The Devil Within 2022 Ending Explained- The Lizards, The Kidnapper, And What Was Jeanne?

“Did we start yet?” says Jeanne young psychiatric patient who is desperate to find out what happened to her one day when she woke up in a pool of her own blood. This is something you never ask yourself as you watch The Devil Within because you spend the majority of the ninety-six-minute runtime trying to play catch up.

A young woman wakes up in a pool of her own blood. She has astigmatic marks on her arms and legs, and her head is bleeding as if it had a thorny crown. She has no idea what happened and had overdosed on drugs at the time. Everyone in her small community is fascinated by her. Some think she has divine providence and seeks her wisdom, while others want to profit from the spectacle. Is she touched by God, possessed by the Devil, or something even weirder?

The Devil Within 2022, not to be confused with The Devil Within from 2010, a slasher about an eighteen-year-old’s birthday party that didn’t end happily for anyone, is a strange movie. It is a million different things simultaneously, and not all dovetail together successfully. Her father sees a payday and is more than willing to leverage an Evangelical preacher’s offer against his local Catholic church. The town vacillates between obsessed wonder and fear. Her mother is understandably concerned about her mental and physical health. It’s a recipe for disaster and maybe the final battleground between good and evil if we are smart enough to tell the difference.

Don’t be confused by the title or all of the religious talk. This film isn’t about demons or devils. It is about what evil and genesis really are. The Devil Within, previously named The Corruption of Divine Providence, is about the capacity for both that lives within us. Or at least it seems that way until a final act twist that puts everything in question.

Writer and director Jeremy Torrie was clearly ambitious with The Devil Within. Perhaps too much so. The competing and often confusing plot threads were at times too convoluted to hold the story together, and by the time the final big reveal comes, the viewer is almost exhausted by what they saw. Here is everything you need to know about that confusing ending and what it all means.

The ending of The Devil Within

In the film’s opening moments, Jeanne is seen bandaged and bloodied, undergoing hypnosis. She has all the signs of demonic possession. She speaks in guttural tongues with black veins running under her skin and whitened eyes. When asked what she wants instead of violence and rage, the message is peace. It’s confusing, to say the least. But that is the least of the bonkers things that happen in The Devil Within. a strange man who may or may not exist kidnaps Jeanne thirty minutes into the film and has his own religious agenda. He also seems to be able to heal himself and claims to be immortal. If that isn’t enough, the First Nations wants an audience with her believing she is crucial, and a psychic named Juniper Fairweather used her connection with the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead to locate Jeanne when she was abducted.

Torrie’s film says a lot about what spirituality is. Is righteousness the fake man of God who bellows from his pulpit about judgment and giving all while trying to figure out better ways of taking from his disciples? Is it gifts from God that come in the form of beloved dogs reborn and men who realize the error of their ways? Maybe it’s the transcendence of a higher being who only wanted to usher in a better way of being.

After unsuccessfully convincing her community to embrace honesty and forgiveness, she traveled into a cornfield, where she built a shrine and disappeared. In her place, a crop design was left. This time an obvious arrow. Was Jeanne indicating she went up or was she warning everyone to choose light instead of dark? Probably it was both. In any case, along with the lizards, which were her spiritual guide, Jeanne left our physical plane. Torrie is likely making a statement about what creation is.

Instead of an alien angle, the crop circles are linking more ancient phenomena like the Nazca Lines in Peru. In more cinematic terms, Jeanne could have been tapping into the engineers from the Alien universe or a descendant of one. Instead, when the town was incapable of receiving her gifts, she was forced to leave and wait for another chance. It is an intriguing thought that would have been better suited developed as the main idea as opposed to a final act shocker.

What was Jeanne?

While speaking at the Pentecostal church run by Peter Wolf, she admits in the church in front of the entire congregation about an affair with a much older married man. As a result, she became pregnant and had an abortion. She also claimed her initial stigmata wounds were self-inflicted and not divine. Jeanne also levitates. At this point, she begs for all religions to unite and find peace. Unfortunately, the congregation and the pastor were terrified of her and believed everything they saw and heard was proof of demonic possession. Jeanne speaks with her mother and expresses concern that she only wants peace and understanding.

Like most spiritual leaders, her actions are met with distrust and fear. Was she a demon? An angel? Was she an alien? The truth lies in how you view the film. If you think The Devil Within is an examination of faith and spirituality, then it doesn’t matter. In the end, Jeanne left one final gift for her mother. She helped her father understand his rage and hopefully control it, and she brought back her dog.

Maybe our idea of otherworldly beings and extraterrestrials is wrong. Perhaps they are the same thing, and we aren’t wise enough to figure that out. That seems to be the angle Torrie is taking. This would mean Jeanne is an alien, an angel, a demon, and a god depending on the definition.

What’s with the lizards and bugs in The Devil Within?

Throughout the film, insects and lizards creep through fields as strange whispers are heard. Jeanne claims they have been hibernating in the ground for ages. She says they have been waiting for her. They seem drawn to her and even come into the Pentecostal church she speaks in. They follow her throughout the town along streets and yards, wanting to be close to her. The blue-speckled lizards complain about the people not deserving her. They are her guides. They lead her and provide comfort when no one else does. The lizards disappear when she does, so they must be tied to the same source as her. No one seems to see them but Juniper and Jeanne, so they must be spirits and not visible to normal humans.

Was the kidnapper a demon or something else?

Her kidnapper is a raving, drooling monster with long dirty nails and definite ideas about who Jeanne is and what she can do. He claims he has been waiting for her for lifetimes despite looking young. Stranger still, he heals from self-inflicted wounds in seconds. He laments his inability to die despite wanting desperately to do so. The man is gone when Juniper leads Danielle to where she is being chained. More worrying, Jeanne’s hypnotic session taps directly into the man and the conversation she had with him while abducted.

Something had been taking things to this bunker underground, leaving them to rot. Was it a strange animal, a serial killer, or a figment of Jeanne’s imagination? Like the lizards in the ground, this being wanted Jeanne for what she could do for him. He thought she could somehow end his suffering by allowing him to die. We have zero context for where he went or if he existed at all, though. As a result, it is impossible to know for sure but using the ending of The Devil Within as a guide, it can be deduced she helped him transcend. This is why he wasn’t found later and why her recollection of the events was so faulty. She didn’t fully understand her power yet.