The Dwelling(2016)

Submitted by Evan B

Pooper:
Sandy changes her fate and is able to leave the bed safely after accepting she wasn’t to blame for her fiance’s death. In the future, Detective Virgil then gets into the bed and is killed due to his guilt over killing an innocent Black teen in a misguided attempt at revenge after a gang killed his daughter. The film ends with the cursed bed being auctioned to new people.

Long Ending:
Two couples, Sandy (Alysa King) and Ren (Dennis Andres) and Nancy (Gwenlyn Cumyn) and Fred (George Krissa), meet at a seedy motel to rent a room and engage in some kinky sexual antics together. All the rooms are booked, but Ren bribes the attendant to rent them a room that has been closed to the public. They enter and find a massive bed inside. The four get into the bed, but eventually call off the tryst after Nancy grows upset by seeing a vision of her dead mother. The couples go to sleep. Cut to hours later, all four are dead, and an explosion in the room burned their bodies. An investigation ensues, led by newly reinstated Detective Virgil (Colin Price). Though Virgil initially assumes that the four were killed in the explosion (set off when one of them lit a lighter with a gas leak), further investigation reveals that they were in fact brutally killed prior to the explosion and that they had tried to escape the room before dying.

Cutting back to the past, Fred awakens and appears to see his dead dog enter the room. Fred gets out of bed to greet it, waking the others. They can’t see the dog, and then they scream in horror as they watch Fred get pulled under the bed by an unseen force where he is torn to pieces. Scared to get out of bed, they break a window above the bed in hopes of escaping that way. To their horror, the window repairs itself. Their phones are all on a desk across the room, so they are unable to grab them without getting out of the bed. Eventually, Ren tries to swing across the ceiling rafters to the hotel door. As soon as he leaves the bed, he is also attacked and killed by the unseen force.

Eventually, Sandy and Nancy manage to use the sheets to lasso Sandy’s phone and drag it to the bed. Sandy calls the cops and is connected to Detective Virgil in the future as he investigates the crime scene. Virgil eventually accepts that they are calling from the past, but has no idea as to how to help them out. Virgil begins drinking heavily and arrests the motel owner in order to interrogate him. The owner seems to know that the bed is cursed, but is uncooperative. The owner brings up the fact that Virgil had recently been acquitted of killing a Black teenager. Virgil’s own daughter had been killed by a Black gang member, and Virgil later shot the Black teen as the teen was “resisting arrest.” The owner speculates Virgil simply shot the boy for being Black like the gang member. Virgil tries to beat up the owner, and is forced by his colleagues to leave the scene. Meanwhile, in the past, Nancy hallucinates that her dead mother (who was an abusive woman that Nancy let die rather than call doctors when she was sick) is in the room. Nancy leaves the bed to approach her mother, and the unseen force breaks every bone in her body.

Knowing time is running out for Sandy, Virgil drives to a detention center where he visits a woman who was convicted of murdering her husband in the same motel room. The woman tells Virgil she was innocent of the murder and that the bed killed her husband. She says her husband was killed because he had earlier abused a young girl and that the bed punished him. Virgil realizes that the bed must kill those who feel guilt for wrongdoing (like Nancy felt guilt over her mother’s death). After further investigation, he learns that while in college, Sandy was attacked by a school shooter. Her fiance (who Nancy was engaged to before dating Ren) died saving her life. Virgil deduces that Sandy must feel survivor’s guilt for having lived while her fiance died.

Virgil returns to the motel room and calls Sandy in the past just as she is about to light her lighter (which would result in the explosion that kills her and burns all their bodies). He convinces Sandy that she bears no blame for what happened to her fiance and that if she wants to survive, all she needs to do is accept her innocence and leave the bed. Sandy hesitates, but eventually listens. Having accepted she is not to blame for what happened, the bed allows her to leave and changes her fate. In the present, Virgil sees there are now only three corpses. He also realizes the bed is still intact (as it had previously been destroyed in the explosion). Virgil gets into the bed and soon hallucinates the innocent teen he shot and killed (and while not shown, it’s implied the bed kills Virgil over his guilt of killing the teen). The film ends with the bed being auctioned off to new buyers.