Arka Mukhopadhyay
The premise of travel is often a great way to begin a ghost story. Ghosts are fragments of imagination that live in faraway corners and only manifest in far-flung lands away from the safety of home. ‘The Resort’ is a gruesome, gory, visceral, and amply diabolical horror film written and directed by Taylor Chien. The story revolves around friends who embark upon an upbeat trip to a haunted island in Hawaii. In turn, they are plunged into a never-ending nightmarish daydream that is destined for a devastating ending. The finality indeed makes room for a horrific revelation, and the audiences must be surprised and even outraged. Well, in that case, let us take you back to the haunted island and look for answers. SPOILERS AHEAD.
The Resort Plot Synopsis
On Lex’s birthday, three of her friends, Bree, Chris, and Sam, take her out on a trip to Hawaii. Lex is a writer specializing in horror fiction, and she is looking for inspiration to write her next story. The present story sees Lex in a medical unit being interrogated by a policeman. Lex tells the policeman of a fabled “Half-Faced Girl” whom her party encountered on a remote island. Going back to the past, we see the events that lead to the present state of Lex. The friends have a surprise party arranged for her, but that is not the end of surprises since Chris pulled some strings to get themselves a ride to the notorious Kilahuna island.
The locals fear the island due to ghost sightings and paranormal events. The location is off-limits for the tourists, but an abandoned island resort is fabled to be haunted. People deny going to the island, but the friends get a local helicopter pilot to take them to the island. According to the pilot, the stories are merely stories, but he remains ambiguous in dismissing the supernatural occurrences. The deal with the pilot is a one-way trip, but a boat would rescue them from this forbidden island. In the meantime, they have six hours to explore and have fun. The upbeat adventure turns into a visceral nightmare when they finally find the resort. They find themselves trapped in the abode of the undead, but is there a way out?
The Resort Ending: Is Lex Dead or Alive?
As the story suggests from the beginning, Lex is the only one to come out from the ghastly paranormal encounter at the island resort. In the course of the story, we see how the other friends die. Bree gets into a car in an attempt to get to the quay, but the car turns out to be a deadly trap. The engine starts by itself, and the car changes gear and takes Bree straight to the bottom of the resort. The other friends come down to check up on Bree, only to find Bree’s deceased body. The other friends go down a darkened path to find an abandoned parking lot, and they attempt to venture into the darkness with torches. Someone drags Sam into darkness, and Sam returns in a diabolical form.
Chris thinks that Sam is still alive, whereas Sam has become one with the undead. A fight ensues, and Chris has the same fate as Sam. Lex finds herself afloat in bleak whiteness and gradually comes back to the hospital bed. This marks the end of Lex’s story. After hearing all the details, the policeman assures her that he will send a search party to the island. As he excuses himself to make some phone calls, Lex gets a hold of her phone.
Out of curiosity, she opens the camera and points it at the officer. After clicking a photo, Lex zooms into the hand holding the cellphone. The veins are extraordinarily red, and the next thing we know, the person jumps on Lex. In the next shot, we see the white, pale (and somewhat painted) face of Lex, and we can conjure that Lex is dead as well. Lex was killed in the encounter with the Half-Faced Girl in Bree’s body. The ending only concludes that Lex is stuck in a never-ending limbo of incessant horror.
Is The Security Guard A Ghost? Does Anybody Come Out of The Island?
The ending only reinstates the story’s faith in the island myth. The ending suggests that no one who has gone to the island has come back to the world of the living. The rescue party, the guards, and the tourists, all live on the island reincarnated in the afterlife as ghosts. On second thought, however, another reading may pop up in your mind. What if Lex has come out of the island, and the ending that we see is the ending of the story that Lex seeks to write? That is not what the film itself suggests, but it is perhaps a more rational alternative than the abysmal infernal limbo reading that comes right off the bat.
If we take into account a secondary opinion, we can consider the video blog that Lex plays towards the beginning of the story to give the friends an idea of what they are getting into. The blogger concludes that none who travel to Kilahuna island come back, and that is why it has been restricted from tourists. If it is real that the island is a teeming house of the undead, then the guards we see in the beginning are also ethereal creatures.
That is a spooky conjecture indeed. But the real question is, do ghosts smoke cigarettes? We see one of the guards smoking cigarettes twice in the story, one of which Sam picks up from the ground. If the security guard is a ghost, as the conclusion of the story suggests, then we are only left to probe into the prospect of ghosts puffing tobacco. But at the end of the day, it is primarily a piece of entertainment, and maybe we are thinking too much about it.
Where is the Half-Faced Girl?
The story begins with Lex describing to the police a diabolical spirit called the”Half-Faced Girl,” who is among the most notorious apparitions of the island. Some people believe the story, while some, like Sam, think the Half-Faced Girl to be only a local legend. However, as the group of friends veers off their original route and ends at the resort, things begin to go haywire. Their upbeat trip turns into a sprawling nightmare, although ghosts, as Lex concludes, are not to be kept on display. The friends meet the specter of the Half-Faced Girl later at the parking lot.
After the death of Bree, the other three frantically look for an exit. But that is until a spooky hand drags Sam into the darkness in a bit of jump-scare. We see the Half-Faced Girl in glimpses as she takes complete hold of Sam. She tears the face of Sam, unveiling a deadly phantom. Later in the hallway, Lex meets Bree again, but Bree has been consumed by the ghost of the same Half-Faced Girl. Therefore, although the Half-Faced Girl is only sighted in the tiniest of seconds, her presence in the story is all-pervasive.
Read More: Best Gore Horror Movies on Netflix
