The ending of Don’t Look Now remains one of cinema’s most shocking and debated conclusions more than fifty years after the film’s 1973 release. Nicolas Roeg’s psychological horror masterpiece, based on Daphne du Maurier’s short story, concludes with a twist that has sent countless viewers scrambling to understand what they just witnessed. The film follows John and Laura Baxter, played by Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie, as they travel to Venice following the accidental drowning of their young daughter Christine. What unfolds is a meditation on grief, premonition, and the dangers of ignoring supernatural warnings. The Don’t Look Now ending explained requires careful attention to the film’s intricate visual language and thematic preoccupations.
Throughout the narrative, Roeg plants seeds that only fully bloom in the final devastating moments. John, a church restorer working in Venice, repeatedly catches glimpses of a small figure in a red coat resembling the one his daughter wore when she died. Despite warnings from a blind psychic who claims to see Christine’s spirit, John dismisses the supernatural elements around him, even as his wife becomes increasingly drawn to them. This tension between skepticism and belief drives the film toward its inevitable, tragic conclusion. By the end of this analysis, readers will understand the multilayered symbolism of the film’s climax, how Roeg foreshadows the ending from the opening sequence, and why Don’t Look Now continues to be studied as a landmark achievement in horror filmmaking. The ending is not merely a shock for shock’s sake but rather the culmination of a carefully constructed exploration of fate, free will, and the human inability to accept what we cannot rationally explain.
Table of Contents
- What Actually Happens in the Don’t Look Now Ending?
- The Red Coat Symbolism and Visual Foreshadowing Explained
- How Grief and Denial Shape John’s Fatal Decisions
- The Psychic Warnings and Missed Opportunities Explained
- The Film’s Influence on Horror Cinema
- How to Prepare
- How to Apply This
- Expert Tips
- Conclusion
- Frequently Asked Questions
What Actually Happens in the Don’t Look Now Ending?
The climax of Don’t Look Now occurs when John finally corners the mysterious red-coated figure he has been glimpsing throughout the film. Having chased this apparition through the labyrinthine streets and canals of Venice, John traps the figure in an abandoned palazzo. Expecting to find either his deceased daughter or perhaps a lost child in need of help, John instead discovers a dwarf woman with aged, grotesque features. Before he can react, she produces a cleaver and slashes his throat. John collapses, bleeding to death on the cold floor as the film cuts to his funeral, attended by his wife and the two psychic sisters. This ending subverts every expectation the film has established. The red-coated figure was never Christine’s ghost attempting to communicate with her father.
Instead, it was a serial killer who had been terrorizing Venice throughout the film’s events, mentioned in news reports and police warnings that John largely ignored. The cruel irony is that John possessed genuine psychic abilities all along, as the blind medium Heather recognized, but he refused to acknowledge or develop this gift. His visions of the red figure were premonitions of his own death, not glimpses of his daughter’s spirit. The funeral scene that closes the film is equally significant. Laura rides in a boat with the two sisters, Heather and Wendy, wearing dark mourning clothes. This image directly mirrors a vision John experienced earlier, which he dismissed as mere imagination. Throughout the film, John saw flashes of this scene, his wife dressed in black on a funeral barge, but interpreted it incorrectly or rationalized it away. The ending confirms that his psychic visions were accurate all along; he simply lacked the wisdom or willingness to interpret them correctly.
The Red Coat Symbolism and Visual Foreshadowing Explained
Roeg employs the color red as a central motif that gains deeper meaning once the Don’t Look Now ending is understood. The film opens with Christine wearing a bright red raincoat before her drowning, establishing an immediate association between the color and death. This red becomes a visual thread connecting past trauma to present danger, appearing in slide photographs, church restorations, and most importantly, on the mysterious figure John obsessively pursues through Venice. The visual foreshadowing extends beyond color to include sophisticated editing techniques that were revolutionary for their time. Roeg intercuts scenes in non-linear fashion, creating subliminal connections between events separated by time. The famous opening sequence interweaves Christine’s drowning with John and Laura in their English country home, establishing a pattern of temporal fluidity that the entire film maintains.
Images of shattered glass, spilled liquid, and the spreading red stain on Christine’s slide photograph all anticipate the blood that will eventually pool around John’s dying body. Understanding these visual patterns transforms a second viewing of Don’t Look Now into an entirely different experience. Details that seemed random or merely atmospheric reveal themselves as precise clues. The dwarf figure appears in the background of several scenes before the climax, always partially obscured or glimpsed peripherally. John’s church restoration work, which involves preserving religious mosaics, connects thematically to his inability to see the complete picture of his own fate despite having all the pieces before him. Roeg constructs the film so that the ending feels both shocking and inevitable, a paradox that defines truly effective tragedy.
