This article discusses the ending of the Netflix film Fever Dream or known as Distancia de resonate, and will contain spoilers.
Ready Steady Cut Film Critic, M.N. Miller, said Fever Dream is an “Ominous and evocative psychological horror film.”
Amanda (Maria Rodriguez) is a young mother who takes her little daughter, Nina, who always carries around her stuffed mole, out in the Chilean countryside for a holiday. Her new neighbor, Carla (Dolores Fonzi), a 40-ish blonde bombshell, brings over a couple of buckets of healthy water in a lovely summer dress. It’s healthier than that damn tap water—big mistake. We will get to that later. She welcomes a friendly neighbor, only to Carla unveiling all her troubles to her. Notably, about her son David, an odd and stoic boy who suffers from social isolation because of the strange lack of children in town. Her mother calls him a “monster” and is afraid of him. So, you know, he won’t have any self-esteem issues later in life.
She tells Amanda how David became ill after playing in a stream by their farmhouse where they bred prize-winning racehorses when he was just three years old. With her husband Omar gone after taking the only vehicle in town, she had to grab a boat and travel down the river to a woman in a greenhouse. She is a medicine woman of sorts around these parts. She has seen this before. David has taken on another being and is trying to separate from himself. In other words, his soul doesn’t want to live there anymore. An expert in transmigration (the passing of one being or soul to another). When David comes out of the back room of the greenhouse, he is muddy and bloody. Carla knows from looking at him that it is not her son.
The film begins with Amanda talking to David as she lays in a fever dream. Did isolation bring it on? No. You see, Chile has one of the most uncontrolled pesticide industries in the world. In the background, in key, you see farmers spaying or dropping buckets of the poison around the golden fields of wheat that surround Amanda’s rental property. The grain is always soaked in dew, yet it never rains. Poor Nina has been running around the field of poison for weeks. Not to mention that healthy water is filled with toxins.
They both become ill. And as Amanda tries to escape with Nina, in a fever dream of paranoia, she stops at a light only to see a group of kids pass in the middle of the night. All of them have deformities, presumably from the unregulated toxin industry. From there, Nina gets out of the car, passes out, and wakes up in a hospital where she later dies.
Netflix film Fever Dream ending explained
But what about Nina? Carla whispered in Amanda’s ear in the ICU before she passed that her daughter was sick and must take her to the lady in the greenhouse. Amanda objects, but it’s too late. She knows this as a courtesy, and the transmigration is already underway. Months later, with Nina now with her father after losing her mother, Marco visits Carla, Omar, and David at their stables. Finds that Carla has left. Omar has no idea where she went. Marco asks Omar if he knows what happened? Nina is acting strange at home.
Omar dismissed it while David came out of the room. He says nothing but looks at Marco with joy. He runs out of the house as Omar yells at him. They both find him in the back of Marco’s car, the same one Amanda was driving, and he won’t get out. He looks like he is excited to leave. Marco yells at him to get out, but he won’t leave. Omar begins to wrestle him out, and David stretches for Nina’s beloved stuffed animal sitting in the back seat. Marco drives off, and David looks despondent — like he is trapped there forever.
There only seems to be one interpretation here. The soul of Nina left her body and is now in David’s. Nina, trapped inside David’s body, thinks her father has come back for her. That is why she jumped in the back seat where Nina always sits. This is why he reached for Nina’s beloved toy. She is safe, healthy, and alive in David’s body.
What did you think of the ending of the Netflix film Fever Dream (Distancia de resonate)? Comment below.
