The ending of David Cronenberg’s “Rabid” differs dramatically between the 1977 original and its 2019 remake, but both versions share a devastating conclusion: the protagonist chooses death as the only viable solution to prevent further contamination. In Cronenberg’s original film, Rose deliberately infects a man in an apartment building lobby to confirm her condition spreads the virus, then locks herself in a room with him as he turns rabid. When military personnel discover her body the next morning in an alley, they dispose of her corpse in a garbage truck as part of the containment effort. The ending depicts Rose’s self-sacrifice—a suicide motivated by the recognition that her very existence poses an irreversible threat to everyone around her.
The 2019 remake takes this concept further, layering it with explicit betrayal and bodily violation. When Dr. Burroughs reveals his true intentions and experiments to Rose, she discovers she has become the unwilling subject of his unethical medical research. In a cascade of violence, Rose kills Brad Hart using her parasitic appendage, destroys the creature growing inside her own body, and eliminates Burroughs’ experimental creation—a horrifying amalgamation using his wife’s body. She then takes her own life while Burroughs watches, ensuring that any survivors would face only captivity and endless research rather than healing or freedom.
Table of Contents
- How Does Rose’s Condition Define the Ending in the Original Film?
- What Role Does Betrayal Play in the 2019 Ending?
- How Do Both Films Use Body Horror to Shape Their Endings?
- What Does Each Ending Communicate About Consent and Medical Ethics?
- Why Does Self-Destruction Emerge as the Only Rational Choice?
- How Does the Ending Reflect Cronenberg’s Signature Concerns?
- What Do the Military and Medical Institutions Represent in Each Ending?
How Does Rose’s Condition Define the Ending in the Original Film?
Rose’s transformation in the 1977 “Rabid” creates an impossible situation: she develops an insatiable hunger for blood and a parasitic appendage hidden beneath her armpit that allows her to inject victims with a virus that drives them rabid. Her initial belief that she might be cured gradually erodes as she tests her condition on unsuspecting victims, each encounter confirming the grim reality that she is a biological weapon without remedy. The man in the apartment lobby becomes her final confirmation—she deliberately traps him to verify that the virus spreads through her appendage, knowing exactly what this means for her future. Hart’s final attempt to convince Rose to leave represents the film’s last moment of human connection and the futility of hope. Rose, by this point, has accepted her nature and understands that leaving would only spread the infection further.
She sends Hart away, choosing isolation and confinement over the temptation to harm others. This moment is crucial because it reframes suicide not as despair but as the only responsible choice available to someone who has become a vector for apocalypse. The discovery of Rose’s body the next morning signals the state’s swift response to the biological crisis she represents. Soldiers do not investigate or study her—they dispose of her immediately, dumping her corpse into a garbage truck as if she were hazardous waste. This treatment underscores how completely she has ceased to be human in the eyes of society; she is now classified as contamination rather than a person. The garbage truck becomes her final statement: anonymity, erasure, and the cold efficiency of containment.
What Role Does Betrayal Play in the 2019 Ending?
The 2019 remake grounds its ending in a more explicit violation—the betrayal of consent and bodily autonomy. Dr. Burroughs does not stumble upon Rose’s condition; he deliberately engineers it through experimental surgery, transforming her into a biological specimen for his own research ambitions. When he finally reveals the truth to both Rose and Brad Hart, the ending shifts from a disease narrative into a horror story about medical abuse and the theft of someone’s humanity. Rose’s murder of Brad Hart represents the tragic collateral damage of Burroughs’ experimentation. Hart, whom she loves, becomes another casualty—not of the virus but of her transformation into an appendage of Burroughs’ will. This killing is particularly devastating because it is also unintentional; Rose does not choose to harm Hart, but her condition makes harm inevitable.
The appendage operates with a hunger that overrides her conscious mind, a detail that emphasizes how thoroughly Burroughs has obliterated her agency. The destruction of the creature inside her own body marks a moment of rebellion and self-awareness. Rose recognizes the parasite as Burroughs’ creation, not part of her true self, and she kills it. However, this act of liberation proves incomplete. When Burroughs brings forth his wife transformed into another experimental creature—a grotesque biological creation designed to harm Rose—she must kill again. The final act is suicide, witnessed by Burroughs in his moment of horror, which serves as the ultimate rejection of his authority and his experiments. Her death ensures she cannot become a permanent laboratory specimen or be forced to spawn further generations of his creations.
How Do Both Films Use Body Horror to Shape Their Endings?
Body horror in “Rabid” functions as more than a visual strategy; it is the narrative mechanism that forces both endings toward their tragic conclusions. In Cronenberg’s original, Rose’s parasitic appendage is a foreign thing that emerges from her own flesh, a violation disguised as mutation. The appendage hungers independently of her conscious will, creating an existential dread that transcends typical horror. She cannot remove it, cannot control it, and cannot negotiate with it—she can only contain it by containing herself. The original ending acknowledges this truth: isolation and death are the only solutions because her body has become fundamentally unsafe. The 2019 version intensifies this horror by making the parasitic growth intentional and external.
Burroughs deliberately implanted the creature inside Rose’s body as an experimental augmentation, meaning her loss of bodily integrity is not an accident of fate but a calculated violation. The parasitic appendage in the remake becomes a physical manifestation of Burroughs’ ownership and control—every time it moves, every time it hungers, Rose is reminded that she is no longer entirely her own person. This violation is so total that even killing the parasite from within her own body does not restore her autonomy. The proliferation of these creatures in the 2019 film—multiple experimental subjects, multiple mutations—suggests that body horror has become industrialized and reproducible. Burroughs does not treat Rose as a unique case but as a template, a prototype for future iterations. The horrific implication of her suicide is that she kills herself not just to escape her own condition but to prevent Burroughs from creating a generation of similar victims. Her death is an act of sabotage against an entire medical-industrial complex built on violation and experimentation.
