The Ending Of The Wretched Explained

Getting a wide release in the pandemic-hobbled spring of 2020, "The Wretched" was produced on a shoestring budget of just $66,000, proving that successful and compelling indie films are far from dead in a world dominated by costly blockbusters. The horror flick follows Ben Shaw (John-Paul Howard), a teenage boy with divorced parents who's sent to live with his father Liam (Jamison Jones) out in the country for a summer. It's there that he snags a job at a nearby marina alongside his dad, meeting a teenage coworker named Mallory (Piper Curda), as well as the latest object of his dad's affection, Sara (Azie Tesfai). But back at home, strange happenings begin unfolding at the neighbor's house, leading Ben to suspect the presence of some supernatural evil.

Making back its budget and then some with a modest but still highly profitable take of over $4 million, "The Wretched" was a surprise hit in a year defined by box office delays and disappointments. But with not just one, but two twists in the film's final act, "The Wretched" begs to have some of its more confusing moments explained. Below, we'll dive into the ending of "The Wretched," and also take a look at what some members of its cast, the film's directing duo, and the critics have had to say about the breakout film.

As we watch Ben get acclimated to his new life with Liam, we're also shown the terrifying events that unfold just next door. It all begins when mother Abbie (Zarah Mahler) and son Dillon (Blane Crockarell) hit a deer on a drive through the woods. When an attempt to gut it goes wrong, and the animal's carcass is left unattended in the bed of their truck overnight, we watch as a disturbing humanoid creature emerges from the body and begins to stalk the property.

From there, the creature, who we eventually come to learn is some sort of witch, begins taking over the bodies and minds of Abbie's family. First it takes their infant son, whose disappearance is used to lure in Abbie, who's promptly possessed. Her son Dillon is the first to notice something is wrong, and his desperate attempts to escape attract the attention of Ben. He seems to be the only other person who can sense what's wrong, as Abbie's own husband Ty (Kevin Bigley) has seemingly fallen under the witch's spell. 

Ben's suspicions are all but confirmed after Dillon never shows up to a sailing lesson at the marina, leading Ben to believe that the truth may lie in the neighbor's cellar. But as he tries to investigate, the witch proves she isn't going down without a fight, using memory-altering abilities and forms of possession to keep Ben and anyone else who tries to stop her at bay.

In the film's final act, the witch has managed to isolate Ben from just about everyone in his life, and has even taken over the body of Liam's girlfriend Sara. She then tries to orchestrate Ben's death, having him escorted away and driven out to the middle of nowhere by a police officer shown to be under her control. Ben manages to barely escape with his life, arming himself with the officer's pistol and heading home. Meanwhile, Liam has finally come to believe his son after uncovering a shrine in the neighbors' house, moments before being attacked by the possessed Sara.

After being brutally stabbed by the witch and inadvertently setting the neighbor's home — and the witch's shrine — ablaze, Liam is saved by Ben, who manages to get his father into a car as they prepare to escape. But as the shrine goes up in smoke, so too does the mysterious curse that's clouded the minds of everyone, including Ben himself. It's then that he remembers his younger brother Nathan (Judah Paul), who was taken by the witch at some point and may still be alive.

Ben climbs into the witch's lair in the woods, rescuing Nathan and Mallory's sister Lily, before Liam reappears and plows the car full speed into the witch, ending her reign of terror. Some time later, Ben and his father reconcile before Ben says goodbye to Mallory, who gives him a flower as the film ends on a positive note. Or does it?

In the final scene of "The Wretched," we watch as the film seemingly closes out with a happy ending. Mallory and her little sister are recovering from the ordeal, the Shaw family looks to be on better terms, and just before he moves back in with his mother, Ben is shown amicably ending things with Mallory, even receiving a flower from her as a parting gift. But on the ride home, it's revealed to be made of plastic, before the film ominously cuts back to Mallory at the marina, alone on a boat with several young children. So what did that final scene mean?

