American Gothic

American Gothic (1988)

Ending / spoiler

(1 vote)

The next day, Fanny convinces Rob to ride a rope swing; she and Woody suddenly cut the rope in mid swing, launching him over the edge of a cliff and onto the ocean rocks below. Cynthia discovers the "accident." The day after that, Lynn stumbles across all three siblings skipping rope in the woods. They tie her up, maypole-style...then leave her there for awhile before coming back and stringing her up from an over hanging branch. When Fanny walks in on Cynthia and Jeff kissing, Fanny gorges out one of Jeff's eyes — but she doesn't kill him, so Ma finishes the job with knitting needles in the back as he comes stumbling out onto the porch...her creeping up right behind him (responding as she does this act; "That child never does finish a chore!"). Cynthia runs away into the woods, where she discovers Lynn's body hanging from a tree. So far, Cynthia is the only one who's seen much of the early mayhem and other weirdness; until now, her friends have blown off her reports of dead babies and the like, because they think she's still a tad off her nut. It takes Woody shooting Terri in the hand with a toy arrow before Terri realizes these wackos are dangerous. When they discover Paul in a rowboat having been hit in the face with an axe/hatchet and left with said implement buried in his skull, Cynthia and Terri run away and hide in the woods overnight. (Everybody's always running away into the woods.) The next day, they stumble across a cabin, and are confronted by Teddy. Cynthia is pulled away from the scene by Fanny, while Teddy chases Terri, catches her, and kills her — accidentally, this time, breaking her neck while they struggle — and then makes the audience squirm with discomfort while he rips off her clothes and checks out her body. Back at the house, Pa whales on Teddy with a stick, while the rest of the family chants, "In the name of God! In the name of God!" Cynthia finally cracks and joins in the chanting; next thing you know, Fanny and Ma are dressing a now-fully-loony Cynthia up as one of them — she is one of them. The family celebrates Cynthia's, er, adoption and show her a big surprise: a whole room full of the corpses of all the people the family has killed over the years (including, of course, all of Cynthia's freshly-dead friends). Now completely off her rocker, Cynthia is pleased. But later, when Fanny is bathing her little mummy-baby, Cynthia flips out and sees her own baby in its place. They have a tug-of-war over the mummy-baby; when its head breaks off, Cynthia attacks Fanny with a piece of furniture and bludgeons her to death. When Woody walks in, she runs him through with a lance of a toy knight statue. Then it's on to the porch outside, where she stabs Ma to death with her own knitting needles continously in her neck. Up walks Teddy, and Cynthia impales him through the head/neck with a swung sickle. Pa comes home to find his whole family dead. He is so not happy. As he renounces God and announces that he's giving his soul to Satan, Cynthia appears with a shotgun and shoots him in the back. Cynthia goes back inside the house and sits near the empty baby crib...perhaps awaiting to greet another group of stranded 'visitors'

Ma: Don't you want to join the clean plate club?

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