What Does Each Ending Communicate About Consent and Medical Ethics?
The original “Rabid” does not focus explicitly on medical ethics because Rose’s condition arises from an accident—a surgical procedure intended to save her life after a motorcycle crash. Her transformation is an unintended consequence, a tragedy rather than a conspiracy. However, the ending still addresses consent implicitly: Rose never consented to become a vector for plague, and her suicide is a final assertion of control over her body and her choices. By taking her own life, she reclaims the agency that the virus and the parasitic appendage had stolen from her. The 2019 remake makes consent the central obsession of its ending. Burroughs performs experimental surgery on Rose without her full knowledge or informed consent, transforming her into a hybrid creature against her will.
Her discovery of this betrayal—learning that her entire condition was engineered rather than accidental—transforms her suicidal ending into an act of defiance. She kills not only herself but also Burroughs’ creations and experiments, using her final act to destroy evidence and prevent further violations. The implication that survivors would face “captivity and research” rather than healing highlights how thoroughly she and other victims have been dehumanized within Burroughs’ framework. Both versions demonstrate that the ending is not a failure of medicine but a failure of the systems meant to protect the vulnerable. In the original, the state responds swiftly but coldly—containment through erasure. In the 2019 version, the protagonist must act because the institutions that should protect her have already been corrupted by Burroughs’ influence. The endings suggest that in neither timeline does seeking help offer a viable path to survival or freedom.
Why Does Self-Destruction Emerge as the Only Rational Choice?
The rationality of self-destruction in both versions stems from a clear-eyed assessment of available options. Rose cannot be cured. No character in either film suggests that a vaccine, antidote, or treatment is possible. Medical science, which caused her condition in the first place, offers no solutions. She cannot return to normal life because her body is now a weapon. She cannot leave the city or isolate permanently because the hunger and the appendage will eventually drive her to seek victims. Every logical pathway leads to inevitable harm to others. Suicide, from this perspective, becomes the only choice that prevents further contamination.
In the 2019 version, this rationality is even more explicit because Rose understands that Burroughs will not allow her to die of her own volition. He wants to study her, to use her as a template, to perpetuate the cycle of experimentation. Her suicide is therefore a tactical decision—she kills herself to deny him his prize and to prevent the creation of future victims. The fact that she accomplishes this while Burroughs watches transforms her final act from an isolated tragedy into a confrontation, a moment where she reclaims power by choosing the terms of her own ending rather than allowing Burroughs to choose for her. The endings also suggest that society itself offers no third path. The military in the original film treats Rose as waste. The medical establishment in the 2019 version is corrupted by Burroughs’ ambitions. No institution offers Rose compassion, cure, or even dignified containment. She is left to solve the problem herself, and the solution she reaches—her own death—becomes simultaneously an act of sacrifice, an act of defiance, and an act of self-preservation from a future of endless victimization.
How Does the Ending Reflect Cronenberg’s Signature Concerns?
David Cronenberg’s career has consistently explored the violation and betrayal of the body. “Rabid” emerges from this preoccupation: the human form, which should be the locus of self and identity, becomes a source of horror and alienation. Rose’s parasitic appendage is not a separate creature she can fight—it is part of her flesh, growing from her own body, using her biological processes to function. The ending, with its emphasis on her isolation and eventual disposal, suggests that once the body has been fundamentally violated, there is no recovery.
Cronenberg does not offer hope or redemption through medical science because medical science is often the culprit in his films. The 2019 remake, directed by Karsten Kusama, does not abandon Cronenberg’s concerns but intensifies them through an explicitly feminist and medico-critical lens. By making the violation intentional and the violator a named male character with scientific authority, the film transforms body horror into an instrument of abuse and control. The ending reflects this: Rose’s suicide becomes not just a response to her biological condition but a rejection of patriarchal medical authority and the violation it perpetuates. Both films end with Rose’s death, but the 2019 version ensures that her death is also an act of murder directed at her oppressor’s plans and experiments.
What Do the Military and Medical Institutions Represent in Each Ending?
In the 1977 original, the military presence signals the state’s response to biological crisis: swift, impersonal, and focused on containment rather than compassion. The soldiers who discover Rose’s body do not mourn or investigate; they dispose of her like toxic waste. This response is efficient but also reveals a fundamental truth: once someone is classified as a public health threat, they are no longer treated as a person. They become infrastructure, a problem to be removed. Rose’s placement in the garbage truck is the final indignity, the ultimate statement that her humanity has been erased in service to collective safety. The 2019 version inverts this hierarchy by making the medical institution—in the form of Dr. Burroughs—the primary threat rather than the solution. Burroughs represents a particular kind of scientific authority: one that prioritizes ambition and knowledge over ethics and consent.
His desire to study Rose, to use her as a template, to perpetuate his experiments, suggests that the medical-industrial complex is indifferent to human suffering if it promises intellectual rewards. Rose’s suicide, witnessed by Burroughs, denies him this reward. She destroys his specimens, ruins his research, and removes herself from his laboratory. In doing so, she performs an act of sabotage against the systems that would have continued to exploit her indefinitely. Both endings suggest that institutional responses to bodily violation and disease are fundamentally inadequate. The military offers erasure; the scientific establishment offers exploitation. Neither offers Rose a future where she remains herself, remains alive, and remains free. Her ending, in both versions, represents a final act of autonomy in a situation where autonomy has been systematically stripped away.
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