It Comes At Night Ending Explained-The Red Door, Was Travis Always Infected, And The Triumph Of Death

I see a red door, and I want to paint it black. The famous lyrics work here in this bleak psychological thriller from A24, currently streaming on MAX. End-of-the-world movies are compelling because there is nothing scarier than what we can’t see or fight. Many times, we end up being our own worst enemies out of fear or ignorance. Sometimes, it doesn’t matter what we do. It Comes At Night details what happens when inevitability meets paranoid nihilism. Here is everything you need to know about whether Travis was always sick, what the red door symbolized, and what it all meant.

Paul, Travis, and Sarah have holed up in a cabin in the middle of the woods in a desperate attempt to avoid catching a terrible disease that has destroyed most of the Earth’s population. Their attempts, although valiant, have not been successful. We watch in the cold opening as they execute Sarah’s father because he has contracted the disease. There is no room for compassion or hope here. Only fear, grief, precautions, and desperation. Their sadness is broken when a man breaks into their home, and soon, they have him and his family living with them. Trust between the group is not strong but it is holding until death comes knocking at their door. By the end of It Comes At Night, one entire family is dead, and another is destroyed.

The ending of It Comes At Night

After the family dog appears at the open back door, suspicions rise, and tempers flare. Will tries to reason with Paul. He asks to take a small amount of supplies and leave with his family. Paul refuses, arguing that he will keep coming back to steal supplies. Instead, a fight breaks out, and Sarah shoots Will to protect her husband, and Paul, in turn, shoots Kim and Andrew. Everything they did to try to protect themselves was for nothing, however, as the final shots of Travis show the young man deep in the throws of the disease. Paul and Sarah once more sit at the table in despair. This shot echoes the earlier scene following the death of her father.

Not only did they probably kill Travis off camera, but they now know they have also been infected, and it is only a matter of time for them as well. For all of Paul’s paranoia, it appears his family was the one who infected Will’s and not the other way around. Since Travis had fever dreams every night, it can be assumed he was infected the whole time. Andrew began displaying similar behaviors later, and we can assume Travis infected him.

The red door represents danger, contagion, and blood

Seen multiple times, it is the barrier against the outside world. It is dangerous to venture out. Unfortunately, it acts as both prison doors and an ineffective barrier at different times to different people. For Travis, it is the jail that he is stuck in. As a young adult, he longs for the freedom and responsibility of adulthood, but the apocalypse robbed him of that. Now, he is trapped with his parents in their house, where every moment is dictated by his father. It doesn’t help that Paul is scared and distrustful of everything and everyone, including Travis, on occasion.

From the photos on the wall, whatever happened was not more than a few years ago, if that. Not too long ago, this family was celebrating graduations, going to school, and worrying about normal things like paying bills and what to have for dinner. Now they are locked down, shut off from the world, terrified of everyone, and grieving a loss.

The Triumph Of Death

It’s no accident that the painting that Travis looks at at the beginning of It Comes At Night is Pieter Brueghel The Elder’s The Triumph Of Death. The painting features the last of humanity being rounded up and killed by skeletons on horseback. It symbolizes the inevitability of death. Painted during the Black Plague outbreaks, which killed roughly 43% of Europe, it was a visual representation of the fear and horror they saw on a daily basis. Sickness was a specter, a monster to be terrified of.

This is essentially the message of Trey Edward Shults’s film. Everyone in this film is doomed, no matter what they do. This ironic fact is this was true before the apocalyptic plague started ravaging the world. We are mortal. We cannot cheat death. All we can hope for is a long well lived life full of happiness and love. That is the real loss in the film. In the end, no one is left with dignity, compassion, or peace. No one can be trusted, and mutual destruction is almost guaranteed.

The painting is meant to be a moral message to disregard worldly possessions. It is a lesson that wealth can’t save you from death. It Comes At Night is set during modern times when plagues don’t wipe out entire communities, and yet COVID proved just how tenuous our grasp on life could be. One tiny bug is all it would take to wipe us all out again. Poe’s The Red Death, King’s Captain Trips, or It Comes At Night deadly wasting disease all end one way.

Was Travis always infected?

The ending of It Comes At Night is purposefully vague. It isn’t completely clear who infected who and when but it hardly matters. Everyone will die one way or another. The name of the film hints that both of them could have been infected. Paul comes at night and breaks in. All of Travis’ sleepwalking and nightmares happen at night, and the dog appears at night. It is plausible, however, that Travis has been the bearer of the disease from the beginning, however, and his parents know it. Because he is young it could have advanced much slower. At first, they may not have realized he was patient zero, but over time, they realized it, and that is the real reason he was never allowed any freedom, and Paul tried to prevent Will from leaving. He knew they were most likely infected, and he wanted to try to contain the illness as much as possible.