Antlers Ending Explained: Is The Reign Of Wendigo Over? How The Wendigo Lore Is Different In Antlers?
Antlers is available at the theaters! If you want to know the explanation of Antlers, read on! That’s the conclusion filmmaker Scott Cooper has come to in all of his grim portrayals of our decaying homeland, from the spiritually tainted criminal saga Out of the Furnace to the morosely existential western Hostiles. It’s no surprise, then, that Antlers, Cooper’s first horror film, ends on such a brutally unsettling note.
Now in theaters, Cooper’s supernatural-laden thriller takes place in a small outpost in rural Oregon, a ghost town in the making where industrial collapse and deeper spiritual stagnation looms over residents like a haze. In this desperate place, college teacher Julia Meadows must fight a mythological entity in order to save her student Lucas from a terrible fate.
Antlers Ending Explained: How Antlers Twist Ending Sets Up A Sequel?
Following Warren Stokes’ explanation of the wendigo, Julia and Paul find themselves entangled with the creature, who followed them home to find Lucas. The college boy was convinced that if he continued to feed the wendigo, believing that this was a new version of his father, he would love him no matter what and could make him happy.
Lucas is still afraid of the creature, but his response to it was born out of trauma and abuse, Starving him establishing that Lucas, like Julia and Paul, had an abusive father. It’s a coping mechanism for Lucas and a way to continue to receive affection by helping someone who is threatened.
After the wendigo attack on Paul and Officer Dan, Lucas goes to the cave with the creature. Julia follows him, knowing that she must stab the wendigo and rip out his heart to save Lucas and the rest of the city. Sadly, Lucas’s younger brother Aiden is a victim of the wendigo’s first attack.
Sensing that he was about to completely transform and leave behind his human flesh like her father Frank, Julia stabs Aiden before that happens. With the reign of the wendigo seemingly over, Julia and Paul, who have recovered from the creature’s attack, take in Lucas, three orphans who take care of each other.
Antlers ends in a pretty grim way. Of course, all the details have apparently been worked out, with Julia and Paul taking Lucas in charge. What is unexpected is to see Paul bleeding from the eye as Julia and Lucas walk away. There is a close-up of the black, earth-like substance staining Paul’s hands and clearly foreshadowing his turn as wendigo.
The rebound of Antlers could give rise to a sequel that sees Julia face off against her brother. It would have an emotional resonance as she and Paul experienced a lot together as a child and are still close. In Antlers Julia killed Aiden with remorse because she knew he was too sick to be saved. Considering the close relationship she has with Paul and how they finally seem to reconcile after their father’s death, a Starving Sequel could create some tension between them, forcing Julia to fight for her brother. or kill him like she did Frank and Aiden.
What ultimately stands out, however, is that although he has killed the wendigo that haunts the city, he continues to infect others, transmitting his traits from person to person while devouring more. of flesh, always Antlers and never satisfied. It remains to be seen if there will indeed be a horrific sequel to Antlers, but the twist with Paul having been infected surely leaves the door open for a sequel to his story and that of Julia.