How Grief and Denial Shape John’s Fatal Decisions
The psychological dimension of the Don’t Look Now ending centers on John’s complicated relationship with grief. From the film’s beginning, John suppresses his emotions regarding Christine’s death, channeling his energy into work rather than processing his loss. When Laura connects with the psychic sisters and finds comfort in their claims about Christine’s spiritual presence, John reacts with hostility and dismissal. His rationalist worldview cannot accommodate the supernatural, even when evidence accumulates around him. This denial extends to John’s own psychic experiences. He experiences flashes of precognition throughout the film, momentarily seeing his wife in mourning clothes before any tragedy has occurred to explain such an image. Rather than investigating these visions or taking them seriously, John pushes them aside. The blind psychic Heather explicitly warns him that he possesses “the gift” and that Christine is trying to warn him of danger. John’s response is to become angry, treating the warning as manipulation rather than genuine concern. John’s fatal pursuit of the red-coated figure represents the culmination of his denial. By chasing what he believes to be his daughter’s ghost, John reveals that beneath his skeptical exterior, he desperately wants to believe Christine has returned. His rational mind rejected the psychics’ claims, but his grieving heart could not resist the possibility of reunion. This internal contradiction leads him into the killer’s trap. The ending suggests that had John accepted his psychic nature and heeded the warnings, he might have recognized the danger and survived.
His death is not random misfortune but the consequence of willful blindness. ## Venice as a Character: Setting and the Film’s Conclusion The choice of Venice as the setting proves essential to understanding the Don’t Look Now ending. The city functions as more than backdrop; its maze-like structure mirrors John’s psychological state and creates the physical conditions for his doom. Venice’s narrow passages, dead-end alleys, and interconnected waterways make pursuit and escape equally difficult. The city itself seems to conspire in John’s fate, leading him deeper into its labyrinth until he reaches the punto di non ritorno. Roeg filmed during the off-season, capturing Venice in a state of decay and emptiness that amplifies the film’s atmosphere of dread. The scaffolding around ancient buildings, the murky canals, and the fog-shrouded squares all contribute to a sense of a city suspended between life and death. This liminal quality connects to the film’s themes of communication between the living and the dead. Venice becomes a threshold space where such contact seems possible, making the psychic sisters’ claims more plausible and John’s skepticism more stubborn. The city’s history adds another dimension to the ending. Venice has long been associated with death, from its connection to plague to its slowly sinking foundations. The churches John restores are monuments to faith in the face of mortality. His work literally involves preserving images of saints and religious figures, yet he cannot see the spiritual reality around him. The contradiction between his profession and his worldview reaches its apex when he dies in the heart of this ancient city, surrounded by religious imagery but abandoned by any protective faith.
The Psychic Warnings and Missed Opportunities Explained
Central to the tragedy of Don’t Look Now is the pattern of warnings John receives and ignores. The blind psychic Heather serves as the primary messenger, explicitly telling John that his daughter’s spirit is present and attempting to communicate danger. Heather’s blindness carries symbolic weight; she sees more clearly than John despite lacking physical sight, while he remains blind to truth despite functioning eyes. Her warnings are specific and urgent, yet John treats her with suspicion and hostility. The warnings manifest through multiple channels beyond Heather’s verbal cautions. John’s own visions, which he experiences as intrusive and disturbing flashes, constitute direct supernatural communication. The consistent appearance of the red-coated figure represents either Christine’s ghost attempting to alert John to the killer’s presence or John’s own psychic perception of his future murderer.
Either interpretation confirms that John had access to life-saving information he chose not to process. Even mundane warnings go unheeded. The police and news reports mention a serial killer operating in Venice. John witnesses suspicious activity and strange occurrences that would give any rational person pause. His single-minded focus on work and his dismissal of his wife’s spiritual experiences leave him isolated and vulnerable. The film suggests that the barriers between ordinary reality and supernatural perception are thinner than skeptics admit, and that ignoring this dimension of existence carries real consequences. John’s fate demonstrates the danger of closing oneself to ways of knowing that fall outside conventional rationality.
The Film’s Influence on Horror Cinema
The Don’t Look Now ending established a template that countless horror films have attempted to replicate. The final twist, which recontextualizes everything preceding it while remaining consistent with established facts, became a gold standard for the genre. Films from The Sixth Sense to Hereditary owe debts to Roeg’s approach, using careful foreshadowing and symbolic imagery to create endings that reward close attention and repeat viewing. Roeg’s editing techniques proved equally influential. The fragmented, non-linear approach to time, the use of cross-cutting to create thematic rather than chronological connections, and the subliminal insertion of images that only gain meaning retrospectively all became staples of psychological horror.
The film demonstrated that horror could be created through form as much as content, that the way a story is told could be as unsettling as the story itself. The ending also exemplifies a particular kind of horror that resists easy resolution or explanation. Unlike films where defeating the monster restores order, Don’t Look Now concludes with tragedy that feels cosmically ordained. John’s death does not solve the problem of grief or answer questions about the afterlife. The supernatural elements remain ambiguous enough to permit multiple interpretations while clear enough to support the film’s emotional impact. This balance between ambiguity and clarity continues to influence filmmakers seeking to create lasting unease rather than temporary shock.
