Movie Monsters

It’s time for another movie monster! This time, I’ll be looking at the Reapers – eerily skeletal, floating entities that appear in a somewhat overlooked horror film called Southbound. Before I delve into the Reapers themselves, however, a decent understanding of the movie is required. Southbound is essentially an anthology film, except that every story takes place in the same setting and leads directly into the next, with the final story’s ending looping right back to the beginning of the movie. Each story follows a different set of characters in and around a small, forgotten desert town somewhere in the American Southwest (or so it would seem), but they weave together into a larger narrative, all linked by a common thread of doom and despair. Each set of characters faces their own struggles, but as the film progresses, it becomes clear that their fates are connected.

Southbound seems to be set in one endless, looping day in purgatory. In fact, although it’s never explicitly stated outright, the film heavily hints that the setting is quite literally Purgatory – a liminal, inescapable zone that torments and punishes the people within it, forcing them to confront their demons. The characters are unable to leave – at least, not until they have made the right choices. People who end up here are forced to pay for the sins they committed while they were alive, trapped in a cycle of guilt and damnation – although it is implied that they remain unaware that they are stuck.

As a location to represent Purgatory, the American Southwest is pretty much perfect. Even in real life, these deserts are lonely and isolated. The lack of cell and GPS service is a given, and all kinds of horrible things could happen without anyone else knowing. It’s also an area where those with troubled pasts might seek escape from the rest of the world.

In the first segment, ‘The Way Out’, two men, Mitch and Jack, are on a lonely, nameless desert highway that keeps sending them back to the same gas station. All the while, they are being stalked from afar by the mysterious floating Reapers that seem to patrol this realm. Jack does his best to escape the endless loop, although Mitch believes they’re better off if they just accept their fate. Jack is killed by one of the monsters, and Mitch manages to make his way to a motel. There, he enters a room and encounters an apparition of his dead daughter, Katherine. She calls out to him, and he chases her around the room in another chaotic loop, unable to reach her. A maid places a ‘do not disturb’ sign on his door, leaving Mitch trapped deeper in Purgatory, tormented by the regret that he was unable to help his daughter.

The second segment, ‘Siren’, is about three young women in a band – Sadie, Ava, and Kim – whose van breaks down on the highway, forcing them to spend the night with an odd couple and their creepy neighbours. They keep bringing up Sadie’s friend, Alex, who died in a car accident and of whom they should have no knowledge. After Sadie’s friends eat a mysterious meatloaf at dinner, they are inducted into a blood ritual and begin chasing Sadie, forcing her to confront her past.

The next segment, ‘The Accident’, which explores how far you would be willing to go to undo what you have done, sees a man named Lucas attempt to save Sadie’s life in an empty hospital after accidentally hitting her with his car. With the instructions of two unseen EMTs on the phone, he does his best to save her, but ultimately, he fails. Accepting that he is responsible for her death, Lucas is able to leave the desert unharmed and is presumably able to escape from Purgatory.

Next, we have ‘Jailbreak’, which follows a man named Danny as he attempts to rescue his long-lost sister, Jesse, from a secret demon hideout. He tries to drive off with her, but she doesn’t want to leave. When she reveals that she killed their parents of her own free will and doesn’t intend to leave the desert, Danny is then taken away by the other demons as Jesse drives off.

‘The Accident’ and ‘Jailbreak’ explore the desert as a land of judgment. Lucas’s carelessness leads to Sadie’s death, but because he admits he was at fault and does everything in his power to save her, the desert forgives him. Jesse, too, has admitted to her sins, but rather than seeking forgiveness, she accepts her new life. ‘Everyone is on the road to redemption,’ says the director of ‘The Accident’, David Bruckner, echoing the strange DJ heard on the radio in the film, ‘and only they can choose how to ride it.’

The last segment, ‘The Way In’, features a family staying at a vacation house in the desert, who are interrupted by a group of masked intruders. They attack the father and mother, Daryl and Cait, but give their daughter, Jem, an option to escape, which she initially takes. After killing the mother, the intruders show Daryl a photo of Katherine, the daughter of Mitch from the film’s first segment. We soon learn that the masked intruders are, in fact, Mitch and Jack, who are here for revenge, as it seems Daryl was involved in Katherine’s death. What Daryl did isn’t explicitly revealed, but his wife’s reaction implies that it was something horrible, perhaps something akin to a mild-mannered suburban man secretly being a paedophile. Maybe he abused Katherine to the point that she killed herself? Ultimately, it’s up to the viewer to fill in the blanks.

The daughter, Jem, comes back and tries to fight Mitch and Jack, but she is killed in the ensuing struggle. The two men feel guilty about what they’ve done and drive away. They’re stalked by the floating monsters as they drive into the morning, and the movie ends where it started, completing the loop.

But what are those monsters? The Reapers (unnamed in the movie but referred to as such by the filmmakers) are essentially floating, legless skeletons that resemble twisted versions of the Grim Reaper. They seem to be covered in a thin layer of burlap-like skin. Tangles of fuzzy tendrils or nerves dangle from their vertebrae, and they have a pair of long, skeletal bat-like wings that the Reapers seem to use more as another set of limbs rather than for flight.

So, what are the Reapers doing in Purgatory? What is their purpose? Their presence certainly seems to imply judgment or karmic reckoning, but Southbound offers no elaborate lore dump, no exposition, leaving viewers to theorise and speculate. Are they agents of death? Manifestations of guilt? Are they perhaps a sort of security system for Purgatory? Their ambiguity is one of the most intriguing aspects of the film. In my mind, the Reapers are watchers and enforcers, existing to oversee and dish out punishments in this nightmarish realm, perhaps ensuring that moral debts are paid.

The first and last segments of Southbound feature numerous connective visual and auditory Easter eggs, establishing the physical connection between the stories that create the film’s endless loop. For example, the motel room Mitch enters in ‘The Way Out’ is numbered 6255, the same as the address where Daryl, Cait, and their daughter live in ‘The Way In’. The Reapers also terrorise Jack and Mitch in much the same way that the two men treated the family during the home invasion. They keep knocking on the door, creating panic in Mitch, just as he and Jack did with the family. And Jack is killed by the creature pushing its ‘hand’ down his throat, just as he pushed cloth down Cait’s throat.

Interestingly, although the film loops back to the beginning in its final moments, the DJ’s voiceover in the first and last segments is slightly different. It suggests that the loop isn’t exactly the same each time and that the characters have the option to make better choices, whether that’s accepting accountability or walking away from the hurt and frustration. Maybe, just maybe, they’ll be allowed to escape next time. After all, the DJ says at the end of the film, ‘For the lost lonely souls racing down the road to redemption, […] one that is never-ending, tonight might be the night we might outrun our demons once and for all.’