Taylor Chien wrote and directed The Resort, a horror film released in 2021. Bianca Haase, Brock O’Hurn, Michael Vlamis, and Michelle Randolph star in the film. After being urged by principal producer Will Meldman, hip-hop singer Quavo helped produce the film in 2019. This year seems to be the year of horror and as things ease up post-pandemic and this movie follows in the footsteps of a horror resurgence. The movie has a classic exploring the haunted house theme and a little folklore intertwined with horror never hurt anyone.
The story follows four friends who travel to Hawaii in search of the fabled “Half-Faced Girl” after hearing stories of a haunting at an abandoned resort. As a result, they are sucked into a never-ending nightmare fantasy with a tragic conclusion. The finality allows for a shocking disclosure, and the audience is bound to be astonished. Let us take you back to the haunting island and hunt for solutions in that case. The movie has been released across all digital platforms but we are here to see what exactly happened in the movie. Sometimes, the endings to horror movies are rather unexplainable and this one happens to have a meta ending which might be confusing to anyone watching the movie for the first time. Lucky for you, we have a complete breakdown right here!
Plot Synopsis
Bree, Chris, and Sam, three of Lex’s pals, surprise her with a trip to Hawaii for her birthday. Lex is a horror fiction writer who is looking for ideas for her next story. The movie begins and we see that Lex is being interrogated by a police officer in a hospital unit. Lex tells the cop about a fabled “Half-Faced Girl” that she and her companions met on a faraway island. Going back through time, we witness the events that led to Lex’s current position as she retells what happened to her and her friends. The pals had planned a surprise party for her, but the surprises don’t stop there since Chris pulled some strings to get them a ride to the infamous Kilahuna island along with visiting the abandoned resort.
The residents are afraid of the island because of ghost sightings and other strange occurrences. Tourists are not permitted to visit the spot, although an abandoned island resort is said to be haunted. People refuse to visit the island, but the group hires a local helicopter pilot to transport them there. The stories are only stories, according to the pilot, but he is unclear in rejecting the otherworldly happenings. The agreement with the pilot is for a one-way voyage, but they would be rescued from this restricted island by a boat. They only have six hours to explore and have fun in the meantime. When they finally arrive to the resort, the cheerful excursion turns into a horrific nightmare. They become entrapped in the dwelling of the half-faced girl and gotten much more than what they bargained for. A room in particular is important, it being Room 306 which is said to be the haunting hotspot in the abandoned resort.
The movie follows this young group of friends as they investigate the resort and are each met with a terrible ending as they die at the hands of the legend that they did not believe in. The film draws influence from Hawaii’s architecture and local folklore to craft a macabre tale of horrific consequences.
How do Bree, Sam and Chris die?
The friends get killed off one by one as they make their way through the island, arriving at the infamous hotel. They land on the island and make their way to the abandoned hotel. While all the four of them have their own distinct personalities, their differences come further out while they explore the resort, looking for a ghost. Everything was going swimmingly up until they had to leave. Lex realises she’s forgotten her backpack in Room 306 as she rushes to reach the 7pm boat off the island. They return to look for it and discover it in a separate room, near to the remains of a coyote that is dead and bloodied.
They run outside and it is alr4eady dark. Unable to make their way out of the resort, they consider leaving in a truck outside the compound that belongs to two security guards. Bree and Sam immediately think of stealing it and leaving because they are already unnerved by the eerie happenings. However, Chris refuses to steal it, and an argument ensues amongst them regarding what to do. But the unthinkable happens when Bree enters the truck. The doors close behind her and she is trapped inside. No matter how much the other three try to smash the car windows or open the car doors, they are unable to and it crashes down from the balcony into the courtyard below, instantly killing her.
Chris goes down to check if she is alive while Sam and Lex wait upstairs. Chris sees that Bree is in fact dead and he joins Sam and Bree upstairs where they see the ghostly apparition of the half-faced girl who runs towards them and they also hear laughing and eerie whispers. Sam is the next one to die as he snatched from behind and possessed by the Half-Faced Girl as the three survivors make their way into the hotel’s service tunnels to escape. Chris and Lex notice him staring at the wall and when he turns, they see deep purple veins running all over his now pale, white face and realise something is very wrong. He begins strangling Chris, but Lex intervenes by stabbing Sam in the neck. For a brief time, it appears that the real Sam has returned, stunned by what Lex has done to him; nevertheless, the half-faced girl arrives behind him and, rips his face in half with her hands, removing the skin of his face which is absolutely horrifying to watch.
Chris and Lex make a run for their lives but are pursued by a still-possessed Sam, who stamps on Chris’s head repeatedly, killing him in a brutal manner, spilling his brains all over the floor. Lex manages to flee, but before waking up in the hospital, she comes face to face with a dead Bree in the corridor, singing Happy Birthday. This is the half-faced girl using her body.
