Year: 2016
Runtime: 119 min
Language: English
Director: Antonio Campos
An ambitious journalist pursues her dream of becoming an on-air star, often clashing with her supervisor regarding the balance between serious reporting and sensationalized content. Battling insecurity and personal struggles, she finds comfort in a supportive friendship with a colleague, but also experiences unreciprocated romantic feelings. As her professional and personal life becomes increasingly complicated, Christine's determination leads her down a troubling and unforeseen path.
Warning: spoilers below!
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Still thinking about how Christine (2016) ended? Here’s a full breakdown of the ending, key final moments, major twists, and the deeper meaning behind the film’s conclusion.
Arnie meets his tragic end when Christine, the possessed car, tries to run over Leigh, Arnie’s love interest. In the chaos, Christine crashes into Leigh, and Arnie is thrown through the windshield and impaled on shards of glass, dying as he clings to the car’s bonnet. Unlike in the novel, where Arnie’s death involves him fighting off possession and trying to help destroy Christine, the film’s ending shows him fully consumed by the car’s evil, with no chance of redemption. His death signifies how deeply he has become intertwined with Christine’s murderous nature, valuing the car over his friends or himself. Following Arnie’s demise, Christine refuses to die quietly. The car continues to pursue Leigh and Dennis, trying to kill them even after Arnie’s death, showcasing that the malevolent spirit within Christine remains alive. The duo manages to trap the car and crush it with a bulldozer, but even then, the car’s sinister presence persists. When they take Christine’s remains to the junkyard and crush them into a cube, the eerie sound of ‘50s rock and roll begins playing again, and the car’s grille twitches subtly when they look away, implying that Christine’s evil spirit might still linger. This enduring malevolence leaves open the possibility of the car returning in future stories. Arnie’s choice to side with Christine and his death highlight the tragic loss of innocence and the destructive allure of material obsession. Unlike his novel counterpart, the movie offers no last-minute redemption for Arnie, emphasizing instead the tragic cost of succumbing to obsession and the dark power of Christine itself. The ending underscores how adolescence’s obsession with superficial things—like a powerful car—can lead to devastating consequences, warning against valuing material things over genuine human connections. Despite its simplicity, the final scenes effectively evoke a sense of lingering evil, leaving viewers with a memorable image of the possessed car still alive in some form, hinting that the terror isn’t over. The film’s ending—focused on the car’s relentless malevolence—thus leaves a haunting impression, suggesting that some evil, like Christine, never truly dies.
Last Updated: June 25, 2025 at 08:44
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