The Ending Of Elizabeth Harvest Explained
The sci-fi thriller "Elizabeth Harvest" begins with a newlywed couple, Henry (Ciarán Hinds) and Elizabeth (Abbey Lee), on their wedding day. They arrive home and are greeted by housekeeper Claire (Carla Gugino) and Henry's adult blind son Oliver (Matthew Beard). After making love and taking a tour of the palatial estate, Elizabeth is welcomed into her new life but told that she must not enter one particular room.
Eventually overtaken by boredom and curiosity while Henry is away at work, she explores the forbidden space and discovers clones of herself in cryogenic tanks. When her husband realizes that his secret has been uncovered, he murders her and restarts the experience with another clone on another wedding day, exactly as before. Predictably, the same events repeat themselves, and Henry once again tries to murder Elizabeth for her disobedience after she finds her copies. However, this time she manages to get the upper hand and kills him in self defense.
After Henry's death, Claire suffers a heart attack and is rushed to the hospital. Oliver takes advantage of the situation, imprisoning Elizabeth in the house and explaining to her that she is the fifth in a set of six clones of Henry's late wife. He then forces her to read Claire's diary, which lays out the entire story.
Henry's true purpose isn't to bring his wife back
Although it initially seems like Henry's reason for creating the clones is to revive his late wife, all he wants to do is relive his wedding night and murder his bride. He explains that the duplicates he produces are not really his wife but poor facsimiles that could never truly replace his spouse. They only seem real to him once he is in the process of slaying them, and he continues this chain of events to regain a small piece of what he lost.
These copies have created a way for him to commit murder without dealing with the consequences of the law or his own conscience. He feels no guilt over what he has done because he justifies that those he destroyed were never really alive in the first place. He derives some sort of carnal pleasure through their execution, similar to the rush he feels on their wedding night, and so he repeats the process over and over for his own sick pleasure.
Though we do not see it on screen, it can be assumed that he also killed the first two clones before Claire's arrival. We have enough evidence to suggest that he smothered the third one with a pillow, and our story begins with the murder of the fourth version. It's only when the fifth Elizabeth turns the tables on him that he finally receives the reckoning he deserves for the homicidal loop he took such pleasure in perpetuating.
Oliver is not Henry's son but just another clone
It then comes to light that Oliver is not actually Henry's son, but a clone of Henry. He initially created this copy of himself in case his bride was dissatisfied with his aging body and wanted the younger version with whom she had originally fallen in love. However, at some point, Henry became possessive of his wife's duplicates and blinds Oliver so that he would not have to share his creations with anyone else. It's only his own ego and self-importance that stops him from murdering Oliver as well, because it would mean killing a part of himself.
Henry does not regard the clones as truly alive, so it would make sense that Oliver (the same person) also holds the same beliefs. This means that when he begins to suspect that he himself might be a clone, the thought is repulsive to him. He traps the fifth Elizabeth and makes her read Claire's diary to confirm his suspicions about his origins. In addition to having the same attraction to Elizabeth as Henry, he also carries the same sadistic streak and has no ethical issues with manipulating the sixth and final clone into loving him and murdering the other copy.
The last clone begins a new life
Confused by Oliver's lies and manipulations, the last clone accidentally murders Oliver and mortally wounds the fifth version of herself when she tries to escape. With her dying breath, the fifth Elizabeth tells the surviving version to read Claire's diary and learn the truth for herself.
In contrast to Henry, who harbors a great deal of self-hatred and is cruel and vengeful towards his own clone, Elizabeth cares and sympathizes with her copies because she believes them (and herself) to be faultless victims of their bizarre circumstances. She is not spiteful or angry about being killed because she knows that the sixth Elizabeth did exactly what she herself would have done in the same situation — as she declares to the clone in the film, "You and I are the same."
After finally understanding the truth, the sixth and last Elizabeth leaves the house to start a new life. No longer under the lies or manipulation of others, she embraces the real world, as well as the reality of her existence, declaring herself to finally be "awake."