We see that she manages to escape and lands up in a hospital with an investigator questioning her so that he can help find her friends. While the investigator begins arranging a search of the resort for her pals, she snaps a photo of him and notices something strange about him. When he turns around, another ghost appears, and Lex finds herself back in the hotel, only this time as a demonic disciple of the Half-Faced Girl, stuck in a nightmare loop because she too, is dead.
Why did the group go to the resort in the first place?
One would think that going to a remote, closed off island and specifically, to an abandoned resort which is known to be haunted would seem like a terrible idea to anybody, Then, why did this group of friends actually go there? Apart from the fact that without them making the trip, this movie would not exist, they explain the reason in the beginning of the movie. The reason as it stands is that Lex is an author with a penchant for writing about the occult and is currently working on a book about the abandoned resort on Kilahuna island and the legend of the half-faced girl.
Her friends, surprise her with a trip to the island as a birthday present which she excitedly accepts since she thinks that she will be able to use the details and authentic pictures from the site to help with the story pitch for her horror novel. This might seem like her friends love her and care about her, which I’m sure they do, but they horribly underestimate the legend of the half-faced girl which leads to a bloody dead for each and every one of them.
Who is the half-faced girl?
The story opens with Lex explaining to the cops a malevolent spirit known as the”Half-Faced Girl,” who is one of the island’s most infamous apparitions. Some people believe the narrative, but others, such as Sam, believe it is just a local mythology. Things start to go crazy when the party of pals deviates from their initial itinerary and ends up at the resort. Their joyful journey develops into a huge nightmare, despite the fact that, as Lex decides, ghosts are not to be displayed. Later in the parking lot, the pals run upon the phantom of the Half-Faced Girl.
After Bree’s death, the other three scramble to find a way out. But that is, until Sam is dragged into the darkness by a ghostly hand in a jump-scare. We see glimpses of the Half-Faced Girl as she completely enslaves Sam. She rips Sam’s face open, revealing a lethal phantom. Lex runs into Bree in the corridor later, but she has been possessed by the ghost of the same Half-Faced Girl. As a result, even though the Half-Faced Girl is barely seen for a fraction of a second, her presence in the story is definitely palpable.
However, the story of the half-faced girl stems from a Hawaiian folklore. The story is based on the sad yet horrifying legend of the Half-Faced Girl of Old Pali Road. It is a sorrowful story of a haunting and local Hawaiian mythology. Legend has it that with the skipping rope she carried everywhere, a young girl was raped and murdered in the forest. People travelling over the Old Pali Road have rarely seen a floating ghost skipping rope down the road. Surprisingly, just half of her face is visible in witness testimonies. Many people say the other half of her face is missing because animals ate part of it and this is where the name is she known by, ‘half-faced girl’ stems from.
Ending Explained: Did Lex survive?
Lex is the only one who survives the harrowing paranormal experience at the island resort, as the plot implies from the start. We observe how the other pals perish during the story. In an attempt to get out, Bree climbs into a car, but the car turns out to be a fatal trap. The motor starts on its own, the car shifts into motion, and Bree is whisked away to the bottom of the resort. The other friends come down to see how Bree is doing, only to discover her dead. The other buddies follow a gloomy trail to an abandoned parking lot, where they light torches and attempt to penetrate into the darkness. Someone drags Sam into the dark, and he emerges in a demonic shape.
Chris believes Sam is still alive, but Sam has merged with the undead. After a fight, Chris meets the same end as Sam. Lex wakes up drifting in a sea of dismal whiteness, gradually returning to her hospital bed. Lex’s narrative comes to a close here. The policeman assures her that he would send a search party to the island after hearing all of the data. Lex gets a hold of her phone while he excuses himself to make some phone calls.
She turns on the camera and directs it towards the cop out of curiosity. Lex zooms in on the hand holding the cellphone after taking a picture. The person’s veins are really red, and the next thing we know, he or she is jumping on Lex. We observe Lex’s white, pale face in the next image, and we may deduce that he is also dead. In the fight with the Half-Faced Girl when she had taken over Bree’s dead body, Lex was killed. Lex is now locked in a never-ending limbo of relentless horror, according to the finale.
Thus, the ending shows that Lex has to endure never ending torture because she and her friends came and disturbed the sleeping ghostly inhabitants of Kilahuna island and specifically, the resort. The half-faced girl’s spirit is described as a spirit that was disturbed and seeking vengeance and this is the way she gets it when anyone tries crossing her.
Granted, the movie isn’t the best thing that I have seen this year but if you’re looking for a horror movie to pass your time and like the gore, then you can totally check this one out.