A Creature Was Stirring(2023)
Submitted by Evan B
Pooper:
Faith had a mental breakdown. What really happened was that Charm had run away (frustrated at her mom’s abusive relationship) and died in the blizzard. Liz and Kory were just figments of Faith’s imagination (based on people she’d met during her years as a drug addict) that Faith conjured to cope with the loss of her daughter.
Long Ending:
The film opens on Christmas Eve during a blizzard. Faith (Chrissy Metz) is a nurse/single mom living with her teenage daughter Charm (Annalise Basso). Charm appears to be sick with a novel disease and Faith is using her knowledge of medicine to try and develop a medication. As the pair talk, Charm asks Faith to tell her about her life before she was born. Faith confides that she was a bad person and drug addict who particularly enjoyed destroying people she deemed innocent. But Faith says she changed her ways after Charm was born. Despite Faith’s claims that she has abandoned her evil ways, Charm knows Faith keeps a locked suitcase in her garage that holds a connection to her hedonistic path.
Two young adults – Liz (Scout Taylor-Compton) and Kory (Connor Paolo) – stumble through the blizzard and break into Faith’s house seeking shelter from the storm. Thinking they are home invaders, Faith attacks them and injures Kory’s leg. Once Faith calms down and the pair explain that they’d been lost in the storm, Faith begrudgingly allows them to stay. Faith and Liz later clash over their views on spirituality (Liz being a devout believer and Faith trusting only in science). Meanwhile, Charm and Kory bond. Charm explains that she’s been sick ever since she was attacked as a child by a sick porcupine when Faith lost her at the zoo. Later, Kory (seeking drugs to help him with his pain) breaks into Faith’s suitcase (Charm had told Kory about it) hoping to find some pain-killing drugs. He only finds photographs of Fatih’s past inside.
As time ticks by, Liz and Kory start witnessing paranormal phenomena and Liz becomes convinced that Faith is torturing Charm. Liz sneaks into Charm’s room to ask if she needs help. Charm laughs at Liz’s efforts before mutating into a giant human-porcupine hybrid. Believing Charm is possessed, Liz gets Kory to try and perform an exorcism (it doesn’t work) And angered Faith confronts Liz while the porcupine monster chases Kory. Liz decides to flee into the blizzard despite Faith begging Liz not to go. Meanwhile, the monster kills Kory. Faith then confronts the monster and stabs it with a knife. She finds Charm trapped inside the monster’s belly and pulls her daughter out. The two embrace.
A week later, the blizzard has stopped and the snow is melting. Charm thanks Faith again for rescuing her and gives her mother a kiss. As Faith begins to clean up from the events of Christmas Eve, she comes across her suitcase and looks at the pictures. Inside, she finds a picture of she and Kory from a decade earlier. This jogs her memory. It turns out that Faith actually had a mental breakdown on Christmas Eve and imagined Kory and Liz breaking in. In fact, Kory and Liz were missionaries Faith had met a decade earlier that tried to convince Faith to stop using drugs. Instead, Faith seduced Kory and after tying him to a chair during a kinky game, injected him with heroin against his will. Kory overdosed and died in Liz’s arms as Faith fled. What really happened on Christmas Eve was that Charm had had enough of her mother’s mental instability and abuse and she (not Liz) had fled into the blizzard after the pair fought. Unable to cope with her daughter leaving, Faith hallucinated Kory and Liz. As a tearful Faith turns around, she sees Charm’s corpse frozen and trapped under a fallen tree. A giant, mutant porcupine then appears behind Faith as the film ends.