Clifton Hill Disappearance Ending Explained: Is Alex Alive?

The end of Disappearance on Clifton Hill It's a shocking ending to the psychological thriller that completely alters the viewing experience the second time around. Disappearance on Clifton Hill is a 2020 Canadian thriller by Albert Shin. The film follows Abby, played by Tuppence Middleton from Downton Abbeya middle-aged woman who returns to her hometown near Niagara Falls after her mother's death to reclaim her inherited motel/casino. Years earlier, Abby witnessed the kidnapping of a young boy and the event has haunted her ever since. When she returns home, Abby begins an investigation to find out what happened years ago.

However Disappearance on Clifton Hill has some familiar stories with characters that fit neatly into the standard archetypes, the last third of the film breathes fresh air into what was mostly a traditional noir. The film got 76% in Rotten tomatoeswith much praise directed towards the performances and the film's ending. It may be a smaller film, content with just a few characters, but it's a fun whodunnit. The end of Disappearance on Clifton Hill is crucial to better understand and even enjoy the film but the multiple revelations may leave some viewers confused.

What happens in the disappearance at the end of Clifton Hill

The film ends on an incredibly strange note

When Abby returns to her hometown near Niagara Falls, she begins researching the missing “one-eyed boy,” the injured child she saw in the woods in her childhood. After meeting conspiracy theorist Walter, played by filmmaker David Cronenberg, Abby begins to suspect that the boy she saw is the same boy named Alex who the news reported took his own life around the same time. She believes he did not take his own life and instead the powerful local family, the Lakes, are responsible for the boy's murder. Her snooping leads her to Beverly (Elizabeth Saunders) and Gerry (Maxwell McCabe-Lokos) Mole.

When she tracks the elderly couple to their home, she discovers the evidence she needs to prove that they and the Lake family patriarch, Carlos III (Eric Johnson), are responsible. Suddenly the picture of what happened becomes clear. Alex's magical parents didn't care about him, seeing him only as a commodity. He was abused by Charles III and Charles II hired the Moles to kill him in order to keep his son's activities secret. Abby reveals all of this to the police and the right people are arrested, although Carlos III insists on his innocence, as any megalomaniac would.

However, at the end of the film, a grown man with an eye patch arrives at Abby's motel. He looks at Abby and asks if they have met before, to which Abby says no. The man looks at a newspaper with a headline about Charles III proclaiming his innocence and the man says that Charles III is not lying and that he actually saved that boy's life. He leaves and Abby looks in the mirror as a smile slowly forms on her face.

Alex Moulin didn't jump into the falls

His death was a murder

The mystery that Abby wants to discover in Disappearance on Clifton Hill that's what happened to Alex, a boy Abby assumes is the same one she saw in the woods when she was a child. An investigation determined that Alex jumped off a cliff around the same time Abby encountered the one-eyed boy. However, Abby suspects the story isn't the whole story. Her suspicions are confirmed when she finally confronts Gerry, and he admits that it was he and his wife who threw Alex off the cliff. Alex's cause of death was murdernot suicide.

Bev and Gerry Mole worked for the Moulins

The duo worked for Carlos III

Bev and Gerry Mole become prime suspects in Abby's amateur operation because Abby discovers they were working for the Moulins, Alex's family. The Moulin family was a popular magic act and the moles worked as animal trainers. At the end of the film, Abby meets with the Moulins, hoping they will be happy that someone is trying to find out what happened to their son. Instead, the Moulins tell Abby about the time they forced Alex to face one of their tigers, a test to see if their son was ready for acting. Alex's eye is scratched, much to their disappointment. Alex, realizing he will be tested again, runs.

The Moulins send the Moles to rescue their son, but they have a different plan. The rest of the story is confessed by Gerry to Abby. Alex suffered abuse from his parents and Carlos III. Charles II hires the Moles to kidnap Alex and anonymously blackmail the Moulins with evidence that they hurt his son. The Moulins pay a large ransom, but Charlie III insists that the Moles kill Alex anyway, dumping his body over the waterfall's cliff, leading to the accusation that the boy took his own life.

Abby is a compulsive liar

An unreliable narrator makes everything questionable

The public is informed throughout the Disappearance on Clifton Hill that Abby has struggled with problems her entire adult life. However, her sister Laure (Hannah Gross) treats her with much more suspicion than one would expect. It is unclear why Laure behaves so antagonistically towards Abby until a flashback is revealed at the end of the film. It is shown that for most of Abby's adult life, she lied compulsively. She is shown doing this to a social worker, her mother, and her sister repeatedly, and the audience suddenly realizes that perhaps Abby has been an unreliable narrator for most of the film.

In fact, the reason Abby's inherited motel/casino is in such bad shape is that her mother was forced to use maintenance money to pay for Abby when her cons were exposed. With this knowledge, everything that happened throughout the film and the events that follow are put in a different light.

The man at the end is Alex Moulin

Alex's survival is confirmed

The final revelation in Disappearance on Clifton Hill it's quite shocking, even if it's not fully explained. Abby is victorious. She discovers what happened to Alex and drives away the Moles and Charlie III for good, exposing their crimes to the world. However, while she is working at the front desk of her motel, a man with an eye patch walks in and asks if they know each other. She says no, and he spontaneously mentions that Charles III is innocent. The implication is clear: that man is Alex. His eye patch, Abby's recognition, and Carlos III's inside knowledge all point to the fact that Alex survived.

