Nearly a decade after its release, fans are still reeling over Super Dark Times' shocking ending.
The 2017 horror film from writers Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski follows a pair of high school friends who get wrapped up in a string of killings in their neighborhood after an afternoon gone awry in the woods.
It stars Righteous Gemstones actor Owen Campbell and Ozark's Charlie Tahan as its central pair of teenage pals, Zach and Josh, and Tom Swift actress Elizabeth Cappuccino as local it-girl Allison.
A Brief Super Dark Times Plot Recap
There is plenty to discuss regarding the Super Dark Times ending, but before that, one must look closely at how the film gets there.
Super Dark Times is a story about two high school friends who begin to lose their grip on reality after an accident leads to the surprise death of one of their cohorts.
The movie sets itself on the backdrop of 1996 New York. High Schoolers Zach Taylor and Josh Templeton are living a fairly uneventful life, chasing after girls, hanging out after class, and getting up to no good.
Just a Pair of Best Friends
One of those girls the pair seems to be infatuated with is Elizabeth Cappuccino's Allison Bannister, the person they deemed the most desirable during a typical flipping through the high school yearbook.
However, things take a turn for the worse as Zach and Josh start to hang out with two other kids, Daryl and Charlie. One cloudy afternoon, the four boys decide it would be fun to go through Josh's older brother's things, discovering some marijuana and a katana.
With both the drugs and the sword in hand, they take the contraband and head up into the woods for an afternoon of fun and games (or at least so they think). Playing with the sword in the forest, Daryl is accidentally stabbed by the katana, leading to his blood death on the forest floor.
Paranoia Sets In
This begins a paranoid-filled saga for the boys as they bury Daryl's body in the woods and hope his death cannot be traced back to them.
As the rest of the story unfolds, rumors circulate about Daryl's disappearance, and Josh and Zach enter a state of hyper-anxiety. Those who were once friends are now enemies, and the boys even begin to question whether they are really on each other's side.
These tensions start to bring in the people around them as well, as the boys attend a party hosted by Allison later in the movie. Saying they did not want to go together, the two friends feel betrayed after they show up to see that the other is there.
A Bloody Finale
As Zach's nerves ratchet up, another student shows up dead, with Owen Campbell's character suspecting that, like Daryl, this death may not have been as accidental as is being led one.
All of this culminates as Zach discovers Daryl's burial site has been defiled and the dead teen's body mutilated. The grave-robbing reveal causes Zach to rush to Josh to find his friend safe and sound.
That is not the case, though, as Zach finds Josh is with Allison at a friend Meghan's house. Josh has killed yet again, striking Meghan down with the katana from earlier and tying Allison up with his intention seemingly being to kill her as well.
Josh manages to intervene, fighting Josh until a nearby neighbor hears the commotion and discovers the crime scene left behind by the boy's activities.
The movie ends with Josh in handcuffs and Allison back at school, sporting three small scars on the back of her neck. Zach's fate is, however, left ambiguous, as he is not seen or heard from again after the film's final confrontation.
The Hidden Meaning Behind Super Dark Times Ending
Super Dark Times' 'up in the air' ending has been a hot topic of conversation surrounding the film since it first hit theaters in 2017.
Some things are pretty definitive coming out of the movie's ending. Josh has been arrested in connection to Meghan's death and Allison's traumatic kidnapping (as seen at the end of the film).
Allison, herself, is safe and sound, just a little shaken up, as the movie shows her in its final scene sitting in class once again with a set of three parallel scars on the back of her neck.
These scars are assumed to be from Josh, as they resemble the precision of something like the katana the deranged teen used to kill throughout the rest of the film.
The lines on the back of her neck represent a prevailing theme in the film, showing that even though one can try and forget traumatic experiences, scars still prevail.
This manifests in the movie in Zach and Josh's paranoid personalities, which take over the protagonists' psyches following Daryl's death in the forest. Allison's scars are a more literal representation of the scars one carries from their trauma. While she does not let them define her, they will always be there.
Some have also speculated the scars could have another meaning. A certain contingent of the Super Dark Times fanbase believes that Allison may have been in on Meghan's death and the defiling of Daryl's grave.
This would mean that the scars on Allison's neck would be a never-fading reminder of her crimes; in the same way, Daryl's burial site would never disappear for the boys.
What happened to Zach is left unclear. By the end of the movie, the seat next to Allison, where he once sat in class, is occupied by another student, leaving one to wonder what became of the teen boy.
One can assume the events of the movie impacted why Zach was missing by the end of the film, for better or worse. He may have been picked up by the police as an accessory to Daryl's murder, or what happened between him and Josh left such an impression that he had to move from the film's sleepy New York town entirely.
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