Having just watched it and now read several reviews, I think ppl interpreted the ending wrong...
By the end of the film the whole town is overrun with aliens, as you can see pretty much everyone is getting abducted and infected with an alien parasite that lives in the humans throat. Once they've invaded they flood the mind with idyllic imagery and basically keep the human in that fantasy state. However this did not work on main character. She was too wracked by guilt and rejected the fantasy they gave her, pulling out the throat alien parasite. Then the aliens just built a doppelgänger instead, but she killed that too.
So aliens, with no other option, pull her up and meddle around her mind.
This is where the twist comes. MOST ppl think that she was just given amnesty by the aliens after they saw her guilt and rejection. As if they would be cool with her just existing down there with them bc she's an outcast anyways.
What I think really happened, is that they finally figured out her true desires by looking in her mind- it wasn't to have her dead friend back, it was to finally live with a community that knows her past, accepts her. She wanted a total escape from her life and into live in an alternate reality of the idyllic '50s dream town.
The horror aspect of that is that's she's actually an alien host while shes dancing away in her mind, and that she's so damaged by her past and her total rejection that she'd rather fantasize about escaping humanity completely.
I can't imagine that it's the literal events of the movie and not just a fantasy in her mind. Why would aliens be super into swing? Why would they construct a '50s vibe and hold dance parties and dress in vintage clothing? That's her dream. That's all her.
For that reason I think this is actually a pretty interesting ending and caught me by surprise. I enjoyed it and don't think it 'ruined' the movie at all. It probably has some room for consideration on how the '50s were all about glossing over tragedy, rejecting reality, and treated ppl as if they simply followed their roles in life, rather than being fully fledged and complicated humans.
By the end of the film the whole town is overrun with aliens, as you can see pretty much everyone is getting abducted and infected with an alien parasite that lives in the humans throat. Once they've invaded they flood the mind with idyllic imagery and basically keep the human in that fantasy state. However this did not work on main character. She was too wracked by guilt and rejected the fantasy they gave her, pulling out the throat alien parasite. Then the aliens just built a doppelgänger instead, but she killed that too.
So aliens, with no other option, pull her up and meddle around her mind.
This is where the twist comes. MOST ppl think that she was just given amnesty by the aliens after they saw her guilt and rejection. As if they would be cool with her just existing down there with them bc she's an outcast anyways.
What I think really happened, is that they finally figured out her true desires by looking in her mind- it wasn't to have her dead friend back, it was to finally live with a community that knows her past, accepts her. She wanted a total escape from her life and into live in an alternate reality of the idyllic '50s dream town.
The horror aspect of that is that's she's actually an alien host while shes dancing away in her mind, and that she's so damaged by her past and her total rejection that she'd rather fantasize about escaping humanity completely.
I can't imagine that it's the literal events of the movie and not just a fantasy in her mind. Why would aliens be super into swing? Why would they construct a '50s vibe and hold dance parties and dress in vintage clothing? That's her dream. That's all her.
For that reason I think this is actually a pretty interesting ending and caught me by surprise. I enjoyed it and don't think it 'ruined' the movie at all. It probably has some room for consideration on how the '50s were all about glossing over tragedy, rejecting reality, and treated ppl as if they simply followed their roles in life, rather than being fully fledged and complicated humans.