Aahana Swrup
Thomas Marchese’s ‘From Black’ is a horror movie revolving around a grieving mother willing to do anything to be reunited with her dead son. The film stars Anna Camp, Jennifer Lafleur, and John Ales. Cora Lowen is a recovering drug addict who lost her young son, Noah, after he went missing due to her drug-addled negligence. Months after the loss, Cora meets a man named Abel, who offers her the opportunity to see her son again by performing a supernatural ritual. Riddled with guilt, grief, and desperation, Cora agrees to partake in the ritual and opens the door to a menacing evil Entity.
If you’re curious to find out what this occultist intervention reveals to Cora and how it changes her life for the worse, here is everything you need to know about the ending of ‘From Black.’ SPOILERS AHEAD!
From Black Plot Synopsis
The day Cora Lowen’s son, Noah goes missing, Cora is too high to notice it until the police, following up on welfare, show up at her door. Search parties are dispersed to find Noah, and in his wait, Cora starts her sobriety journey and tries to get her act together. However, months pass, but the kid is nowhere to be found. Cora joins a support group for people dealing with grief and loss, and on the day of Noah’s birthday, she breaks down in front of everyone. Meanwhile, Cora’s sister Allison continues her investigation of Noah’s cold case.
One day, Cora comes across a member of her support group while she’s working at the bowling alley as a waitress. The two chat, and later, the same guy, Abel, arrives at her house after Cora stops coming in for the support group meetings. He tells her there’s a way to fix her situation and that he did the same thing to bring back his little girl, who had drowned in a creek long ago. At first, Cora doesn’t believe Abel, but her desperation eventually wins out. She seeks Abel out and asks him how she can bring her son back. Abel tells Cora about a ritual she would have to perform, and Cora agrees.
The next day Cora and Abel prepare Cora’s house for the ritual. Cora nails a shackle to the center of a room and creates a salt circle with kosher salt. Abel also admits to Cora that even though his daughter has returned, he hasn’t met her yet because he needs to finish something before he sees her again. After the preparations are finished, Abel binds Cora to the bolted shackle on the floor for her safety. He makes Cora repeat some rite verses and mutters incantations from his journals. Hours pass, and just as Cora is about to give up due to exhaustion, a mystical force levitates her into the air.
After this experience, Cora’s faith in the ritual grows, and she gets excited about the real prospect of meeting her son again. The next day, The Entity takes Cora to show her what happened to Noah the day he went missing. Cora sees her kid trying to wake her up. However, Cora is unresponsive because of the drugs and fails to respond. As a result, Noah runs away from home with a tiny backpack on his shoulders. Afterward, a strange man kidnaps Noah and drives away with him in his van. The man takes Noah to his house and kills him in his bathtub. Cora watches these events unfold but is held back by The Entity when she tries to intervene.
The next day, Cora ties Abel to the shackle and summons The Entity again. This time, Abel gets possessed and starts throwing up bloody appendages. Cora freaks out and runs out of her house, breaking the salt circle. Meanwhile, The Entity emerges from Abel’s mouth, one limb at a time. Once Cora’s stable enough, she returns to the room and watches Abel’s dead body be brought back to life and dragged away by an invisible force.
From Black Ending: Does Abel Die? Does He Get Reunited With Her Daughter?
While preparing for the ritual, Abel tells Cora that kosher salt creates a protective layer and absorbs negativity due to its purity. Therefore, when Cora breaks the salt circle during his possession, Abel dies from supernatural involvement. Nevertheless, Cora continues with the ritual after The Entity reminds her about her deep-held desire to have her son back. She uses Abel’s journal to figure out her next steps and offers one of her dead mother’s goats from the farm as a sacrifice to The Entity.
Later, Cora resumes the summoning ritual and is transported to a field in a different plane of existence. Abel greets her and takes her to a dining table in the middle of the field. He places three cubes of goat meat onto Cora’s plate, each representing Noah’s body, blood, and bones. After Cora eats the goat flesh, Abel hands her a chalice of blood and asks her to drink it. Though Cora tries, she inevitably throws it up and breaks the ritual.
She then gets into an argument with Abel when she realizes Abel trapped Cora to become the next vessel of The Entity. For years, people have been bartering with The Entity for their wishes and passing down the secret ritual to others in return. After Abel’s daughter dies, he is approached by a woman who does the same thing to him. While Abel is alive, The Entity prevents Abel from seeing his daughter without another victim secured. Therefore after his daughter returns from the dead, she lives with her mother under a fake name in Boston, away from Abel. However, Abel is claimed by the supernatural before he can complete the ritual with Cora. As such, he never gets to see his daughter again and pays for the price of her life with his own.
What Happens to Cora?
After Cora returns from the field, The Entity attacks her for breaking the ritual. He needs a vessel and threatens to make Noah’s afterlife miserable, riddled with pain and grief if Cora doesn’t finish what she has started. Cora convinces The Enitity that she has another vessel for him and calls up her ex, Wyatt.
When Wyatt shows up at her house, he is expecting Cora to sleep with him in exchange for drugs. Shortly after his arrival, The Entity attacks him and tries to claim him. However, Wyatt’s body is tainted and unclean. As such, Wyatt is of no use to The Entity, and he turns his sights back on Cora, who runs away and puts up a barrier of salt before locking herself in a room. Inside, she plugs her landline back in and calls 911. When the police arrive at the place, they find it wrecked and bloody and take Cora to the station.
At the station, Cora’s sister, Allison, tries to get answers from her but is reluctant to believe her story. Cora is constantly on edge, anticipating The Entity to return for her. Meanwhile, a skeptical Allison runs a test for drugs in Cora’s system, but it comes back negative. Shortly after, Cora is locked up in holding as a suspect in Wyatt and Abel’s murder. Cora begs her sister not to leave her alone, but her pleas are in vain.
Once the station empties, the lights start to go off, and The Entity comes to claim Cora as his vessel. The Entity tells Cora that her son is calling out for her and tries to convince her to open herself up as his vessel. Eventually, driven mad by fear and desperation, Cora agrees and allows the Entity to claim her.
Does Cora Get Her Son Back?
When Allison leaves Cora alone, locked up in the station, she partly does so for Cora’s own safety. Allison is also gravely affected by Noah’s disappearance and has tried to reach out to Cora multiple times without any luck. Nevertheless, she cares deeply for Cora and Noah and has a wall of research investigating Noah’s disappearance. Yet, all she can find is one red Converse that Noah had worn the day he died.
After leaving the station, Allison goes to check out Cora’s house. While she looks around the spiritual and mystical runes drawn on the floor of the summoning room, she hears a noise from upstairs. As she investigates the noise, she follows it to the closet in Noah’s abandoned room. When she opens the door, she finds Noah standing inside with one red Converse on his foot. Cora has completed the ritual, and The Entity has brought back Noah. However, much like Abel, Cora will also not truly be reunited with her son until she passes her curse onto someone else.
Read More: Is From Black Based on a True Story?
