THiNC. is an itty bitty website built by a huge Indie Film fan, Taylor Holmes. Taylor loves movies that break the Hollywood mold… and he also loves talking about himself in third person. And when I have the good fortune of finding another crazy little indie that busts the mold? I write about it here for all of you to check out as well. You know, glorious movies like Starfish, Shimmer Lake, Green Room, Blue Ruin, and the like. Well today, I’ve got a little film that really defies categorization. For you hardcore horror fans this is a thriller. For you pansies out there, this is a horror fan. For you X-files fan, this is a bughunt X-file, with an off brand Mulder and Scully. Paranormal fans? This is your jam. Extraterrestrial film fans? Maybe? This thing is like 360 degrees all over the map. And that is why I enjoyed it so much. You just had no idea where it might go. So let’s do this, The Block Island Sound Ending Explained. And a shout out to Chris for originally recommending the movie out on the Patreon chat server. Kudos, mate, great find.
I’ll be walking through the movie now – so if you haven’t seen the film yet – head over to Netflix and check it out before you continue any further. Then once we walk it through, we can conjecture about what the ending of the Block Island Sound means and we can figure it out together. Alright? Great.
The Block Island Sound Ending Explained
The movie opens with a fisherman named Tom (Neville Archambault) who wakes on his boat, completely dazed and confused. His boat is a wreck. Trash everywhere, poles in an explosion of chaos. Oh, and there is a dog’s collar and leash there as well. Jump to Harry (played by Chris Sheffield) who is Tom’s son, who is watching as all the tourists are heading home for the season. The island will basically empty and leave a thousand or so locals to ride out the winter.
As the movie continues, we start to get the sense that there are lots of weird phenomena happening with regard to the wildlife on the island. Harry gets bombardiered by a bird that dies after kamikaze’ing into his windshield. Hundreds, and thousands of fish are washing ashore. It’s really quite strange. (Like the opening of season 1 of Dark to be honest.) Well, Harry starts realizing that his father isn’t really doing very well. He finds his father vacantly staring out into the great beyond. He also takes the boat out every night, and returns it in a disarray. Meanwhile, Harry’s sister, Audry (played by Michaela McManus) who works for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is called out to investigate the craziness happening out on the island. So Audry, Paul (a coworker of hers) and Audry’s daughter, Emily, all head out to the island to investigate.
Tom’s episodes continue to get worse, while Audry, Emily, and Harry watch helplessly as things get weirder and weirder. But Harry, Tom’s best friend, covers for his father effectively, assuaging their concerns and questions. One night though, Tom goes completely AWOL. Harry and Audry look everywhere for Tom, but all they have found is his trashed boat and no other evidence. The police are pretty sure though that Tom went out on the boat, drank too much, and fell overboard to his death. And sure enough, Tom’s body washes up onto shore, verifying the police’s theory. But Harry isn’t so certain that it can all be chalked up to alcohol and a drowning.
Harry’s uncertainties only get worse when they see the body and it’s covered in bruises. And after their father’s death, Audry and Harry’s sister comes back home, only adding to the emotional stress and chaos that Harry is experiencing. Worse, when the funeral spirals out of control into a fist fight between Harry and some other guy in attendance, the sisters wonder what they’ve gotten themselves into. Several more blackouts later for Harry, including a scuba accident, and road rage encounter with a deer, and more cops… it feels as though Harry is soon going to follow in his father’s footsteps, right up to the point of his death. And it all escalates exponentially after Harry sleepwalks their neighbor’s dog out to the sound, and everything levitates into the sky. Is Harry just hallucinating? Or is something extraterrestrial happening here? But when the noises in Harry’s head begin calling for the girl (Emily – his niece) Harry realizes he needs to do something drastically different.
Meanwhile, Audry heads out to a lead from Harry’s doctor who might be experiencing similar electronic pollution poisoning. When Audry arrives, the man, living in an RV is obviously mentally disturbed. Electronics scare him to death, but only because he believes “they” communicate through them. He believes that something else is calling to him and testing him for some reason. And as Audry starts to get freaked out, he tells her that he began to be told to bring them things, a dog, a person, and that it won’t stop until Harry is removed from that area of the Sound.
