That last scene! (BIG spoilers for entire film)

As wonderful as Laura Ashley Carter is, carrying this movie almost entirely on her shaky, weeping, deranged shoulders, how about those brief but perfect scenes with Sean Young?

The last scene, with another young woman about to take over as caretaker, features Sean Young basically repeating the lines from her introductory scene, but her perfect delivery creates a completely new reading of the film. It's like a much subtler version of the reveal at the end of The Usual Suspects.

Suddenly, just from the way Sean Young says "After what happened to the last caretakers," you realize:

(The following spoils most of the movie, so if you haven't seen it, please don't read.)

1. Who on earth would hire a caretaker and leave her alone in the house without talking to her references? In an early phone call to check in, Sean Young's "Madame" mentions that she still hasn't heard from Darling's references, the Abbotts, and urges Darling to get in touch with them.

Soon after, Darling runs into a man who she identifies as Henry Sullivan, then as James Abbott. And as we later find out, Darling was lying about her references; the Abbott family is actually connected to Darling's trauma. (The trauma is never explained, but Darling has deep scars on her side.)

2. Why did Madame tell Darling about the previous caretaker's suicide right before leaving? It seems like the kind of thing you'd mention before the new caretaker took the job, or else not mention at all. Likewise, the locked room that Darling is supposed to stay out of: why would Madame leave without mentioning she wants that room to stay closed? She waits until Darling asks about it on the phone before specifying that it must stay shut.

3. When she moves in, Darling carries her heavy suitcase up flights of stairs to a small room. It seems that if she had her choice of rooms, she'd probably choose one closer to the ground floor, so we can infer that she was told that particular room was hers. Darling discovers the inverted cross necklace in the dresser in her room. As if it had been left there for her.

4. On the phone, Madame tells Darling the locked room has to stay shut. The door to the locked room has scratches around the knob and the baseboard as if someone forced it open before. The previous caretaker who killed herself, maybe.

5. Sullivan/Abbott startles Darling on the street by stopping her to give her the inverted cross necklace, which he claims she dropped, though before that, she didn't appear to have it with her. Darling is terrified by the man, and this incident sets off Darling's breakdown.

6. Before leaving, Madame implied the house was reputed to be haunted and talked about the prior suicide. Later, Sullivan/Abbott tells Darling that there were rumors that a lunatic attempted to conjure the devil in a back room of the house. The inverted cross suggests devil worship, and Darling sees the phrase "abyssus abyssum invocat" scratched onto the dresser in her room: this means "hell calls to hell."

6. Ultimately we learn that Abbott was actually the name of a doctor who treated Darling after a trauma. If James Abbott is the doctor or a member of his family, it's a hell of a coincidence that a man connected to Darling's past trauma, from the same family she gave as a false reference for her current job, randomly stopped her on the street to give her back an occult necklace she found in the spooky house she's staying at.

7. At first, Darling is sure the man is Henry Sullivan, who seems to have been responsible for her trauma. She even sees the name "Henry Sullivan" on the man's driver's license. Later, she checks the license again, and the name is "James Abbott." However, the actor is credited only as "The Man." The man's wallet appears to be embossed with "D D" on the outside. There's no real reason to think that the second name Darling sees on his license is any more accurate than the first.

It seems just as plausible that "The Man" is just a random guy who saw Darling drop the necklace and returned it, and primed by her past trauma and current tension, Darling believed he was her attacker. When she tracks him down again later, he says she looks familiar, but that could be due to seeing her on the street in the earlier encounter-- he doesn't recognize her because on the street she was shocked with her hair in her face, and when he meets her again, her hair is up and she's wearing heavy evening makeup. When Darling checks his license the second time, she sees that he isn't Henry Sullivan, but possibly she's wrong again when she sees his name as James Abbott, maybe because she can't bring herself to admit she murdered a stranger-- and the Abbotts are also involved with her trauma somehow.

7. Near the end, Darling forces open the door to the locked room, damaging it in the same pattern as the scratches already on it. Whatever she sees inside the room makes her scream in horror. She then puts on the inverted cross necklace and jumps off the balcony.

8. The chapter titles are "Her" - "Invocation" - "Thrills!!" - "Demon" - "Inferno."

So, instead of a straight-up Repulsion homage, possibly the plot of Darling is actually something more like this...

Madame finds a troubled young woman, "Darling," and offers her a job caring for Madame's house. She calls Darling's references, and talks to Dr. Abbott about Darling's dark history. The first thing Madame says to Darling is, "I don't think you realize what a godsend you are." Damaged, violent young women don't grow on trees.

Before leaving, Madame makes sure to tell Darling that the house is said to be haunted, and that the previous caretaker killed herself. She leaves the back room locked without mentioning it, and leaves the inverted cross necklace in Darling's room.

On the phone, Madame mentions the Abbotts to Darling, reminding Darling of her trauma and her lies. Still nervous from the phone call, Darling then runs into a man, who she believes to be her attacker. This encounter, along with a few noises and slammed doors in the creepy house, makes Darling lose her mind. Darling becomes convinced the man she met is Henry Sullivan. She lures the man to the house and murders him there. Then she sees his name as "James Abbott" instead.

Madame calls the house and tells Darling that Madame spoke to the Abbotts, and "we know what you did." She instructs Darling to leave the house. Darling breaks into the locked room and sees something that horrifies her. She puts on the inverted cross necklace and jumps off the balcony.

Madame has just arranged two human sacrifices in the house without ever getting her hands dirty, and with a flawless alibi intact. The phrase in Darling's room meant "Hell calls to hell" - maybe Madame arranged to hire Darling so that Darling's suffering and her personal demons would call to the demons of hell.

Did Darling see a demon in that locked back room? Or did she see evidence that Madame hired her to be a human sacrifice from the start, intending to drive her to violence or suicide?

Sean Young's practiced, sinister inflections as Madame in the final scene implied that there was more going on in the plot than met the eye.

That last scene took this movie from "liked it" to "loved it" for me.