My thoughts on the Themes.....

I just watched the film last night, and I wanted to bring some of my own thoughts to the boards..


End of the Line is a film that depicts how each human is driven by their own belief system. And how these beliefs affect our actions, influence our emotions, and change how we perceive things in the real world.

As the way that each person's perception of a given belief or situation may not always be correct. And that influences how we act and react to situations, especially those that science and medicine can't always explain at the given moment it happens. It's also about the fact that even if something can be explained or shown as a reality later—such as the hallucinations are caused by muffins, or the tv stations are being hacked by the religious group-- it can also fall on deaf ears, as an ignorant person just won't care to change their opinion of something.


Much like magic, just because we see something does not always mean it is true, or it has a supernatural connotation. This was the case the whole movie in which all these characters were under distress and not of a sound mind. People who have taken drugs, went days without sleep, or even has been under extreme emotional torment, may suffer delusions and hallucinations, and again, all that means is it’s a product of the person's own belief system influencing their perceptions, as sometimes our own senses (sight, hearing, etc) lie to us.

Furthermore it's about how humans try to explain things they don't understand through the use of faith (or literally a belief in something without proof) and don't really try to understand what they are really seeing by the use of science or medicine. The demon scenes play on the audience's own beliefs. How the people are seeing these demons in not the point, the point is that our beliefs make or don't make them exist.



And remember, like another poster on these boards states: right after the "look it in the eye and marvel at its very existence" line that character says "because you're seeing proof of an afterlife.... or proof that you're hallucinating and should see a doctor, whichever one works for you."

The above line by the nonreligious Mike shows that Mike realizes that everyone has their own perceptions about these things. And, in a sense, we make something exist because we want it to exist.


I think this goes back to that above conversation that Karen has with Mike, as during it she says she agrees with Mike's view of their not being an afterlife, but she also admits that she still sees these hallucinations.

Therefore, I interpret that last scene that depicts the main character (Karen) seeing demons as a hallucination or a literal proof of an afterlife. Whether the hallucination--if it is one-- comes from muffins, the ordeal, or guilt over the suicide of a patient at the beginning, is all possible, but not really the point. The point is that she has a look of relief before the screen goes black.

I believe this-- and the final scene of Mike with the young kid running away from him, for him to turn around and look like he is wondering what the kid even saw, showing Mike's level-headed nature— to show that Karen has conquered her fear of the unknown into a more rational form of existence, or that she now realizes there is a god and an afterlife.

It's ambiguous and it's meant to be. The viewers own beliefs will often dictate what we think happened, because humans often want to see that art-- not to mention other people-- agree with them.


That final scene symbolically depicts that Karen realized the answer to the afterlife riddle, but as a viewer we are not so lucky.

Therefore, the movie is about how beliefs of this nature can be distorted and used for extreme measures, especially when one is not open minded enough to realize different belief systems.


With that said, a similar ambiguous ideological statement was done a year later, at the end of 2008's Martyrs, as well.