After Harry flees to avoid kidnapping his niece and taking her to them, he almost runs down a jogger. But when he tries to kidnap her instead, and fails, he decides to head back to get Emily. Overpowering Audry’s coworker, Harry takes Emily. Audry arrived just in time to jump on the boat, and head out with Harry. When Audry tries to talk to Harry she realizes that something has happened to her zombified brother. As the wailing sounds crescendo, things start flying into the sky, and Audry is sucked out into the sky along with Harry. Emily is wrapped in ropes, and remains in the boat. The next day, the local police find Emily on the boat. And as the movie ends we watch as the camera pans across the ocean floor as we re-listen to the previous conversation between Audry and Emily about how she only takes fish out of the sea in order to study them. Basically she needs to learn from them in order to help the rest of the fish in the sea. And as we are swooping through the sea, we watch as Audry splashes back down into the ocean out of the sky.
The Block Island Sound Ending Explained
Okay. So what did we just watch? What just happened at the end of the movie The Block Island Sound? No, really, because I have no idea. What, just because I put explained in the title you thought I had an answer? Haha. No, the writers/directors, the McManus brothers, probably don’t even have a really clear answer for us. But we have hints though. A few strings that we can pull on to see what might unravel for us.
It could very well be, that for most of the movie, everything we are seeing is all the delusional ravings of two people who are quickly going insane. Tom, and Harry. Both seem to be affected by something, and when we are only with them, and no one else, we can’t really trust what it is that they are experiencing. But all of that changes as we barrel into the ending, and Audry and Emily also experience what Harry is seeing. And while a lot of movies in this genre walk a very fine line between the protagonist’s insanity and some other possible truth, the last 10% of this movie throws that idea away as a possibility. We know that what happened to Tom and Harry both really happened physically in the real world. It wasn’t just a fiction their minds made up.
But what is it that is happening? Well, it would appear, that some other entity (to be discussed later) is communicating with Tom at the outset of the movie. Also, it would seem that this other entity is utilizing electronics to megaphone their desires to the individual people that are susceptible to their communications as Tom and Harry are. But what are these beings attempting to communicate? Well, they want Tom and Harry to bring them things. Specifically animals, eg. a deer, several dogs, a child, a jogger. But why?
The Why of it all is really unknown to the viewer. But, we do have one very solid bit of evidence brought to us by the screenplay in Audry’s voice over at the end of the movie. It was a flashback to a conversation between Audry and Emily. Emily was asking why her mother hurt the fish that she takes out of the ocean? And Audry tried to explain that only a few fish are accidentally harmed, and most are actually put back into the water safely, and they are ultimately okay. But occasionally a fish is harmed by her studies, but that it will benefit the greater good of all fish by her research. Is it clicking yet? So basically, these entities might very well be requesting individuals (Tom and Harry) to bring them subjects that they can study. Hopefully they will return the test subjects back into the “wild,” and they’ll be fine. But if a few eggs are broken along the way? Oh well.
Who or what are studying the people of earth?? Well, this question is definitely the most difficult to ascertain of them all. We definitely don’t know who might be attempting to communicate with humans in order to get them to bring them test subjects. I did get a sense that maybe there might be something in our oceans we haven’t discovered yet, and that it is reciprocating our desire to study the oceans. But that doesn’t exactly add up. Whatever it is that is studying man, and the animals of the earth, has the ability to manipulate electronic waves, and also levitate things off the planet’s surface. And the fact that the rendezvous point tends to be out in the water might just be an arbitrary coincidence. That in fact, the water might only be the choice because it is farther away from other humans. Also, we know that whatever it is that is communicating is probably in the sky, that is where everything is getting levitated to anyway. So, yeah, I’m going to argue that the entities that are trying to communicate with the humans on earth are some sort of alien life form that are cloaked, and hidden in the sky. They are also using humans to snatch and grab test subjects for them to learn from.
What Did You Think of Block Island Sound?
I personally enjoyed how this movie was all over the place. I really couldn’t tell where it was going along the way. This could have been a zombie movie, a communicable insanity outbreak, a swamp thing overrun, and even an alien movie. Heck, it could have been a zombie insanity swamp thing alien movie for all I knew. And it was all of these variables that really kept me engaged and invested. Was it great!? No. But was it a fun ride? Sure. These actors are generally known in the television world, and I have never seen them in anything before. I personally thought that Michaela was really good, and the most compelling of the bunch. But I also really enjoyed the brilliant creepiness Neville Archambault brought to the table as well. Every time he was on screen things escalated pretty quickly. Anyway, I enjoyed this fun little indie film and all the different things it threw at the wall. It was worth a watch.
Edited by: CY