As astute viewers will remember that whenever the witch is shown to be nearby, her presence alone can cause flowers to wither and die in seconds. With that in mind, and Ben able to recall this effect thanks to his earlier scrap with the witch after she took Sara's body, it leaves us with an unsettling possibility as the film fades to black. Instead of fully burning the tree with Ben as she claims to have done, at some point during the film's climax Mallory was instead taken by the witch, who now lives inside her and will likely perpetuate the cycle with a handful of new victims.

In the first and perhaps most unexpected twist in "The Wretched," a disastrous fire that destroys the witch's depraved shrine is shown to lift her powerful hold on the minds of Ben, Liam, and Mallory. It's only then that we're introduced to the character of Nathan, who Ben immediately recalls as his younger brother. But were there any clues to suggest that Ben wasn't really alone the whole time, and that Nathan had instead been by his side from the beginning?

As it turns out, there were pieces of evidence to suggest Nathan's presence throughout the film, though they're pretty tricky to come up with on a first viewing. In one of the earliest scenes, when Ben is riding on the bus to his father's home, an elderly passenger sitting across from him gestures to his cast, calling him "quite an artist." It's an odd comment to make about signatures on a cast that weren't even Ben's work, but it's made much more understandable when you realize the woman was complimenting Nathan, who in reality was sitting next to Ben and drawing on the long ride. 

On a more subtle note, an early phone call between Ben and his mother suggests he's not her only son, and a later scene between him and Abbie where he says it's "only us" at home likely implies he's speaking of himself and Nathan, not him and Dillon as we're led to believe.

Set years in the past, the very first scene in "The Wretched" firmly establishes the mysterious nature of the film's monster. But what exactly is the witch? We know that the being can easily take the form of seemingly any human or animal it chooses. From Ben's own research, we learn that it's likely similar to a creature that's said to feast on the souls of the forgotten. On top of that, it's capable of possessing adults and even erasing the memories of children from the minds of their families, two psychic abilities that seem possible only after it's constructed a shrine with photos of its victims. Lastly, its real home is an underground burrow in the woods, where it takes its prey to be eaten.

Unfortunately, the witch and her powers remain loosely defined throughout the film. Her ability to take on the form of both human and animal suggests she may be a type of skinwalker, a creature from certain Native American cultures with similar powers. That same practice of stealing skin is also attributed to another creature of Gullah folklore known as the Boo Hag, making the creature in "The Wretched" something of a mix of several terrifying legends. In fact, that was the exact explanation given by co-director Drew Pierce, who told Horrorigins.com: "We dove into mythologies from around the world. We found many cool witch mythologies that we had never seen on screen before."

Given that Ben's parents' divorce lays the foundation for the events of "The Wretched," the groundwork to explore deeper themes of trust is laid out in the first few minutes of the film. That trust, mainly between father and son, is soon shown to be on rocky footing. It's further put to the test through Ben's constant disregard for his father, such as in the scene where he blows off Liam's dinner plans in favor of attending a party. Later, that fractured trust is pushed to its breaking point thanks to the witch's unique powers, and ultimately means the difference between life and death for our protagonists.

While we've already covered the witch's powers of deception, including her ability to manipulate those close to her to do her bidding and even forget certain aspects of reality, we haven't touched on the impact they have on her victims. Despite their differences, both Dillon and later Ben find themselves isolated from the people they love and made to seem untrustworthy. For Dillon, his mother's strange behavior is dismissed by his father, while for Ben, he's portrayed as suffering a violent psychotic break, slashing Liam's girlfriend and making wild claims about the neighbors. The key difference between their situations, however, is that while Dillon's father ultimately ignores his son's fears and pays the price for it, Liam still has faith in his son when the time comes, and manages to escape the witch's clutches with his life.

