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Haven’t been able to stop thinking about They Remain since watching it last night. I haven’t read the short story it was based on, but instead came into this based on the apparently Lovecraftian vibe and the presence of William Jackson Harper (Chidi from The Good Place).

It was hypnotic and mesmerizing — but exactly the sort of arthouse, pointless bullshit I’d normally hate for being too ambiguous and atmospheric at the expense of telling the actual story. Based on the reviews, it seems like most people ended up feeling that way… except that I think I figured out what it was all about, and now I kind of love it.

[image error]At the beginning a voice says “You already know how this story ends,” which seems to be the big clue that whatever answer you come up with as a viewer is the correct one.

Here’s what I think happened:

The world was essentially ending. The orgy of lustful violence that started with the cult had spread to the whole world and society was in full on collapse.

This company the two main characters work for clearly had some inkling of what was going on and knew that both eldtritch and scientific means would be required to pull the world back from the brink, so they were sending two-person teams back in time and space to where it all started.

Their goal was to figure out what was causing the madness to spread (rather than stay localized around the horn) which is why they are focused on studying the wildlife. Its clear the infection wasn’t just hitting humans and was even affecting the insects.

[image error]The problem is that they were stuck in a time loop, performing the experiments over and over and over, until it was breaking their brains. Chidi clearly didn’t know for instance that he found the horn out in the wilderness and dragged it back to camp, and neither of them realized he was the one whispering “where’s your friend?” and knocking on the door.

When they found the horn, the researchers became infected just like the cult did, first just getting sex crazed and then eventually becoming violent. The discussion about the cult “fucking to the sound of flutes” and the nature of the horn make it seem like a clear reference to the demonic piping that surrounds Azathoth.

[image error]This had clearly happened a bunch of times before – both with this group and previous research teams.

The ending is where the difference comes in. Chidi stands at the door for a super long time, then lets out a ragged, nearly-crazed laugh before finally going into the wolf’s den. His partner asks him at the end “did you come to join us?”

It seems like they are asking us to decide if he laughed because he went nuts and was joining his fellow colleagues in madness… or laughed because he figured it out, and was bringing the answer to them.

We know he believed they would never find it, frequently talking about how the universal is fundamentally unknowable, so his insane laugh may have been his worldview breaking down as the truth came to him.

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