I'm thinking and this might be bit of a spoiler of the stepford wives that Chris could not escape and the brain transfer thing worked and if the bad people died Chris's friend could have killed them and maybe Chris kills his friend and tells him it is too late.
I wonder how crazy this ended would be if this was the ending especially if Jordon really got inspiration from the stepford wives with that dark ending
There are so many alternate endings that could have been both scary and ft into horror movie tropes
1. When the cop car pulls up, it's not Chris's friend. It's a racist white cop who sees Chris and all these dead white ppl, and he immediately shoots Chris. (this would call back to the end of Night of the Living Dead, when the black guy is the only survivor but then gets shot by the rescuers.)
2. Chris and his friend drive away. Rose is left to bleed to death, she's not quite dead yet. but just as she's almost about to slip over to the other side, another branch of this body snatching cult turns up and grabs her body - and the movie ends there. But then the SEQUEL shows they take her to another house and implant her brain into a waiting slave body, but the drape is over the recipient's face so we don't see them. Rose's own body was damaged beyond repair but she was not hit in the head, so her brain could be salvaged.
Then a year later after much therapy, Chris is finally able to trust again and he falls in love with a black girl. but it turns out to be Rose again, out for revenge since he killed her family! NOOOOO!
In this sequel ending though , he smashes her head in, Walking Dead Style, so she cannot transplant into another body.
3. Chris's friend arrives too late , after the transplant. he finds "Chris" alive and well, wearing a knit hat. Friend sits down in the living room with the whole family for coffee and cookies. Chris assures him that everything is fine, the whole family acts normal, but then when his friend says do you want your dog back, "Chris" doesn't even remember the dog. Ooh, something is not right here! Something bad is happening!
Close up on Chris' friends face as he realizes he is paralyzed - he's been drugged and they are gonna snatch his body too!
Good one.
Or: The ending of the film is basically the same: Chris thinks he has escaped, but is actually under deep hypnosis and on the operating table.
Cut to wide shot of the evil white/black family still very much alive, congratulating themselves on this new technique which means Chris remains fully compliant forever.
At least Chris is happy in his "virtual" reality. Everybody wins/
I totally thought your first guess was going to happen.
shareI think even Chris thought it was going to happen. When he sees the cop car pull up, at first his face just FELL. Instead of reacting like "Yay I'm saved', his face looked like 'oh shit', for a split second.
The instinctive reaction when you are more habituated to fearing the police instead of trusting them. But then it closes up on the side of the car, and you see 'TSA' instead of 'Police', you are like, WHEW!
I was bracing myself for a Skeleton Key type ending, but that wasn't the case
shareIt originally ended with the racist cop from earlier showing up to the scene, shooting Chris but not killing him. Chris is then detained and we see him arrested in prison in county jail, and the person he shares a cell with is another survivor who escaped, and it is implied he's in jail for killing (or mortally wounding) Rose's grandfather, and that the groundskeeper was his friend or something.
The ending was apparently never filmed.