1- Alice crashed her car, exited and was struck by another driver and dragged into the woods. Therefore, the parents would have a shared mental breakdown and were feeding off of each other’s delusions. This seems rather unbelievable but it’s a rare phenomena and one of them was the catalyst, likely Maddie since we see at the beginning of the she has an intriguing prescription medication.

2- Playing on the Prescription theory, much of what we see is actually from Maddie’s perspective but not everything we see is true if we consider Frank’s perspective. A big clue here is… yes, Alice shrieks that the face is changing. Near the end of the film, Maddie repeats to Frank what Alice said but Frank insists he has no idea what she is talking about (face changing) which indicates that Maddie is delusional and perhaps the entire film is HER delusion.

Taking these 2 theories into account, assuming Alice crashed her car, exited, called parents, then was hit… why do WE see Alice calling mom and telling her she hit another girl on the road? Perhaps it’s the MDMA and she never hit anyone. She manages to tell mom she’s on Hallow Road. For Maddie to experience delusions, then we must assume at some point that she heard something happen to Alice on the road but WE, as viewers, don’t see this. We are automatically thrust into her headspinning delusions.

3- Another theory I’ve seen is the parents hit Alice, either causing the initial accident. They shared a mental breakdown, drove home and we watch their delusions escalate from here.

4- Changelings & Fae. I do love this theory for a few reasons. I don’t need to elaborate because it seems like we all understood this possible element of surprise. The only clue in the film that does not support this theory is, again, when Frank says “What are you talking about?” to Maddie regarding the face changing statement. This is where things get under your skin…

I want to believe this theory so much that I almost refuse to believe other theories, much like Frank & Maddie want to believe their daughter is alive and that everything that we saw transpiring was really happening. But did this happen? As the strange woman would say, that’s the dilemma in a dilemma.

Let that sink in. The director & writer(s) set everything up perfectly to mindf*k us. Frank & Maddie had dilemmas in dilemmas with choices to make going far beyond the actual fork in the road. As viewers, we were so pulled into making these decisions with them, deciding how to interpret everything and what WE chose to believe. It honestly felt like this movie played out like one of those old Goosebumps books, choose your own ending, where you get to a page and are instructed to head to X or Y page based on the decision you make.

This may or may not have been the directors intention but it’s brilliant!

You’re right that heaven and hell might be too definitive in light of the movie’s ambiguousness.

In that case I might just adjust my take to say that Alice’s judgment is maybe about ‘grace vs punishment’ rather than specifically heaven or hell.

Taylor, any thoughts on the red ‘brake’ lights imagery?

That’s a really compelling take, especially the idea of the encounter functioning as a kind of moral or spiritual test rather than a literal abduction or hallucination. I like how your interpretation pulls together the face imagery, the tonal shift in the woman’s behavior, and even the vocal mirroring into a single framework about accountability and judgment. The one place I hesitate is the “heaven or hell” conclusion—it feels a bit more definitive than the film itself, which seems committed to ambiguity over any fixed cosmology. But framing the woman as a guide (or judge) testing Alice’s willingness to confront her actions does line up neatly with the film’s recurring focus on denial and responsibility, and it adds an interesting layer to the horror that isn’t just about what happened, but about how Alice responds to it.

Also, you’re missing a 4th option:

Alice was killed right away and was dead/a ghost when she first called her mom.

However, I’ll add that I believe it definitely had been a test (not a changeling), only the outcome of that test wouldn’t determine whether she lives or dies – that was already a forgone conclusion – but whether she goes to heaven or hell.

Unfortunately, Alice failed to accept responsibility for either the girls’ death, or her own death when it was shown to be her own face.

It explains all the ‘hints’ given to us:

· Alice’s initial comment when she tells her parents that she keeps seeing her own face interposed on the dead girls face – this is before the actual physical change to the face.

· then of course there’s the actual changing of the dead girls’ face which horrified Alice.

· the woman, who is gentle at first, as she’s giving Alice the opportunity to accept responsibility for both her own death and the ‘other’ girls’. However, as Alice does not take any accountability, only then does the woman become harsh, and angrily leads Alice to be “corrected” (aka punished for “killing” someone/herself (partly by throwing away her “potential” with pregnancy and drugs) and leads her to her new ‘future’, likely in hell.

· it then also makes sense as to why the woman’s voice is similar in cadence to her mother’s…which would likely be an easier transition into death for Alice.

· it makes sense of the imagery of the red brake lights that the parents are chasing, thinking they can catch up to their daughter, but that scene is a metaphor for Alice being taken to hell.

The parents know they spoke to their daughter, but don’t understand, nor can they explain it to the police let alone themselves, how it was possible.

It was best not to make any of it visual and leave it all up to our imagination to ponder afterwards. Very smart and clever little film.

Glad you enjoyed it

Nah, I didn’t need any credit or anything- hehe