Death of Me(2020) My take on the movie with spoilers!

PLOT SUMMARY: Vacationing couple Christine and Neil must solve the mystery of the previous night before they can get off the island. 

You know what’s fun? Vacationing in a country and immersing yourself in their culture. Never miss an opportunity to learn something new.

You know what isn’t fun? Taking random drinks from the locals, not learning basic words of the local language, and yes, not taking care of your personal belongings when you know the police and the embassies are on the mainland and not on the tiny island you picked out of a brochure only because it hasn’t seen a hurricane in 200 years.

DEATH OF ME Movie Plot 

Christine wakes up in a room, smeared with dirt and the room in shambles. Her husband Neil is lying on the flooded floor.

The TV is going on and a warning is being issued about the hurricane that is due to hit the island. Christine wakes up Neil and says something about being late.

They can’t remember a single thing about last night or how they ended up in their room. Nevertheless, they are late so pack up their few belongings but don’t bother with checking whether they have their essentials like passport and money and ID.

They get into a taxi where the driver takes a long route to drop them off at the ferry so that he can pad the fare. Christine questions him and Neil uses a dictionary to converse with the driver and learns a festival is taking place which is why he must use another road.

Neil calls him out for purposely taking them down the wrong road, the driver gets pissed, Christine apologizes and offers him more money to drive faster, but the driver throws the money at their faces and tells them to get out of his car.

Neil and Christine barely make it to the ferry and are asked for their passports. Of course, they don’t have them. They are not allowed on the boat but for some reason, their luggage was transferred with proper documentation.

They are told their luggage will be returned when the ferry returns and that they must wait another day to board it.

Christine and Neil return to the house they booked through Airbnb. They can’t find their passports and Neil advises they take a walk around the beach rather than find a way to make a call to the embassy or the police on the mainland.

They try to piece together what happened the night before and find pictures and a video on Neil’s camera. They see themselves at a restaurant where the waitress pours them a local drink and calls it island magic. She even gives Christine a necklace that she takes readily.

Soon enough the effects of the shady drink show on the couple. For some time there is nothing on the video and upon fast-forwarding, come to a point where Neil takes Christine to a grassy place and has his way with her before choking her.

Christine is shocked and cringes when she hears a snap. Then Neil digs a grave and dumps Christine inside it.

Christine is horrified and runs to the bathroom. It is only then that she notices the bruises on her neck which she didn’t before. Nor did Neil.

She removes the necklace and immediately starts throwing up grass and dirt.

Neil tries to convince her that he would never hurt her intentionally and it was the drugs that made him do that.

He breaks through the door and catches his collapsing wife. At the same time, Samantha and her daughter Nathida enter. It is their house and Christine and Neil were supposed to have gone a long time ago so she could have their house back.

Neil explains the situation and Sam only agrees when the story is confirmed by Christine. Sam lets them stay for a while and goes on and on about how the island is magic and they are fortunate to spend more time here.

Neil tells Christine that he hadn’t come here for a holiday but on an assignment which consisted of only taking five pictures so far. He wants more. They were supposed to have left by today. Neil only took five pictures? Had it not been for the strange incident, he would have gone home with five photos of the beach that anyone could find online and then get fired for not covering more of the island.

Neil takes Christine to a restaurant by the beach to talk and finds a parade going on. Christine notices the waitress checking out her necklace that keeps appearing around her neck and immediately takes it off. Neil rushes off to take pictures of the mysterious festival that isn’t listed in the official calendar. He takes terrible angles and then makes a video only to have a local steal his phone and run away.

Meanwhile, Christine wants to throw up more grass and rushes to the bathroom. But to her horror she finds a snake slithering out of her mouth.

Neil finds the local and bashes his face with his expensive camera but the local has already deleted the video.

He rushes back to the restaurant and finds his wife gone. He is told that she’s in the bathroom but when he goes there, she isn’t there.

Christine is on a table somewhere with the locals in masks injecting her eye with something black. When her vision clears, she sees people with their eyes and mouths stitched.

Neil runs around the alleys and finds Christine lying on the ground with cuts on her wrist. Neil bandages her up and claims he believes whatever vision she had.

They decide to go look for the waitress who drugged them but come to a potion shop owned by a woman called Kanda. Her son is sick but instead of showing him to the doctor, she claims he will be fine after he rests. She gives them the address of the waitress called Madee but warns them against going there. But she won’t tell them why until the movie is about to end.

They go to where Madee lives and Christine claims that the waitress ran away when she saw her to which Madee states that the locals all look alike which is why she made that error. She returns Neil’s passport but doesn’t have Christine’s.

The couple also doesn’t get any answers from the tight-lipped Madee.