How to Prepare
- Watch the opening sequence multiple times before proceeding with the full film. The first ten minutes contain virtually every major symbol and foreshadowing element that will pay off in the conclusion. Note the interplay between time periods, the use of color, and the specific images that recur throughout.
- Pay attention to background details in every Venice scene. Roeg places the dwarf figure in several shots before the climax, training attentive viewers to notice what John himself misses. The editorial choice to include these glimpses means they carry intentional meaning.
- Listen carefully to dialogue about the serial killer subplot. News reports and police mentions might seem like atmospheric details on first viewing, but they provide crucial context for understanding who the red-coated figure actually is.
- Track John’s visions and note when they occur relative to plot events. His precognitive flashes follow a pattern that becomes clear on close examination, revealing the extent of his psychic abilities and his failure to interpret them correctly.
- Consider the film’s religious imagery in context. The church restorations, mosaic work, and Catholic symbolism throughout Venice connect to themes of faith, vision, and the relationship between physical and spiritual sight that define John’s tragedy.
How to Apply This
- Revisit the film immediately after a first viewing to catch foreshadowing elements that only make sense once the ending is known. The experience transforms from suspenseful mystery to tragic inevitability when armed with knowledge of the conclusion.
- Discuss the ending with others who have seen the film to encounter different interpretations. The ambiguity Roeg builds into the narrative supports multiple readings, and engaging with alternative views deepens appreciation for the film’s complexity.
- Read Daphne du Maurier’s original short story to understand what Roeg changed and why. The adaptation makes specific choices that alter the story’s meaning, and comparing versions illuminates the filmmaker’s artistic priorities.
- Explore other films influenced by Don’t Look Now to see how its techniques have been adopted and modified. Tracing this lineage helps contextualize why the film remains significant to horror cinema and film studies generally.
Expert Tips
- Focus on water imagery throughout the film, which connects Christine’s drowning to the canals of Venice and ultimately to the blood that flows from John’s fatal wound. Roeg uses liquid as a visual motif representing both death and the fluid nature of time and perception.
- Note that the famous love scene between John and Laura serves narrative purposes beyond its explicit content. The intercutting between intimacy and its aftermath, with the couple dressing for dinner, represents one of John’s precognitive experiences and establishes the non-linear editing style that defines the film.
- Consider the ending from Laura’s perspective. She loses both her daughter and her husband, and the final image of her at the funeral suggests a grief beyond what the film depicts. Her acceptance of the psychic world contrasts with John’s rejection, yet she too could not prevent tragedy.
- The title itself, derived from the source story, carries meaning. “Don’t look now” suggests the danger of both looking and not looking, of seeing too much and not seeing enough. John’s fate results from looking at the wrong things while ignoring what mattered.
- Remember that the dwarf killer is not supernatural. She is a human murderer using the confusion of Venice’s labyrinth to evade capture. The horror comes not from a monster but from a human threat that John’s psychic visions tried to warn him about. The blending of supernatural premonition with mundane danger distinguishes the film from simpler horror fare.
Conclusion
The Don’t Look Now ending represents a masterful convergence of narrative, visual, and thematic elements that has secured the film’s reputation as one of horror cinema’s greatest achievements. Nicolas Roeg crafted a conclusion that punishes its protagonist for the very skepticism that audiences might share, forcing viewers to confront their own assumptions about rationality and intuition. John Baxter dies not because he lacks psychic ability but because he refuses to acknowledge the ability he possesses. His tragedy stems from a grief so profound that it paradoxically prevents him from receiving the very communication from his dead daughter that might have saved him. The film’s enduring power lies in its refusal to offer comfort or resolution.
Christine’s death remains tragic, John’s death compounds that tragedy, and Laura is left alone with her grief and her faith in a supernatural realm that could not protect her family. Yet the film does not condemn belief in the psychic or the spiritual. Rather, it suggests that the divide between skepticism and credulity is less important than openness to ways of knowing that transcend rational analysis. Viewers returning to Don’t Look Now find new details with each viewing, new connections between the beginning and end, new appreciation for Roeg’s meticulous construction. The ending does not simply conclude the story; it transforms everything that came before into a different kind of narrative, one where fate and choice intertwine in ways that continue to haunt long after the credits roll.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does it typically take to see results?
Results vary depending on individual circumstances, but most people begin to see meaningful progress within 4-8 weeks of consistent effort.
Is this approach suitable for beginners?
Yes, this approach works well for beginners when implemented gradually. Starting with the fundamentals leads to better long-term results.
What are the most common mistakes to avoid?
The most common mistakes include rushing the process, skipping foundational steps, and failing to track progress.
How can I measure my progress effectively?
Set specific, measurable goals at the outset and track relevant metrics regularly. Keep a journal to document your journey.
