up in the RV would have been pretty rad! Tortured and killed has been done so many times, it would have been refreshing to see something d totally diffrent.

[–] ghostdeen 9 years ago

You are SO spot on. I felt exactly the same way -- actually enjoying most of the film more than I thought I would, until the ending. It's frustrating, too, because I feel they had the opportunity for a REALLY cool ending right there in their grasp (they wake up the next day, RV, woods, wherever -- slightly bruised, even having been drugged, maybe -- with the realization that Blue Skeleton really was just a haunt -- the scariest f'in haunt of all time!

Instead we're left with... ok, the random people who staff the Blue Skeleton (which seems to have a decent budget, but how does it run when hardly anyone knows about it, and no one seems to pay a ticket price?) -- have set up this elaborate ruse, where they set up this "haunt" in a different location every Halloween, in the hopes that a few people might jump through a million hoops to find the place, so they can then just kill them. Wow. That motivation makes zero sense. Also, what's the deal with the scare-actors from the Texas haunt? Are they connected somehow? Come on, guys, this started off strong! Brilliant comment, though -- the found footage genre is, sadly, often used as a crutch for lazy storytelling. I only wish it hadn't been in this case.

Having said that -- Porcelain was pretty darned creepy. :)

[–] Mazzy0774 9 years ago

I thought maybe since her coffin was different she's only one actually dying she she was the most scared and they seemed to mess with her the most.

[–] Only_Here_For_The_Food 9 years ago

I agree. The movie was genuiniely creepy and then the ending was flat. Ugh! I was very disappointed witgh the ending.

[–] divisionbell-2 9 years ago

Actually seeing of the character murdered would have been a much better ending. To have all of that build up and the finale is over in about 10 minutes was incredibly disappointing. Horribly weak ending.