They return but on the way see an effigy bearing resemblance to Christine. They decide to get off the island immediately and manage to find a boat. But Neil feels queasy and Christine sees a video on Neil’s phone about him going on about how they were both going to die horrible deaths.

There’s a fisherman on the docks who is cutting open a fish. Neil takes that knife and pretends he’s a fish too and guts himself. Christine screams in terror and runs toward him but Neil falls into the water. Christine goes to the edge and loses consciousness.

When she awakens, the police are standing on her head and Samantha looks concerned. Christine heads to the docks but doesn’t see any boat. Also, there’s barely any water because of the low tides. She wants to look for her husband but keeps getting sick. Samantha takes her to the doctor who tells her she’s pregnant. Lights flicker and the baby inside her grows a beaked head.

Christine rushes out and is stopped by the police who is warning everyone about the hurricane. He tells Christine to get off the island but she wants to stay back and look for Neil since whoever was present at the docks claim Christine was the only one there.

She is made to believe that Neil left after he found his passport but Christine knows her husband isn’t that hopeless and cruel and wouldn’t leave her behind.

She goes to meet Kanda and is told that the necklace is what is keeping her on a balanced plane because she did die after Neil strangled her in a drugged state. Kanda wants her to give her the necklace to save her sick son. Christine promises to do so if she helps her. Just then the doctor walks in and Christine hides with Kanda’s son who keeps grabbing at her necklace.

Kanda has something whispered in her ear after which she stabs herself to death. Christine escapes with Kanda’s gun and on the way meets Samantha who offers to take her to safety. But she’s dressed in a white gown and Christine suspects her.

In the car, Christine is once again taken on the wrong route. At this point, Christine should have just found the route to the boats and gone walking.

Christine has become a little suspicious of Samantha especially after she claimed to have received a call from Neil but that she couldn’t hear anything because of network issues.

Christine begins asking questions about the island and Nathida tells Samantha that Christine has guessed the truth.

DEATH OF ME Ending Explained with spoilers! 

Turns out Nathida isn’t Samantha’s daughter. For some reason, she didn’t give the appropriate reaction during Christine’s sonography and that’s how Christine knew. Because Samantha watched the sonography in wonderment. Apparently, if Nathida was her child, Samantha would have watched the baby on screen with nonchalance.

Samantha reveals that yes she is supporting the islanders since when she first came here she had stage three pancreatic cancer and miraculously recovered. Nathida’s mother was the one who was sacrificed so that the island wouldn’t be hit by storms and other natural disasters. Also, the person being offered as a sacrifice have to do so willingly and consider it an honour.

Christine doesn’t think she’s been treated well by the islanders and so they don’t deserve her sacrifice. Now only if the islanders had been super nice to her, not killed everyone who was nice to her, given her some perks, maybe Christine would have considered.

But Christine has had it with the lies and doesn’t wait for Samantha to finish her pitch to sacrifice her life for the island. She straps herself in, then shoots Samantha in the head. The car swerves, hits a tree and Samantha is thrown through the windshield. Nathida is fine but abandoned in the car. Christine barely makes it two steps before she’s captured and brought to a place where the sacrifice is going to take place.

There are older locals there but it is Madee who takes charge of the ceremony and keeps telling everyone that Christine has to do it with her own free will. The locals argue that they gave Christine every opportunity to leave the island but she chose to stay back. But they didn’t ask her directly. And she never said she wanted to die for them.

Christine uses a lot of justified profanities but her eye is still sewn shut. She manages to loosen her ropes and kick and punch her way out. She is shown to a boat where she escapes just as the storm hits. She rides right into a giant wave.

Later, a news channel is covering how the storm missed every island but the small island that hadn’t seen a storm in 200 years. There are shots of broken homes and dead bodies.

Christine’s boat is found but when her pulse is checked, there is none. The necklace has come off her.

She is supposedly brought ashore and made to lie with the other victims of the hurricane. Someone finds her necklace next to her and drops it in her body bag.

Christine awakens. She will remain a zombie forever.

The islander’s superstitions were right. They didn’t get their sacrifice and lost their homes and lives. For such an important ceremony, they should have kept a backup plan. Maybe lured another tourist?

The islanders banked on the wrong person and then didn’t even treat her right. They should have tried everything in their power to make Christine love the island enough to make a sacrifice for it.

Christine on the other hand should have just taken the cop’s offer to leave the island and go to the mainland to file a report and go to the embassy for help. She does none of these things and thinks she can find her husband in a place where weird things are happening, where her hallucinations are getting worse and where the locals have become hostile.

Too late in the movie she realizes no one knows where she is. At this stage maybe it isn’t such a bad idea to keep location settings on and post on social media sites where you’re going for a vacation. Especially on small islands. With weird rituals. Where storms haven’t hit them in 200 years...

Scare scale: 

Watch DEATH OF ME on Prime Video