The Immaculate Room: the eerie movie’s ending, explained

The Immaculate Room is a psychological thriller movie which released in August 2022. Set in a tense setting, let’s see what the end of this movie is about.

The room is just a… plain white room

Kate and Michael, a couple looking at an opportunity for a fresh, are selected to stay in The Immaculate Room for 50 days. Upon completion, they will be rewarded with $5 million. They are invited into a stark white room, without any distraction. It’s created by a Professor Boyan, who isn’t shown, just a mechanical female voice giving details.

There’s a double bed, a bathroom (only 1 person at a time allowed), a digital timer/clock and a panel with instructions. The food they get is in cartons, not real food, but contains nutritional requirements.

How do Kate and Michael pass their days?

At first, Michael is excited about what he’d do with the money and Kate meditates and says her affirmations every morning. The next day, wonders if they could even believe the timer, while Kate calms him.

Soon enough, days pass in hyper motion. Small snippets show both of them in their routine, playing, exercising. The images start turning a bit distraught from their expressions. They start having arguments and their issues seem to come to the surface. Michael, an artist, spends a hundred thousand of the prize money for a ‘treat’; green crayon, drawing images over the walls.

Unexpected objects and messages come for them

With just 20 days left, Kate and Michael find a gun on the bathroom counter. Terrified of it and thinking it’s there to mess with them, they push it under the bed. The next is a Connect, a message from family, for Michael.

It’s his sister wishing him luck and talking about her whereabouts. She mentions stuff like ‘Kate detox’, ‘Shawn thing’ and ‘letting go’. Kate is unaware of this and when a Connect from her estranged father comes, she goes into an emotional spiral. However, she rejects getting a treat for herself.

Instead, she asks Michael to get another treat, costing quarter million dollars, which results in a fully nude female walking in the room. She’s Simone, an actress. A little frustrated, Kate takes a treat too, ecstasy. That leads to the revelation about Shawn, Michael’s brother who drowned on his watch.

Kate does something terrible

Later, she accuses Michael and Simone, saying blunt words to her. The next morning, she finds Simone gone but a message implicating that she and Michael slept together written on the wall. Kate becomes furious and pushes him and he hits his head on the edge, blood dripping.

Michael tells her how he had to modify his life to make her feel secure and deal with her high jealousy. He decides to leave, urging her too, but she doesn’t. Rather, she threatens him with the gun as the prize would drop to $1 million if one person leaves. He doesn’t stop and she cries.

In the abrupt ending, what did Kate do?

With a few days left, the hyper motion snippets show Kate in a state of despair, emotionless, blank. The timer shows 2 days left and we see Kate walking towards the red button to leave. The screen blanks out just before she touches it.

Another scene opens where Michael sees Kate outside St. Mary’s, a shelter for homeless. She was visiting her dad and, on the walk back together, they catch up. The camera loses focus from them and shifts to a plaque mentioning an ‘anonymous donor’ who donated for the new kitchen at the shelter. It seems she did take the money and invested it in a good cause. Plus, also dealt with her issues.

The final shot shows another couple is greeted in The Immaculate Room.

In an interview to Cinema Daily, director Mukunda Michael Dewil said he wanted to showcase the human mind’s problem solving in a thrilling way. “Most of us spend so much time being constantly distracted… [so] we never deal with our stuff. So, what happens if you take everything away and people are just left with who they are and who their relationship is? They’re forced to deal with some stuff.”