Wen is dead and all the horsemen but Sabrina have sacrificed themselves. Sabrina takes Andrew and Eric, carrying Wen’s corpse, to where their van keys have been buried, with vague info about where the van is left (the gang have moved it to prevent them leaving). She implores the men one last time to choose and sacrifice one of them before it is too late. And she takes her own life leaving Eric and Andrew despairing and alone.
Both are willing to die by this point. Not because they want to play by the rules – any god that would not accept the death of their precious daughter as enough of a sacrifice is not a god they care for. But because their world has all but ended already. Ended – but for each other and the profound love they share.
Because of that love neither can sacrifice himself: seeing the other die and being left alone is a far worse fate than death. They must both live, for the sake of one another. Like Samuel Beckett’s famous quote from the end of his novel The Unnameable goes, “You must go on. I can’t go on. I’ll go on”. It’s the mantra of the book by the end (and the human condition, and of love itself – it’s a weighty book). Andrew and Eric will continue, together, alone in the face of an actual apocalypse, or just their own personal one. This wasn’t their choice, it wasn’t their fault, and they’ll be damned if they destroy each other for the sake of a vengeful deity that may or may not exist. Fuck that guy, as they say at the end the book (we are paraphrasing).
The word, as the start of the new testament proclaims, is love. And at the end of Cabin, love is what remains – god, apocalypse or not.
Why the change?
Well, we’re not surprised that Night opted not to kill an 8-year-old and have an ending which would leave audiences sobbing into their popcorn at best, and annoyed because there’s no definitive answer about the apocalypse at worst.
At a post-screening Q&A Shyamalan told audiences about discussions he had with his own family – he has three daughters – about what they might do in this situaton. At the start, he said, the family opted to sacrifice no one. But at the thought that the youngest would never find love, never get married, never go to university or experience life, the family all decided it was worth the sacrifice. And that is the route the film takes – Eric willingly dies so that Wen and Andrew can live. And that’s a decision made with love too. Keeping Wen alive allows an ending where no ambiguity is left but the themes of the story are the same – or similar at least.