This article discusses the ending of the Netflix film The 8th Night, so will contain major spoilers.
The 8th Night is a fairly standard supernatural horror centered on the endangerment of the human race following the release of an evil spirit into the world. Over the course of eight nights, the spirit possesses one person after another, treating each as a stepping stone until it reaches the one who will return it to its full glory and enable it to unleash Hell on earth. The only person who can stop this from happening is Cheong-seok (Nam Da-reum), accompanied by Park Jin-soo (Lee Sung-min).
We see the spirit go from one host to the next, wreaking havoc and leaving a number of unexplained corpses that baffle local detectives. Meanwhile, Cheong-seok tries to convince the reluctant Park Jin-soo to undertake the duty passed down to him by their recently deceased mentor. Eventually, he comes around and, with the knowledge they have of this ancient spirit, they hatch a plan to neutralize it by identifying the next host and killing them, saving the world from unholy annihilation.
What happens next?
When Park Jin-soo eventually comes face to face with the spirit, he narrowly escapes with his life and becomes aware of just how powerful it is. This gives him a real sense of urgency too, as this first acquaintance was the penultimate opportunity to stop the spirit from taking over the world. As a result, he heads off into the forest with his protégé to create a trap to capture the spirit when it comes for its final host, Cheong-seok himself. However, when the spirit arrives, the local detective assigned to the case of the mysterious bodies also turns up and the plan hatched by Park Jin-soo and Cheong-seok goes sideways. He shoots Park Jin-soo before he has the chance to destroy the spirit, meaning it manages to take over Cheong-seok’s body and possess him to become the all-powerful entity that will rain permanent Hell over the earth.
Or at least it would’ve done, had Park Jin-soo not sacrificed himself to the spirit so that Cheon-seok could recapture it. Upon its containment, Cheong-seok returns the spirit back to the desert where an aging archeologist previously discovered it, protecting the world from it once again.
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