Here’s the ending to Kevin Costner horror movie The New Daughter explained. Costner had an extraordinary run during the late ’80s and most of the ’90s, with movies like The Untouchables, JFK and Dances With Wolves, which he also directed. His career hit a bump with Waterworld, however, a costly adventure that became well known for its messy production, and it received largely negative reviews. This is a shame, as the movie has been reappraised in recent years as an ambitious and unique blockbuster.

Costner’s star has risen again thanks to drama series Yellowstone – which has many upcoming spinoffs – a show that’s been running since 2018. While the star has appeared in everything from romantic comedies to post-apocalyptic epics, he’s not closely tied to the horror genre. That said, he’s made a handful of genre outings, including the forgotten ’80s slasher Shadows Run Black and the underrated serial killer drama Mr. Brooks. Probably his most overt outing in the horror genre to date is 2009’s The New Daughter, where he plays the father of a teenage girl undergoing a terrifying transformation.

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In The New Daughter, Costner plays a divorced novelist who moves to a new home with his daughter Louisa (played by Pan’s Labyrinth’s Ofelia actor Ivana Baquero) and son Sam. Costner’s John is struggling to deal with the stress of being a sole parent, which isn’t helped when Louisa starts exhibiting odd behavior. This appears to be tied to a huge mound near their house, and John learns the house’s previous owner disappeared years before and he starts investigating his new home’s dark history. Jumping ahead to the finale, The New Daughter reveals a race of mysterious beings dubbed “mound-walkers” live within the ground, and have selected Louisa as their new queen.

Things come to head in The New Daughter’s ending, where the mound-walkers – which somewhat resemble the Molded that Resident Evil 7 hero Ethan Winters fights – lay siege to the house. Louisa is fully under the sway of the creatures too and seemingly killed Sam’s teacher Cassandra (Samantha Mathis). John kills several of the creatures and descends into the mound with his shotgun to rescue Louisa. He finds her inside and pulls her out as the monsters give chase, but as he plans to burn the mound, he sees her transforming into one of the mound-walkers.

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Recalling an earlier scene in The New Daughter where John promised not to leave his daughter as their mother did, he tearfully tosses a flare at the fuel can, blowing up the mound. This causes an explosion, but while this almost certainly destroyed the mound-walkers nest, it’s not clear if either John or Louisa survived. The New Daughter concludes with a very ambiguous ending, as Sam watches the fire from a distance and a figure is seen reflected, walking towards him. Sam says “Daddy?” as the figure approaches, but the signature growl of the creatures is also heard, and a mound walker appears behind Sam as The New Daughter cuts to credits. It’s up to viewers to decide what happened, but it does feel unlikely John would knowingly take his own life while Sam was still in danger, so maybe that figure really is Kevin Costner’s character coming to the rescue.

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Padraig Cotter
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It’s pronounced Paw-rick, not Pad-raig. Now that’s out of the way, a brief introduction. Padraig has been writing about film online since 2012, when a friend asked if he’d like to contribute the occasional review or feature to their site.

A part-time hobby soon blossomed into a career when he discovered he really loved writing about movies, TV and video games – he even (arguably) had a little bit of talent for it. He has written words for Den of Geek, Collider, The Irish Times and Screen Rant over the years, and can discuss anything from the MCU – where Hawkeye is clearly the best character – to the most obscure cult b-movie gem, and his hot takes often require heat resistant gloves to handle.

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He’s super modern too, so his favorite movies include Jaws, Die Hard, The Thing, Ghostbusters and Batman. He can be found as i_Padds on Twitter making bad puns.

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