After watching “No One Gets Out Alive“, there’s a chance its wild final act may have left you with some lingering questions. We’re here to offer an in-depth explanation for some of the film’s more confusing elements.

What is the stone box?

Throughout “No One Gets Out Alive”, a recurring theme and object is that of a stone box.

Over the course of the film we find the stone box to be a mystical physics-defying object, housing a giant Aztec monster, who comes out to claim human sacrifices.

The film opens with mock archival footage of Professor Arthur Welles, the father of current house owners Red and Becker, discovering the box, amongst numerous Aztec skeletons, while leading an archaeological dig in Mexico in 1963.

A bit later in the film, protagonist Ambar ventures into the house’s study room, where she discovers a book titled “Early Mesoamerican Rituals”, and flips to a page with a drawn depiction of a human sacrifice being conducted in front of the same stone box.Judging from dates on other memorabilia in the study room, along with real world history, we can assume the stone box is from at least the early 1500s, when Spanish explorers conquering Mexico first came upon the Aztecs and their culture, and their human sacrifice rituals.

What is the monster that lives in the box?

Human sacrifices in Aztec culture were conducted in order to appease their gods, who the Aztecs believed had to be frequently fed with fresh sacrifices in order to maintain order and stability in their society.

We believe the monster in “No One Gets Out Alive” is likely an amalgamation of multiple deities that were worshipped by the Aztecs, and doesn’t represent any one traditional Aztec god in particular.

What do the butterflies represent?

Another constant visual theme in “No One Gets Out Alive” are butterflies. We see both framed ones in the study room, and live ones throughout the house.

Butteflies played a significant role in ancient Mexican cultures, and were so respected that they too would be offered as sacrifices. They were also representative of death, and the lives of important and people who had died.

The ending of “No One Gets Out Alive” explained in-depth:

Red and Becker prepare Ambar to be sacrificed and leave her to have her head eaten by the monster.

The monster is now looming over Ambar, who hallucinates being rescued by her distant relative Beto, whom Becker just murdered, followed by another hallucination where she murders her own dying mother in the hospital.

When she comes back to reality, Ambar is standing and no longer in shackles, and the monster is seen crawling back inside of its own box, which she promptly seals behind it.

Ambar then seeks out revenge using an Aztec Macuahuitl from the study room, wounding and knocking out Red, and then killing Beckett, who manages to break her ankle before she does so.

Ambar notices the lifeless body of her fellow housemate, who Becker threw over the stairs, and then that Red is still alive — so she decides to haul him back to the stone box to be sacrificed to the monster.

Headed to the exit, it seems Ambar’s finally set to limp out of this messed up house for good, while she catches a fleeting glimpse of Red’s ghost, now destined to haunt the house along with all the other ghosts of past sacrifices.

As Ambar continues limping to the front door, her broken ankle miraculously heals itself, and her other wounds fade as well. The film ends with her simply smiling in the house’s entranceway.

At this time we believe Ambar feels the magnetism of the stone box, the same pull that drove Becker and his father Arthur mad, and inevitably got them both to start supplying sacrifices to the monster/god.

She also recognizes the god has performed a miracle on her in exchange for the sacrifice she brought it. (This is what is meant when Red says Becker thinks he’ll only need a couple more “hits” before they can stop sacrificing people.)

We think the monster recognized utility in Ambar, and that she would make a more reliable servant than Becker going forward, which is why it chose not to eat her when it had the chance.

It it during these final moments of the film where Ambar realizes the freeing path now available to her– of simply inheriting this monstrous mansion, and using it to start building a better life.

OK, ok, so she’s going to have to start sacrificing some people every now and then–and she lives with dozens of haunted souls–. have you seen that house, it’s MASSIVE.