Haunt ending explained: what happens to the masked killers?

Like their other work, Haunt has a simple high concept, following a group of young people on Halloween night as they become trapped in a haunted house that preys on their fears. Many, many murders follow as the gang become threatened by masked killers.

If you want to know what happens at the end, read on to have the Haunt ending explained.

Haunt ending explained: what happens to the masked killers?

Before entering the haunted house attraction, the friends – Harper, Bailey, Nathan, Evan, Angela and Mallory – are forced to give up their phones and sign a liability waiver, which they do all too willingly.

Not long after entering the house, the group is split up, with Bailey encountering eerie armholes. After putting her arm into one of the holes, she is promptly cut with a straight razor. Shortly after, with the group reunited, they witness the first death as Mallory is brutally impaled through the head by a person wearing a witch mask.

Figuring out that the threats posed by the haunted house are very real, the rest of the group attempts to escape, with Evan finding another person seemingly trapped inside – though given he’s wearing a ghost mask, he should have been a little more weary when accepting him as a friend. Evan and the masked man actually make it outside before he kills Evan with a hammer and gruesomely rips his face off while Angela is also picked off inside.

What is left of the group appears to turn the tide on the attackers after Harper kills two of them only to find out one of the masked killers was in fact Bailey, as she had earlier been kidnapped by the masked figures.

Earlier, Nathan ended up in the haunted house’s operation room and managed to get word to Harper’s boyfriend that they were in danger. The boyfriend shows up, seemingly to save the day, only to get promptly murdered by the killer in the clown mask.

Nathan and Harper work together to take out another of the killers before coming across a figure in a vampire mask. Vampire Mask unlocks the truth of the situation for the viewer – and Nathan and Harper – as he explains that the haunted house workers are all part of a cult that mutilates their own faces so they match their masks. We see that underneath the vampire mask there are no scars yet as he was new to the cult.

After Vampire Mask is killed, Nathan and Harper fight their way out of the house, taking down more of the masked cultists. Though Nathan takes a bullet, they make it to a car and drive away.

We’re then shown that not all of the cult killers were defeated and the one wearing the clown mask is still standing. He burns down the haunted house attraction as Harper and Nathan receive medical attention at a hospital.

While recovering at the hospital, Harper is handed a release form eerily similar to the one the whole group were forced to sign at the beginning of the film and realises that any remaining members of the cult would know where she lives.

At the very climax of the film, the clown-masked killer arrives at Harper’s home intending to finish her off but she has been expecting him. Harper created a trap of her own that immediately ensnares the killer. She then emerges to blow him away with a shotgun as the film ends.

Haunt never offers any complex explanation for the haunted house killers beyond the suggestion they’re all part of some murderous cult – with the filmmakers keen to keep the antagonists' motivations a mystery as they celebrate the slasher genre in this throwback flick.

Haunt is now streaming on Netflix. Sign up for Netflix from £4.99 a month. Netflix is also available on Sky Glass and Virgin Media Stream.

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