Sightless Ending & All 4 Twists Explained

WARNING: Major spoilers for Sightless ahead

Writer and director Cooper Karl’s Sightless features several jarring twists that culminate to an even more intense ending – here’s each of them explained. The horror thriller follows a young musician who is suddenly blinded after she encounters a stranger on the street. When she is sent to a rehabilitation facility, she quickly discovers that not everything is as it seems. The twists and turns that lead to Sightless’ ending are nothing short of impressive, but they do necessitate some explanation.

The movie stars Madelaine Petsch, of Riverdale fame, as Ellen Ashland, a talented musician left blinded by a vicious attacker. As more characters are introduced, the seams of her false reality begin to fray. When Clayton (Alexander Koch, Lucifer) expresses his love for her, a Fatal Attraction-esque relationship ensues, but Ellen doesn’t quite know it just yet. Sightless resembles some of the greatest horror thrillers that include themes of captivity, a lack of awareness, and unrequited love. Over the years, romance and horror have merged together to create some of the most unsettling images of relationships, as seen in Welcome To The Blumhouse’s Evil Eye and Into The Dark’s “My Valentine.” With incredible performances by the cast and masterful atmospheric illusions, Sightless has garnered relatively positive reviews that could mark it as one of the best romantically driven horror thrillers of the 2020s.

Cooper Karl’s feature-length directorial debut with Sightless showcased his raw talent in creating overwhelming tension and twists. All four are so impactful that they envelope the majority of the movie and how Ellen is forced to navigate her surroundings. These twists impact her mental anguish, which is already at its peak following the recent loss of her vision — here’s what all four twists really mean.

Ellen’s Apartment

Due to the fact that Ellen is recently blind, everything that the viewer sees is through her perception of what she smells, tastes, hears, and feels. There are several moments when this is revealed. For instance, several characters state that everything she is telling them is based on her perception. After feeling as though she has nowhere else to turn, she tries to take her own life by jumping off of her balcony. To Ellen’s surprise, she falls into a soundstage where the sounds of city life are on a constant loop. Her captor has been using this technique to give her a false perception of her location. When the big twist that her apartment may not be what viewers are seeing is revealed, everything surrounding Ellen becomes questionable and, as it turns out, it is all mostly a figment of her imagined perception of what the place should look like.

Who Clayton Really Is Explained

The biggest reveals in Sightless were Clayton’s true intentions towards Ellen and who he truly is. In the same fashion as M. Night Shyamalan’s Split, he is revealed to have made up each of the personas that have been interacting with Ellen in order to be the light she was for him growing up. He alters his voice to fit each person, which causes her to believe that they are all different people. Once he taps twice on the table, she remembers that the nurse at the hospital, the detective, and the EMT use two-taps during their interactions with her. Clayton is himself around Ellen, but he is also several other people. In creating these personas, he is able to manipulate her perception, leading her to believe that her brother truly did send her to a rehabilitation facility.

Lana’s Connection To Ellen & Clayton

Throughout the movie, Lana (December Ensminger) visits Ellen to maintain the charade that everything is as Clayton has made it seem. She drops subtle hints that she shouldn’t trust what everyone tells her. In turn, Lana becomes Ellen’s closest confidante, but she must maintain a level of anonymity, as she is also being forced to manipulate her perception. As the movie comes to a close, Ellen escapes and finds Lana in a hidden room, where she delves into her relationship with Clayton and their relationship as siblings. This twist seems a bit misplaced, as their backstory reveals that his sister was very caring and wanted to help him get better when their father abused him. At the same time, it heightens just how manipulative Clayton can be to anyone and everyone.

Clayton’s Backstory & Why He Kidnapped Ellen

Lana explains to Ellen that their mother died when they were children. After which, Clayton sought comfort in Ellen’s music. He refers to her as his light in the dark while explaining that he wanted to be the same for her. He blinded Ellen in hopes that she would be so helpless that she would need him. In this way, his character resembles others with Munchausen by proxy, such as Diane (Sarah Paulson, American Horror Story) in Run and Eddie Kaspbrak’s (Jack Dylan Grazer, We Are Who We Are)mother in IT: Chapter One. He has the makings of being an individual with such a diagnosis, but he is also hopeful that Ellen will develop a type of Stockholm syndrome, where she relies on her captor despite the mental and physical abuse she’s sustained. Since Clayton wasn’t loved by his father, he wants nothing more than to feel loved, no matter what it takes. He was an emotionally scarred child whose mental anguish became deadly in adulthood.

Sightless’ Ending Explained

The ending of Sightless is one of the most symbolic representations of a woman escaping an abusive situation/relationship. Ellen discussed her previous marriage and how it impacted her desire to return to music. When she showcases her strength in escaping Clayton, she returns to it and performs to a massive crowd. The fear of being confined, abused, and without vision has left her, and she can now lead a life filled with what once brought her so much joy. Sightless, at its core, symbolizes the power of a woman’s will to survive (the baseline of horror’s final girl trope) and the severity of the violence in celebrity culture when a man – such as Clayton – wants nothing more than to have said person for themselves. Recently, horror thrillers have delved into the empowerment of women as they face off with male antagonists in movies like Shudder’s Hunted and Blumhouse Productions’ remake of the classic holiday slasher, Black Christmas. Just like these titles, Sightless highlights very important discourses on womanhood, empowerment, celebrity culture, and social movements in the 2020s.

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