Slapface Ending Explained

Slapface (2021) Ending Explained – Is The Monster Real?

(Last Updated On: 4th January 2024)

Well, I am going to attempt to explain the ending to Slapface and I am not overly confident about it. This movie spent it’s entire run hinting at one thing before seemingly flipping it and then, for some reason, flipping it back. It’s a weird ending made even stranger by the message in the credits. Anyways, let’s get to it.

If you haven’t checked out our review of Slapface, feel free to click the link and check it out. The link opens in a new tab so you won’t be taken away from this page. I guess if you are reading this you have seen the movie and might not give a shit about my opinion of the film so, in that case, carry on reading.

Obviously this is NOT a spoiler free article. We have to talk about the events of the film to explain the ending so, if you haven’t seen Slapface yet, you probably want to skip this article and come back later. I’ll also point out that this is purely my opinion. I have no inside source on the movie, if I did I would actually ask them why they bothered, not what the meaning of the ending was. I am just speculating here and may be completely wrong.

Slapface Ending

So, it becomes apparent pretty early on in Slapface that Lucas is troubled. He is suffering from grief and social isolation. He is bullied at home by Tom and at school by a group of girls. He is lashing out in some way or another as the sheriff picks him up and warns Tom about Lucas’ behaviour.

He meets the monster/witch thing in the abandoned asylum and starts spending time with it. This is a strange thing in and of itself because the monster is pretty intimidating.

It’s not long before the monster has killed a dog that looked as though it would attack Lucas, scratched up a car, and killed Tom’s girlfriend Anna. Lucas and the monster smash up the house in, what I would consider to be, one of the more ridiculous scenes in a movie like this before the monster attacks Lucas’s girlfriend/bully with a rock.

Lucas is blamed for attacking the girl and taken to the police station. Lucas awakes in the police station to an alarm sounding and a chaotic scene. There has been a massacre and the monster is apparently responsible as it is hiding in the corner of a room. Lucas heads back home where he meets up with the monster again.

Tom arrives at the house only to have to play a game of Slapface with the monster. Obviously the monster wins, Lucas shoots the monster before finishing it off with a stab to the heart. Moments later the police arrive and Lucas notices that the body of the monster is not there and looks as though he is having a revelation about something. A message in the credits points out that bullying is bad (no shit) and we are done.

So What Happened

What an eye roller of an ending. I think the movie hints at a potential mental illness explanation for the events and the monster being imaginary and something Lucas uses to blame for his violence.

If you notice, the actions are not reflective of what an enormous monster would do and seem more like the actions of a child. Lucas is jealous of Tom and Anna’s relationship so he scratches her car. Lucas kills the dog with a knife, something which is supported by his brutalising of the rat in the house. Victims of abuse and bullying often resort to harming animals. Even previously happy and carefree children can end up harming animals as a coping mechanism. Judith Barsi, for example, pulled the whiskers out from her cat’s face.

Lucas steals Tom’s gun and Anna ends up dead by a gunshot. Moriah is hit over the head with a rock and doesn’t even die immediately. A monster would have done a lot more damage, one would have to imagine. Lucas smashes up the house with the monster but the sheriff relates a story of how, years ago, he used to go to over to see Lucas and Tom’s mum only to find Lucas had smashed up the house. This suggests this is something Lucas has done before without the monster being present.

And Then Things Go South

I was pretty much onboard with the monster being imaginary and Lucas being the one that is doing these things……. Until the last 15 minutes of the movie. So Lucas is in the police station, he wakes up and the entire police station is a mess and all the officers are dead. How the fuck could Lucas have done that? I know we are supposed to suspend disbelief in horror movies but Slapface is trying to tell a story that is grounded in reality with a potentially metaphorical monster. Are we supposed to believe that this child became the Terminator and managed to kill everyone there despite alarms going off? I love how the sheriff was slumped over at his desk dead despite said alarms going off everywhere. Did he just not hear them?

This makes no sense, Lucas could not have done this and the whole thing made it pretty apparent that the monster was real. Obviously then the monster slaps the hell out of Tom who appears to be dead. Lucas shoots and stabs the monster who dies on the floor. The police arrive and Lucas notices that the monster is not there and there is no blood.

It’s at this moment, that it became apparent that they were going to flip the script again. We have the message about bullying in the credits that, along with the monster disappearing and the look on Lucas’s face, suggests that it was actually Lucas doing everything. So I assume Lucas was the one playing slapface with Tom and ended up shooting and stabbing Tom, not the monster. The problem here is the police station. Lucas could not have killed everyone here, it’s nigh on impossible and totally farcical. Remove that segment and everything adds up. The monster was a figment of Lucas’s imagination and it was Lucas killing everyone. As it stands, I can’t be 100% sure.

TLDR

In summary, I think the monster was imaginary and it was actually Lucas doing the killing. He was an emotional mess due to bullying, grief, and abuse and was lashing out in a way many victims of abuse have done. As the message in the credits attempts to point out, bullying and abuse are cyclical.

He killed the dog as an outlet for his emotions, a common occurrence with victims of abuse; he brutalised a rat later on in the film as further evidence of his ability to be horribly violent. He was jealous of Tom and Anna’s relationship and scratched Anna’s car before stealing Tom’s gun and shooting Anna. He wrecked the house in an outburst of aggression, something the sheriff said Lucas had done before. He smashed Moriah over the head with a rock as revenge for her hanging out with the bullies, spitting on him, and being disgusted by him killing the rat. He somehow escapes the police station and returns home where Tom attempts to play a heated game of slapface as punishment for attacking Moriah but Lucas turns the tables by shooting and stabbing Tom. The monster disappears at the end because it was never real, Lucas realises this, and the message in the credits seems to further support this.

There are things that don’t make sense such as the massacre at the police station but we can probably safely put that down to terrible story telling on the part of Jeremiah Kipp. Obviously this is my opinion and you may not agree but, I think it makes the most sense given the context. Thanks for reading.