So what happened?

It seemed to me that the protagonist was drawn into the woods, and drawn into the black cave, and drawn into the black basement (of the hotel) and the black corridors (of her dreams)--like she WANTED to go. She was always willingly walking into (you might even say happily exploring) these black, dark places and disappearing from view. She clearly wasn't afraid to go into those dark places--she just went. Some reviewers complained that she should've been acting like she was afraid, but instead she was emotionless. But I think that's the point. I think she WANTED to go into those dark, horrible places. Something isn't right there with that girl. I don't think she's as pure or innocent as she appears.

In fact, I'm fiddling with the idea that she WAS the witch, or at least she was some active part of the darkness somehow (even if she doesn't realize it, necessarily).

SPOILER: I think in the end of the film when she disappears into the woods, she may be going home (not home to her parents on a train, which she says she is going to do, but returning to her real, dark, scary home--the cave, or at least the dark woods). I don't think she is being abducted or sacrificed. She's walking into those cold, horrible woods because she WANTS to. And maybe everyone in the hotel is acting strangely to her because they are maybe a little afraid of her? (Remember the woman who told her to "Leave the hotel" and started saying prayers? I don't think the woman is being nice and trying to save her; I think the woman is telling her to "get away from me" and the prayer is being said as protection against the desk-clerk-girl.) Also, maybe that's why the basement door was locked behind her--to give her that little push to "go back home and leave us alone." Of course, at the very-very end of the film there is that horrible far-away scream (barely audible--I had the sound turned way up), which makes you think she's being attacked or killed as she disappears from view. But if you pay close attention, that PRECISE SAME SOUND is heard throughout the film--3 times--when she is in the woods earlier in the movie. (It is the exact same set of two screams--the first time it seems as if the movie plays it off as a bird or something, like a peacock. But it is the exact same sound three times throughout. Very subtle. Again, I think this shows that this is not her screaming, and she is not being attacked.) I think every review I've read so far about the film has been wrong.

Either way, I don't think anyone can ignore the fact that she was willingly disappearing into those dark places and never seemed particularly upset about it. And I don't get the feeling that she was under some influence either, or under any spell. She seemed to have her wits about her all the time. She seemed very "together" (which is what so many people seemed to complain about because they thought she should've acted more scared or something). But if she WANTED to go into those dark places, then she would have no reason to act scared.

At first, I must say that, when I first saw this ending, I was enthusiastic. In whole movie is such a brilliant scary atmosfere and this end is like big silent boom and then - straight came end-credits.
But I think, in my opinion it is has something with demonology of the forest.
In movie, we heard that, there is a legend of witch and Devil's cave in the woods.
And Hotel is right in that wood and calls "Waldhaus". And that "darkness, demons and ghosts" of the forest penetrate to the hotel and try to drag the main female character into the darkness. And when she goes at the end to that forest and then comes that scream, she maybe sees the witch or something really "demonic". Maybe like a EVA, her predecessor.

Perhaps, we never will know the truth, maybe there's not even any "truth" and if it's, only Jessica Hausner knows it :-)))

Anyway, I think this is that "spirit" movie. And that is genius :)

In a 2003 interview Hausner said:

"I want to tell a story about a nightmarish situation, at the same time without giving the audience an opportunity to attribute it to a concrete circumstance. The thriller genre was chosen so as to justify a claim that something terrible is happening - this also evokes in the audience a foreboding of what might happen next. But an answer is never provided. I thought it was exciting to say that this is a genre film but it's told realistically and there's no monster at all."


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