Charles Lake III Didn't Help in Alex's Murder

The abuse may not have even happened

With the understanding that Alex survived, his certain knowledge that Charles III is innocent must mean that he knows something that Abby and the audience don't. Due to Abby's propensity for fabricating lies and the uncertainty of what exactly happened 25 years ago in the forest, Alex's true fate must be inferred from his survival and loyalty to Charles III. It has already been demonstrated that the Moles are dangerous people. Bev chains her husband Gerry to the wall and there are blackmail photos of Alex's injury in their home. The Moulins happily tell Abby about the tiger and Alex. For the most part, Abby tells the correct story.

However, there are two crucial details that Abby got wrong. Alex was not killed and Carlos III did not abuse him. The man with the eye patch says that Carlos III saved that boy, not that he killed him. At some point during the kidnapping, Charles III came to Alex's rescue and saved him from the Moulins and the Moles, perhaps using his family's wealth to get him out of the city. Abby just assumed Carlos III abused Alexmaking assumptions with little evidence. In fact, Alex may be back in town to testify and clear Charles III's name.

Why does Abby smile at the end of the disappearance at Clifton Hill?

Abby might like the chaos she caused

After Abby talks to the one-eyed man, who is probably Alex, she is shaken and goes to the bathroom. There she looks in the mirror, perhaps wondering if she accidentally sent the wrong person to prison. Just before the movie ends, his frown slowly turns into a smile. This implies that Abby somehow takes pleasure in the chaos she has caused and is not at all upset that an innocent man is accused of a horrendous crime. Just like the lies Abby has often invented throughout her life, Abby once again finds herself in the middle of another lie, a fascinating story of her own making.

The true meaning of the disappearance at the end of Clifton Hill

The film is a message against the sensationalization of crime

The end of Disappearance on Clifton Hill it's not just an indictment of the protagonist, but of anyone who has ever reveled in a sensational crime without understanding the full context. It's no coincidence that Abby finds affinity with a conspiracy theorist in her search for what really happened to Alex. Abby is not interested in finding out the truth or righting a wrongshe's looking for an interesting story with an amazing twist. When Alex appears and reveals that Abby got it wrong, far from being upset, Abby is excited, happy to be even more involved in a strange and baffling lie.

Disappearance on Clifton Hill points out that many audiences would probably behave in a similar way if they knew about the situation described in the film. True crime fiends and lovers of pulp fiction would probably be thrilled to know that a violent, horrific crime also has a major twist, such as the victim's survival. Disappearance on Clifton Hill turns the camera around at the end, showing how voyeurism can be harmful as often as it is arousing.

How the disappearance at Clifton Hill Ending was received

The final moments did not win over critics

The Disappearance at Clifton Hill is a divisive film and seems to divide critics and audiences when it comes to opinions. As evidenced by the 78% critic score versus just 31% of the audience on Rotten tomatoes, The Disappearance at Clifton Hill is one of several films that received much more praise in reviews than many general viewers felt it deserved. However, it is also not true that critical acclaim was unanimous. There were several who agreed with most members of the general public and their complaints about Mount Clifton. Furthermore, the ending was among the most cited negatives.

Many critics felt The Disappearance at Clifton Hill The ending didn't tie the rest of the story together well. Although everyone knows that it is a deliberately surreal and ambiguous film, many reviews still point out that the ending needed to be more succinct and explanatory than it really was for the story to seem satisfactory. None suggested that a full exposition of the truth was necessary. It's simply that the end of The Disappearance at Clifton Hill it didn't contain enough, which a rebalance between explanation and narrative in the final moments would have corrected.

Writing to The Guardian, critic Peter Bradshaw echoes the general sentiment regarding The Disappearance at Clifton Hill ending in his review:

“It's a rather bizarre film, a thriller that seems to be partly composed of delusions and hallucinations, leading to a shaggy-dog ending that wraps things up, albeit in a slightly exasperating way.”

Other critics had similar complaints. Another example comes from Roger Ebert critic Nick Allen. Allen's critique is even less forgiving than Bradshaw's, and when it comes to the ending, this critique of The Disappearance at Clifton Hill labels the surreal ambiguity as far from satisfying enough to convey the story:

“The narrative takes twists and turns with this change, but the characters are underwritten, and the slippery nature of the film (until the final scene) feels more like a gimmick.”

Apart from the negative reviews, the end of The Disappearance at Clifton Hill the ending isn't mentioned much as a selling point. Those who praised the film focused on the cinematography, the cast's performances (even if the characters themselves didn't like it), and the overall tone of the film, rather than the narrative or the final scenes. As The shelfVictor Stiff's review says:

Disappearance on Clifton Hill kept me hooked even though I never cared what was going on. I know that statement is a strange compliment. There are hints of a big neo-noir fight to come out of Shin's latest film, but these glimpses only tease us. The captivating genre film that the plot suggests never fully takes shape. What we get, however, is a mediocre thriller with a killer vibe.