Things Heard & Seen (2021) is a new amazing film from Netflix, which made the audience not only rejoice at the quality of the work, but also break their heads over the ending of the film. The project was released this year and instantly won both the hearts of the audience and television ratings. Today we will figure out how the film ended and what is its meaning.
The ending of the picture tells us that, first of all, this project is about drama, about drama in relationships, which was miraculously disguised as an ordinary horror film. In the finale of the film, hints and references to religiosity run through, which in many ways complicates the narrative and makes it quite difficult to understand.
The plot of the tape revolves around a married couple. Katherine and George have been living together for a long time, they decide to move to a small town in one of the states of America. George gets a job at a local college, where he begins to teach, and Katherine takes care of the household. Their lives are going well and peacefully until Katherine starts noticing ghosts in her new house. The spirits destroy George and Katherine’s marriage. The girl begins to feel that her husband is completely different from the person she once married.
Katherine learns that these are unusual ghosts, but cursed souls. It turns out that many married couples lived in this house before them, but they all broke up some time after they moved to this small town. All the wives were sentenced to a terrible death by their husbands.
Over time, the viewer, along with the main character, finds out that the ghosts of men also remained in this house and they still want blood. The problem is that the spirits take over George and turn him into just like them. At the end of the tape, he goes on a rampage and kills his wife with an axe. Maybe it’s a reference to The Shining, don’t you think? By the way, a religious moment appears in this episode, because it turns out that the ghosts of men go to hell for their atrocities, so George’s fate is unclear.
At the beginning of the film, the audience is introduced to the woman Ella, who sees Katherine and her daughter Franny. The arrival of a mysterious ghost causes real horror in the house: the lights turn off, the lights flicker, strange frightening sounds are heard. True, over time, this does not frighten Katherine at all, because she perceives the arrival of Ella as a kind of consolation to her soul.
It turns out that Elloy is the deceased mother of the boys that Katherine hired (spying on her house). Elloy’s husband flew into a rage, shot all the cattle in the territory, and then dealt with his wife. Ella is called upon to help protect Katherine, because she considers it her duty to help defenseless women from their furious husbands. She begins to help at the moment when terrible ghosts take possession of George.
All the dead wives and Katherine are connected to each other on a physical and spiritual level. Physically they are bound by an ancient ring worn by all the women in this house, and it fell into their hands for a variety of reasons. Spiritually they are connected through a common curse. It turned out that all past homeowners were somehow connected with mysterious magic, which actually cursed their husbands.
Katherine wants to contact Ella spiritually to learn more about the curse. She arranges a communication session and finds out that 2 ghosts live in the house, and one of them is evil. This spirit turns out to be Ella’s husband, who keeps appearing in the house. Katherine notices that George is adopting the usual habits of Ella’s husband. He cheats, insults, beats and manipulates Katherine.
The bright concept of the doom of human nature and fate is seen especially strongly in the film. All the women living in this house are doomed to die a terrible death, to acquire their own curse, just like men are doomed to show their true brutal face in front of the girl.
The picture ends with symbolic scenes. After George commits the murder, he is sort of cleansed of the deaths of Floyd and Katherine. In the future, he also tried to kill his work colleague, the beautiful girl Catherine Justine, but the murder was unsuccessful, because the girl ends up in a coma. The woman wakes up from a coma, ending up in the hospital and tells George that she remembers everything perfectly. At this point, normal life for him comes to an end.
He steals a sailboat and sets off into the distance. This scene automatically develops into a rereading of the painting “Shadow of Death Valley”. In the background, the viewer hears the voices of two women. It’s definitely Katherine and Ella. In unison, they say: “We are united, which means we have become stronger.” In the finale, it is clear that George will not be sent to prison, but he will definitely receive punishment for what he has done – he will go to hell! This shows the symbolism of religion in the film.
The film is striking in that it pushes the boundaries of cinema, because in fact, many viewers and critics perceive the tape as an ordinary horror film with ghosts, spirits and murders, but this is fundamentally wrong. The film carries an idea, a message and interesting plays on religious themes. The creators managed to speak out on a serious topic, using base mechanisms for this. The finale of the tape is simple and understandable, if you look at it from this angle: “he who must be punished will definitely receive his punishment: in physical or spiritual form!”
