Here’s the ending to creepy 2014 ghost story The Forgotten explained. While mainstream horror tends to be loaded with jump scares – as seen in the well-executed likes of IT or The Conjuring 2 – slow-burn horror has also made something of a comeback in recent years. This genre is defined by films that rely more on atmosphere and creeping dread that audience jolting scares, and can be seen in movies like The Witch, It Follows or The Blackcoat’s Daughter.
One of the most acclaimed examples of a slow-burn ghost story is 1963’s The Haunting, which was based on the novel The Haunting Of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. This movie relied more on sound effects and psychological chills that overt scares, and it was later remade – to poor effect – with 1999’s The Haunting, which instead brought the ghosts to life with lots of CGI. The most recent version was Netflix’s acclaimed The Haunting Of Hill House, which took many liberties with the source material but also delivered a show with fantastic performances, genuine chills and a lot of emotion. Production is underway on the next season The Haunting Of Bly Manor.
Another solid example of the slow-burn approach is 2014’s The Forgotten, a low-budget British ghost story – and not to be confused with the 2004 Julianne Moore movie of the same name. The story is about a shy teenager named Tommy (Clem Tibber) who is forced to live with his father in an abandoned set of council flats. At night, Tommy hears strange noises coming from the flat next door – which is quite worrying, since it should be empty. He befriends a local girl named Carmen (Elarica Johnson, A Discovery of Witches), and they explore the empty flat together and explore its dark history.
The third act of The Forgotten reveals that a man murdered his wife in that flat fifteen years before, and Tommy’s troubled father Mark (Shaun Dingwall, Legends) saved the life of their baby. Carmen later learns the killer was her father, that he committed suicide in prison and she was the baby that was saved. She heads back to the flat alone to confront her past, only to discover the ghost of her father has possessed Mark, who approaches with a knife. Tommy appears and tries to stop his dad, only to be knocked unconscious while Mark drags Carmen screaming into the room where the murder took place.
When Tommy awakens, he finds his father looking scared and confused in the corner, with no memory of what took place. Carmen has disappeared, and people quickly start to forget her. Even a drawing Tommy has of Carmen fades and disappears. The final scene of The Forgotten has Tommy visiting his mother in hospital, revealing Mark has left but that he’s made a friend; when his mother asks for her name, he can’t recall it. The ending of The Forgotten is a little confusing, but what appears to have happened is the spirit of Carmen’s father wanted to reunite the family in death, and used Tommy’s father as a vessel in revenge for having stopped him years before. The saddest part is this also made it like Carmen never existed, as the people she knew quickly forget about her when she vanished.
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