And finally the ending, which is really what this film is all about. Almost everything you ever feared in your youth, both in the light of day and dark of night, is compressed perfectly into the film's last few seconds. When the evil suggested throughout finally thunders down like stagnant water through a breached dam, the result is possibly the most viscerally disturbing horror sequence ever produced. All exploding skulls, bursting rib cages, and dangling intestines ever filmed are mere confetti alongside its simple, implicit power. Only the discovery of the maternal corpse in the basement, in Psycho, even comes close. Keep the little ones away from this one, Mom and Dad. A child's mind will have no defense, nowhere to run, and most disturbing, nothing tangible to run from; only an invisible, meticulously goal-oriented malevolence that comes from nowhere, and everywhere, at once.