In the days that followed the film's official release, "The Wretched" star John-Paul Howard spoke on the YouTube channel Vegas Film Critic about his personal experience on the set of the horror flick. When asked what it was like to work with the Pierce Brothers, Howard stated: "We met over Skype, and they kind of wanted to get a feel of who I was. They wanted to make sure that everyone they were bringing onto the production was first of all a good person ... that also kind of brought their own identity to the film as well because that's really what I think film is. A collaboration of ideals and personalities."

In another interview, makeup effects supervisor Erik Porn told Syfy.com how the scene in which the witch crawls out of Sara's body was put on film, which made use of a fake floor to complete the illusion: "We had been filming for like, I don't know, 17 hours, something crazy like that. And they were like, 'Well we have to get this shot. We have to do this,'" he recalled, adding, "It was a logistical nightmare. We were figuring it out for like an hour or two. At one point, I remember we had to lift the whole thing, and we had to have the grips come in and screw a bunch of apple boxes into the bottom just to lift it up another six inches."

Both before and after "The Wretched" got its theatrical release at the tumultuous 2020 box office, brothers and directing team Drew and Brett Pierce gave fans plenty of insight into what went on behind the scenes. Drew Pierce discussed his greatest challenge in making the film with Dailydead.com, saying, "I think the biggest challenge, for us and probably all filmmakers, is just getting financing. But if you're so committed to it and in love with that, you're willing to do anything to get it made, that's a feeling that I think most filmmakers feel at some point." 

For brother Brett, the hardest challenge was shooting an independent film against the clock, stating, "Most of us get like two or two and a half weeks and we had a little bit more than that, and you have to compete with mainstream movies that often shoot around four months or more."

The Pierces also spoke in the same interview about working on the visual design of the witch with makeup effects supervisor Erik Porn: "Drew would literally draw over Erik's sculpt and Erik was doing a really great job and he'd come over and Drew would be like, 'Let's thin the cheeks out, this looks maybe a little too masculine, I want it to look a little more feminine,' said Brett. "So, it was this constant back and forth of evolving the look which was always loosely based on witches like Black Annis and Jenny Greenfingers."

It wasn't just success at the box office that "The Wretched" managed to secure upon release, but success with critics too. Warm reviews, such as the one from The Hollywood Reporter, acknowledged the film's imperfections, but felt it was still a well-rounded package: "Do all the tangled plot points make perfect sense once you step back and start reassembling the pieces as the end credits roll? Maybe not," critic David Rooney wrote. "But there's enough solid internal logic mixed in with the murky ambiguities to keep 'The Wretched' far more compelling than its generic title might suggest."

Of course, few critics thought the film was flawless, with even positive reviews such as the one from the Associated Press finding more fault than good in the film's structure and ending. "Just as things start to get seriously hairy, the Pierce brothers suddenly have something really interesting to say about erasure and how families can abandon their histories," wrote Mark Kennedy. "It's a development worthy of M. Night Shyamalan, but they've run out of runway and there's only enough room left to battle the witch."

Thanks to its highly profitable release and meager production budget, as well as an ending that implies the witch is still very much alive and now occupying the body of Mallory, audiences can rightly wonder if a sequel is in the cards. Thankfully, those hoping to see the story continue haven't been left totally in the dark, with the directing duo behind the film providing some insight into what's next.

The Pierce brothers tackled the topic of a potential sequel in an appearance on Detroit's Channel 4, saying: "We've been thinking about it. We want to do it, it's something we definitely want to do. We didn't even think about that till like, yesterday, though. Somebody else brought it up and was like 'are you guys gonna make a sequel?' And we're like 'I guess yeah, do people want to see it? I guess they do.'"

That said, it may be a while before fans of "The Wretched" can expect to see a revisit on the silver screen. The Pierce Brothers are reportedly working for Screen Gems on a new project titled "Room 428." Though its plot is still a mystery to fans, if "The Wretched" was any indication, it'll likely be another horror favorite.