The Ending Of Possum Explained

The following article discusses child abuse and sexual assault.

Matthew Holness' disturbing 2018 film "Possum" is hard to pin down. It's a horror movie, but with few of the jump scares or overtly supernatural elements that usually power that genre. It's a psychological thriller, but with few thrilling moments, preferring instead to creep along in a state of permanent dread. At times it feels like a British kitchen sink drama crossed with a creature feature, like some long-lost issue of "Tales from the Crypt" written by John Osborne or Harold Pinter. But as difficult as the film is to define, it is equally difficult to forget.

Based on Holness' own 2008 short story and informed by real-life stories of trauma and sexual abuse, "Possum" ends as mysteriously as it begins — what we see on screen is only part of the story. With its main character experiencing a mental breakdown, can we trust that the final confrontation between him and his wicked uncle happened the way it appears? Or that it happened at all? Or, for that matter, that any of it even happened? Could it be that every element of the film is nothing but the slow collapse of one man's fragile psyche?

Unsurprisingly, "Possum" fan theories have run rampant, with every detail — from the eerie to the mundane — combed over for clues that will unlock the mystery. Let's do a little digging of our own as we take a look at the ending of "Possum."

Philip retraces his steps around town to see if there are any clues about the boy's disappearance, including a frightening trip to an abandoned Army barracks where it appears that Possum is pursuing him. At home, he finally steps through the door he had been avoiding. On the other side is the remains of his parents' bedroom, still charred from the fire that killed them years ago. But while the room has gone unchanged since that awful night, it has not gone uninhabited. As Philip finds a jar full of pulled teeth, a hooded figure all in black attacks him. It's Maurice, who admits to being the boy's abductor and attempts to molest Philip in the same way he would do when Philip was a boy.

It's a harrowing scene. Philip, whimpering and begging, initially submits to his uncle's violence, but when a noise comes from a large trunk in the room, he realizes that the boy is still alive. Philip overpowers Maurice and snaps his neck on the room's broken floorboards. He opens the trunk and the boy flees without a word. Alone, Philip sits on the stoop in his backyard, smoking a cigarette. In the distance we see the spindly legs of Possum sitting in a rubbish heap. Is Philip no longer haunted by his ghastly creation, or are there some things that can never be cured, only lived with?

If you or someone you know may be the victim of child abuse, please contact the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child (1-800-422-4453) or contact their live chat services.

In a literal reading of the film, "Possum" is a supernatural tale of a puppet who is pushing its creator toward a reckoning with his abusive upbringing, despite the creator's attempts to destroy it. But the film resists such a literal interpretation. Possum's many returns are only ever witnessed by Philip himself, and several other disturbing moments — like the black rain that falls from the sky as he looks at an old picture of his parents — are likewise limited to his point of view, suggesting that they are fantasies or waking nightmares.

But if Possum is not actually alive, that would mean that the many scenes of Philip trying to get rid of the ghastly thing are not really happening, or at least not happening the way the film shows us. And if so, can we be confident that any of what we see exists beyond Philip's fraying psyche? For instance, no other characters but Philip ever see or interact with Maurice, who is confined to the broken down home that they share. The television reports of the boy's disappearance seem to drift in and out of reception on Philip's TV, and the fact that the boy who disappeared is the exact one that Philip tried to speak to on the train seems too unlikely to be a coincidence.

If every other character acts as a double or doppelganger to Philip, audiences can reasonably wonder if any of them were ever real in the first place. At the end of the film, when Maurice attempts to assault Philip, the protagonist overpowers and kills him. However, as there's nobody else there to see it, there's every chance that this fight is actually a mental one rather than a physical one. Philip could well be wrestling with his demons here rather than his uncle.

The specter of child sexual abuse hangs heavy over "Possum." While the plot focuses on the violence Maurice inflicted as an individual on Philip and the kidnapped boy, Holness is also concerned with the institutional cultures that let abusers like Maurice thrive. The short story explicitly sets the narrator's childhood assault near his schoolyard, suggesting that it may have been a teacher or staff member that committed it. The film is less focused on what might have happened to Philip in school, but finds a potent symbol in the town's abandoned Army barracks, where Maurice worked for years and where Philip finds himself pursued by Possum in a late scene.

Britain has faced multiple reckonings in the last two decades over sexual abuse in the military, the church, and in schools. In the early 2010s, police executed a massive sting known as Operation Yewtree, which came about after the late British celebrity Jimmy Savile was exposed as a serial rapist with hundreds of victims. "They are the monsters of our time," Holness said of Savile and other abusers in a 2018 Newsweek interview. The betrayal of trust and the culture of silence that robs victims of their voice is at the heart of Philip's trauma. With nowhere else to turn, he channeled all of his pain into the terrible, immortal Possum.

With this in mind, the final shot of the film is less ambiguous than it may initially appear. Possum's grotesque body is destroyed, but its face remains. This is Holness telling us that while Philip has managed to deal with his demons to some extent, he will still have to face his past from time to time, because some trauma simply cannot be forgotten.  

If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).

Over the past few years, the film's small but dedicated fan base has taken to Reddit to pore over plot details and offer up theories about what it really means. Much of the debate centers around which of the characters actually exist and which are products of Philip's shattered mind. For many, Maurice is nothing but a malignant voice in Philip's head, a dissociative personality that allows Philip to do terrible things like kidnap the boy from the train. For others, the boy himself was not real — or at least no longer alive when Philip kills Maurice and opens the trunk. If that is the case, the boy's wordless, immediate escape after being released is nothing more than Philip's damaged mind comforting itself.

Beyond questions of who did what to whom in the film's final moments, internet sleuths have delved into some of Holness' more inscrutable imagery. Since foxes are known to play dead like opossums, does the fox in the yard indicate that Philip is somehow both alive and dead? Do the balloons reference whatever scandal happened to send him back home? Are the candies green because they are rotten? Do they cause hallucinations? And, if so, are all the horrible visions candy-induced, or just some of them? Trying to "solve" a film such as this one is fun for viewers, but in the end, all speculations are just that. As in life, sometimes there are no answers.