I didn't think it was ambiguous at all.

The duplicate blew up the lighthouse, and Lena escaped.

She was already infected and, essentially, becoming one with it.

The way I interpret it was that she chose to move on and adapt with it (what else could she do?).

The movie was about self-destruction and this was her moving on.

This duplicate of her husband is not necessarily evil or anything like that.

It just is, like us.

She chose a new beginning with this being, as they are both "it" now.

It's like 'starting over' in their relationship (after she had the affair she was ashamed about, which was basically the 'end' to their 'previous' relationship).

Her husband was essentially a sort of physical (not sure about memory) clone with a new life in it.

Her original husband even told it to find her, like maybe this is what he wanted and hoped for.

As for the overall movie... I haven't found any meaningful discussion on it (I miss the IMDB boards, but this is the next best thing, wish more people came here... in time).

So the way that I saw everything was that (and this is actually reality) we are cells and we divide (the division of the marriage, the division of the group that went in) and we join together and replicate and divide, etc.

The aliens are no different than us, we just are.

We're a living thing made up of living things that spread like a virus/cancer.

It's just life.

I like your take...

As for the themes of the movie... In addition to the cancer nods... There is the whole discussion about the "shimmer" being a prism that refracts our DNA throughout the area... 🤔

So the cancerous DNA of the boss lady gets refracted throughout... Also, notice that the girl who cuts herself has bits of plants growing and covering her scars... it's as if there is a psychological or situational interaction between a persons DNA and the shimmer... The internal nature of these people being "expressed" in the envorinment, as an inversion of epigenetics...

Also notice the masculinity/warrior spirit (Nietzsche?) being expressed as a destructive nature of the original all male crew manifesting itself in the environment and refracted onto one another...

The all female crew are the only ones capable of birth, i.e. creation, thus they are successful at reproducing the new form... It's not co-incidental that the lesbian, the mother who lost her child, the damaged self cutter and the cancer afflicted women do not make it. Yet the healthy, fertile one, Lena, not only survives, but does so in a new form...

Tied to her, is the reproduced model of Kane (biblical?) who has also survived the shimmer having overseen the death of the original (biblical brother Abel?)... Kane is now destained to create decendents together with Lena and pass on their new mutated/refracted genes... 😎

Now what starts all of this? An alien meteor? An earthly reaction to a normal meteor, to us? A signal from the gods (ok, maybe not the last one 😉)

I need to reflect on this some more, as I've only just watched it...

Decent movie, more cerebral than emotionally resonant... But not particularly clever either...

Personally, I don't like the way these Sony cameras look.. especially in Alex Garland's movies... They look more like high end digital TV than cinema...

It's great that there are forums where we can discuss this movie... it has now been released internationally on Netflix, since it wasn't released in cinemas outside of North America... I think we'll get more comments soon...

@Xyberfaust said:

She chose a new beginning with this being, as they are both "it" now.

Except that there was no "being," but rather, a process of replication in play.

@Xyberfaust

I like your interpretation better than what I was thinking when I left the theater. The adventure and mystery were entertaining, but the ending, specifically the closing shot, left a bad taste in my mouth. I don't like movies where the hero seems to barely escape after defeating some evil entity only for the ending to reveal that the evil has either been let loose on the world or possessed the hero. This movie appears to indicate that both have occurred.

I also felt that the movie also didn't seem to follow its own internal logic based on what we were shown.

• We see that Kane basically was losing his mind because he couldn't deal with his body's mutations. He converses with the copy before killing himself. The copy then finds Lena, as instructed, but doesn't seem to have any of Kane's memories.
• We see Lena confront her copy, trick it, and escape the lighthouse before the phosphorus grenade destroys the copy along with the rest of the lighthouse and the rest of the alien material.

After all that, the closing shot demonstrates that Kane and Lena were affected in the same exact way even though we were shown that this Kane is a copy created in the shimmer while Lena is still herself.

The old notion that we are not the same person we were yesterday because time/age and experience has changed us seemed like an idea they played with in this. When Kane asks Lena if she was the "same Lena" she pauses, afraid. She can't answer the question because she knows that her DNA has changed and even her memory. She is forced to face the fact that even though Kane is a duplicate and she is not, they are both not the same people that they were. We have to ask 'how different does that make them from each other?' since they are both Shimmer-eyed. Does Lena's somewhat intact mind make her any more the same person than Kane's wiped mind? Which leads us to the question of 'how different does that make the alien from us?' As Xberfaust mentioned: It just is. Just like us.

For Lena to be the duplicate, we have to assume the "Unreliable Narrator" approach to the film which could fit given that it is all an interview but I don't think that is what the director/writer intended.

I agree that it was not an amazing film but I did enjoy it. The directing was great and succeeded in the otherworldly ambiance. Lots of fun and a good movie for conversation if not flawed and simple. There are a barrel full of thin bits like the lack of hazmat suits or breathing apparatuses (spellcheck has just taught me that I have been wrong about that plural forever) but I can lend this the same forgiveness I afford old 60's sci-fi in that regard. It's "fun."

I think it was the original Lena after she had been infected with the Shimmer. The Shimmer allowed itself to be destroyed to cover its tracks and allowed Lena to escape to find Kane, possibly to reproduce with him and propagate the alien species.

@Horus Mazinga said:

For Lena to be the duplicate, we have to assume the "Unreliable Narrator" approach to the film which could fit given that it is all an interview but I don't think that is what the director/writer intended.

This was my interpretation (which I found very annoying...and the film's greatest flaw). If an "Unreliable Narrator" was not intended, the filmmaker did a terrible job of making that clear. Even the beginning of Caine's speech "I am you or you are me" shows the possibility.

I guess one thing that works against Lena being the alien copy was her retaining any memory at all...something it seems Caine could not do.

No matter, the ambiguous ending added to the suck.

Why? there's nothing wrong about an ambiguous ending.

I had assumed the "she's the real one but was infected by the shimmer" ending. But the "she's the duplicate ending" is an interesting interpretation for sure. I lean towards my interpretarion though, for one reason: her reaction when Kane asks her "are you Lena?". There's a distinct look of panic in her eyes. Like, she hadn't thought about whether the alien substance could still be irrevocably in her. She shouldn't have had that reaction if it was the duplicate pretending to be the original.

Of course, maybe the alien had just improved its duplicationg methid. Kane was the first try.

It is interesting how Kane doesn't seem to be sure, before he does, about whether he is himself. And the dumplicate doesn't seem quite sure either. Lena's memory of getting away though is clear, so the duplicate there would have to be lying.

It does sem like the alien is more of a "substance" or "life force" rather than a conscious being. It only appears to "give birth" to one when it mixes with human DNA.

So, I don't think it could have tricked Lena and purposefully let her go away. It just tries to reproduce, and the duplicates are and act a bit like a new born. Not devious at all.

@Movie Queen41 said:

I think it was the original Lena after she had been infected with the Shimmer. The Shimmer allowed itself to be destroyed to cover its tracks and allowed Lena to escape to find Kane, possibly to reproduce with him and propagate the alien species.

This is what I thought too. They were all being assumed by this thing from the beginning, remember how they were having trouble remembering how long they had been in there. And then there was the bear that had consumed some part of the consciousness of the victim. Lena was infected after the double held her tightly against the wall to the extent that when she gave the phosphorus grenade to the double to hold, she was working in tandem with its consciousness. It was as if she was giving it information that it would have to burn the evidence (especially her husbands remains) and it would be more successful in having her go back into the world to mate with whatever her husband's double was. I didn't think it was ambiguous when I saw her weird eye effect (the same as her husband's).