This article discusses the ending of the Amazon film Don’t Make Me Go, and will contain spoilers.
Check out our article — everything we know about Don’t Make Me Go.
Ready Steady Cut film critic M.N. Miller says Don’t Make Me Go proves that “We just can’t have nice things.”
Don’t Make Me Go follows two main characters. One is Max Park (John Cho), a single parent and teacher who just found out he has Chordoma. This is a rare form of terminal cancer. So rare, it only accounts for 1% of all tumors. Now, when we say terminally Ill, this would suggest the patient has no more than six months to live, and there is no cure. However, the synopsis says terminal and forgoes areas of medicine that reduce the pain, like palliative treatments.
Moving on, the doctor tells him that his options are bleak. He can choose surgery, which gives him a 20% survival rate. Yes, a one in five chance of beating this thing. The other is he has a year or so to live or less. This issue being he is raising his 16-year-old daughter, Wallace, or he calls her “Walley,” and needs to consider her. They have no family. The mother left then when she was an infant.
So, he wants to take the year to ensure he has crossed all the T’s and dotted all the I’s. Like a good father, he wants to ensure she is not just taken care of financially but emotionally. So, he makes her take a road trip to New Orleans under the pretense of attending his college reunion, where he will reunite with his friends to talk about Max’s musical ability and his frosted tips. However, the reason will be to reunite Walley with her mother.
The trip consists of Max teaching his daughter how to drive, which is terrifying. Walley snuck out of the house earlier in the film and rebels again by sneaking out of their motel in Texas to go out with a couple of older guys at a local party. When they get to the reunion, Max shows off his daughter to old friends and locates Dale, a guy Walley’s mother ran off with. It turns out she divorced him as well. Eventually, Max punches Dale’s very punchable face, and it all spills out that the trip was an excuse to reunite Walley with her mother.
Amazon film Don’t Make Me Go ending explained
Walley does not want to see her when they arrive at her home. Her mother is a basket case and still does not have her life together. Even if she is married and has a new infant child, Max makes an excuse that she is having the house redone, and they will see her tomorrow. Yet, all the secrets come spilling out later. He manages to calm her down after the incident, but Max admits what he has been holding back all along — he has terminal cancer.
This causes his daughter to run out of the hotel and jump in the car. Keep in mind that she still does not have a license or even a driver’s permit. She is upset and is driving the car erratically. Eventually, she slams her father’s car into the back of a sedan. The agreement that unfolds after is she convinces him to live life again, stop playing it safe, and have the surgery that gives him a chance to see her grow up and walk her down the aisle.
Now that Max is going to have the surgery, they go to sing karaoke. While he is singing and Walley is cheering him on, she becomes light-headed and faints. We are told a brief time later that she had died from an enlarged heart. Walley was showing the signs throughout the movie. She had fainting spells, shortness of breath, dizziness, and sweating during times of no physical activity. All these unfolded during situations that camouflaged the condition—for example, her first kiss with Glenn. Also, she was waiting to meet her mother for the first time.
The final scenes have Walley narrating how her father will now live his life again, despite her death. His girlfriend is now living with him, and by the film’s end, they drive off together to watch a meteor shower.
What do you think of the Amazon film Don’t Make Me Go, and the ending? Comment below.
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