MovieChat Forums > Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King (2006) Discussion > 'Road Virus' ending??

'Road Virus' ending??

posted 18 years ago by leefoo
20 replies | jump to latest

Tom Berenger falls down the steps, wakes up, sees the killer outside and says "guess i'm going outside".
Then it cuts to the credits???
What??
My wife and I were waiting for him to go outside to see what happens.
Can anyone explain this ending to us??

'Fifth Quarter' ended the same way...i forget how, but we were both dumbfounded when it cut to the credits...can someone explain that one also??

Man, we both think we're fairly intelligent adults, but we must be getting dumb in our old age. btw, neither of us have read the short stories.

Thx!

[–] jakelange 18 years ago

He sees blood on the car seat in the painting and knows that its his. He knows he willbe taken o the car and killed.

[–] geny82 17 years ago

I'm not trying to sound rude, but is that really it, or is that your guess? I was wondering what happened to the chicks. I figure if you read the books you might know a little more.

Karen, if you see Jesus, tell him to take the gerbil babies! They're Christians!

[–] bim_2602 17 years ago

I explain u:

The guy with the knife was death itself. Since Richard had some infection in his body, it was his time to die, and the guy in the knife came to take him.

[–] VoteForTheLeastWorst 17 years ago

Hi Leefoo,

If you remember, during his healing, he had a vision of talking to this man. The young guy is like I'm not what you fear or something to that effect. Then Tom's character desperately tries to get out of the car but can't. Then he wakes up.

When he sees the painting he realizes the ending to that vision. And that one way or another this guy is going to kill him.

However, it is possible that fate could have been changed, since he was going to kill the lady friend, but didn't, because she was simply not home, and he kept going. Nor did he visit the healer lady. Why is this? Probably because she had some kind of magickal protection around her. Or, was she in on it? She said she threw away the painting but we never saw it in the trash did we? And wouldn't she have gone and checked if she was superstitious, seeing it gone then called him?

Anyway, I'm not sure what "road virus" means if anything. Maybe just refering to himself as a virus or plague.

I think the previous theory about Death is plausible, however I disagree. I think the young man probably had conjured a lot of evil energy and was a walking spirit of himself made more powerful by his own suicide.

Hope that helps.

[–] colegallop 17 years ago

"The Road virus heads north" is the title of the picture, in stephen kings short story.

[–] VoteForTheLeastWorst 17 years ago

Right. So does that mean it was planned out ahead of time?

[–] borgter 17 years ago

I was also confused. The episodes just End! They are supposed to be "Twists" but they are not, they are just annoying endings!

The "Crouch End" episode and the one where the writer where they swap places was just terrible. It left soooo many questions. Maybe im just oblivious...

[–] 17 years ago

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[–] martytamu27 13 years ago

Right, many of his, and writers in general, short stories end abruptly. they say its to make you think...or to imply that what you just read was some profound bit of genious. but really its just lazy nonsense churned out because they get paid for it and they couldnt come up with a decent ending themselves. to me that is the most annoying hting about short stories..how many end so abruptly.
its all find for you who like to make up the ending or scenario in ur head, but to me, that defeats the purpose of reading a story. you want to see what happens. if its left ot make it up in ur head, well i can just do that by myself...takes to much energy..i wanna be passivly entertained

[–] Savage_Pacifist 13 years ago

Yes...because in your world everything has to be spelled out for you in black and white with nothing left for the imagination...please stick with Harry Potter and Twilight

Some people just get way too serious around here

[–] melikeemovies 17 years ago

It's EXACTLY how the short story ends. I believe that Richard Kinnell simply accepted his fate; he was most likely going to die from cancer anyway.

[–] axelorn 17 years ago

But cancer isn't even in the original story?
I just.. don't get it.

[–] rubixgirl 16 years ago

In the extras on teh DVD, Tom Berenger explains that its a metaphor for someone who knows he's dying and wants to make sure everything's in order before he dies, ie paying for the girls hotel room, calling and talking to his aunt.

The ending was a bit confusing and the blood and tyring to figure it out..but I think its him coming to terms with his death, not necesarily death itself.

~~Heather it's your turn. No, Heather it's Heather's turn. Heather???~~

[–] Deus_ex_Machina_815 14 years ago

But that's just the metaphor. It needs to make sense story-wise as well, or it's a lame story

[–] faith-49 15 years ago

after watching the episode and got equally confused about the ending, i went to check the wikipedia of the short story book version. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Virus_Heads_North

imho, we're overthinking about it. think the evil spirit from the painting is just going to kill him and he realizes that he's gonna die from the painting showing there's blood (which is his blood). the adaptation leaves much to be desired as well.

[–] keithulhu 14 years ago

I think that in addition to overthinking it, we just can't accept that it really had that crappy of an ending. Everything tells us that there is nothing more to it than that--it just had a lazy, crappy ending, but we just can't accept that. Stephen King doesn't write stories as piss-poor as this!

The story/video is a metaphor for itself. He ends, he dies, thats really just it. The story ends, it fails, thats really just it.

[–] ejc15 9 years ago

As to short stories I have heard interviews with King and read his "on writing" book. Basically his short stories are ideas he has that just die out before they can develop into novel.

Therefore, most are bad its just that as fans we pay to read them and studios figure they can make money by getting us to watch them.

[–] 9 years ago

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[–] Naivo_Hjorteknull 8 years ago

I thought it was making him go outside, to get in the car and keep going, to find more victims.
Most of the episodes seem to pan out this way. As a neverending nightmare

[–] sambuca 8 years ago

Based on the conversation he had with the killer in the car in one of his nightmares, where the killer more or less said he is the manifestation of his fears, I took it as Tom Berenger's character going out there and facing his fears. Whether these fears were cancer or his own mortality, we do not know (in fact it's not even certain that he has cancer). However we also do not know if he is meant to be killed, I mean, for all we know the blood on the car seat could be the driver's after the writer killed him.

-Goodnight, mother of six!
-Goodnight, father of two!
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