This article contains major spoilers for The Night House’s ending.
After a devastating revelation, Beth starts to understand the nature of the hauntings in her husband’s lake house. After a near-death experience in her teenage years, Beth is in a car crash and her heart stops beating for 4 minutes, but while she feels the afterlife was all tunnel and no light, it seems that she has brought an entity back through with her. This entity has become obsessed with Beth and has been watching her from the other side.
Her husband, though, is the real target of the apparition’s attention and has been sitting on his shoulder whispering terrible things to him, and it seems the ghost wants Beth dead so it can be with her forever.
In an attempt to fool the evil presence though, Beth’s husband does what he feels is the right thing, and finds women that look like his wife, then murders them in an attempt to save Beth from this thing.
However, it seems that the ghost is not easily fooled, as he has to actually keep killing these lookalikes in the hope that the demon is appeased.
The Night House ending explained
By the final reel, Beth becomes aware of the demon haunting her and has visions of her husband’s terrible deeds. After being attacked by the demon, who she initially thinks is the ghost of her misguided spouse, she finds herself in the small boat on the lake, the scene of her husband’s suicide.
Meanwhile, Beth’s best friend, that she is quite horrible to earlier on, and her elderly neighbor Mel, who she is also awful to, have arrived on the scene to see Beth floating in the boat, armed with the gun that Owen killed himself with.
I’m not sure that the gun would have been returned to her if I’m honest, but you never know.
Beth is in an alternate reality, where she can see dead Owen, now occupied by the ghost that has followed her, but her co-stars see only her on the boat with the gun. Her distraught friend swims out and Beth manages to find the strength not to follow Owen’s path. She is rescued, brought back to shore and the film ends.
Why husband Owen felt that murdering people that look like his wife was a good idea, I don’t know. The discovery of an ancient artifact that seems to have something to do with the demon is never fully explained. Why the demon couldn’t kill Beth is also not explained — he certainly seems to have no trouble throwing her around in the final scene.
Who the demon is and why it wants Beth is never explained. There are hints about the building of a second house that may have been designed to trap the demon that are left unresolved, and why Owen kills himself, apparently secure in the knowledge that Beth is safe, seems odd, as obviously she isn’t safe as the ghost begins its campaign of terror on her after his suicide.
This narrative is designed to make us think that Beth is being haunted by Owen, but it becomes obvious later that it is not Owen but the demon from her near-death experience that has been tormenting them.
Patchy, illogical, and really only there to push the story on, this film fails to provide a logical conclusion or explanation, leaving the audience confused and uninvolved.
