How Does The Visitor End?

What's the ending to the indie horror game 'The Visitor'? The ending followed a journalist who went to a small town to investigate some disappearances. In the final act he found out that there was a sort of ritual going on and he stumbled into it. After that the journalist followed some traces and in the end he found himself in an underground, ancient chamber. There he found all the missing people from the town and something older. The last cutscene showed the journalist at the edge of a pit. He heard some whispers, the camera dropped and the screen went to black with only some static noises. Later the credits started rolling.

The environmental storytelling in this section of the game is incredibly effective at establishing a sense of foreboding. The use of flickering lights, distant chanting and the really unsettling painting that you find early on in the game all comes back in this section in a way that feels deliberate yet at the same time unanswered. It’s a really complex section of the game that I still think about quite a lot. The pit in the game’s ending is a really interesting symbol and it could represent a lot of things such as a collective unconscious or even a person’s deepest fear. I think the game drew a lot of influence from Lovecraftian horror and as such the greatest fear of the player is that of realizing just how insignificant humanity is in a universe that is comprised of greater and greater monsters.

This is another story, “The Visitor” and there’s a short film, a novelization, and even a comic adaptation of the story. The ending of the film is so quiet and so devastating at the same time. He resists the visitor’s influence the whole time and finally gives in. The last shot of the film is of him smiling as the visitor’s shadow envelops him. It is bittersweet but in a way, odd and beautiful. The story is told with no dialogue at all, just the acting and the visuals. It makes me cry, every time I watch the film and it’s not a sad story in the classical sense. It’s almost the opposite, it’s a release. The novel, obviously, goes into more detail about the story and it’s explained that the visitor isn’t evil and is instead a guide to help the lost souls to move on. It makes me appreciate the ending of the film even more as it’s not about fear but about acceptance. The comic, however, takes a completely different approach. It feels that the protagonist is stuck in some kind of cycle and that he is doomed to relive the same encounter over and over again. So, one story with so many different endings.

After watching the entire movie ‘The Visitor’ I was left with many questions. Even though the whole movie consisted of pieces of a puzzle that the main character tried to put together while at the same time trying to remember details of his past, after the final scenes I was left with even more questions. I had to think long and hard about the whole movie and especially the ending and what it all meant. It turned out that the Visitor was something the main character had to deal with and that in the end it was a part of himself. His Visitor was guilt and/ or trauma. I also loved the open-ended nature of the movie’s ending. Because instead of just telling the audience what really happened in the end of the movie, the Director left a lot of room for interpretation and as a result lots of discussions about the movie in online forums. Even though there are some people who are absolutely convinced that the Visitor was a metaphor for the main character’s grief, there are also lots of people who are absolutely convinced that it was real and that the main character really did encounter a supernatural being. I personally love the open-ended nature of the ending because it’s more unsettling that way.

This movie has such a haunting ending, and in a really great way. The soundscape during the last scenes of the movie is really slow and menacing, and it really heightens the sense of unease that has been present throughout. I love that the Visitor is left ambiguous and that this movie is paying homage to many classic horror films where the unknown is scarier than anything that can be explained. I have re-watched this movie three times now and every time I find something new that I had not noticed before. This movie is one of those that you really have to be willing to sit with and pay attention, but it is so worth it even though it does not provide any closure.