Very spoilery. (If you’re looking for my review, it’s here. My game name-check is here.)
You want to know the ending to GATLOPP? P. Just kidding. I’ve spent too long playing Hangman with my 10 year old, I think.
So do they all get sent to hell to play that damn (and literally damning) game for eternity? I’m not sure where Paul ends up as the sun rises, but it looks pretty nice to me: on a flower-entwined swing, with his gorgeous ex-wife Alice on the swing next to him.
Okay she isn’t his ex-wife, she’s presumably some kind of trickster demon. Paul is there because with sunrise fast approaching (and chasing them round Cliff’s house) he has to either condemn the newly-appeared Alice, or someone else. He chooses himself, very gallantly, and ends up on that swing, in a meadow.
He asks her if he’s dead and she asks him if he feels dead. He tells her she’s not Alice — she laughs and shakes her head — and that his friends doesn’t deserve punishing as they are good people. They’re not, she replies as she walks away, but they aren’t bad people either. They’re “just people”. He then finds himself back at Cliff’s, coming round after collapsing on the floor.
Here’s how Alice appeared in Cliff’s house to start with:
Paul rolls a six. As Cliff starts to read the card there’s a scream and Alice appears in the room, holding a cocktail and wearing a beautiful long red dress. Sam tells her to sit down so they can finish the game, or they’re all going to die. Cliff reads the riddle on the card:
“I took your chance to succeed, lied about my every misdeed.
Attempts to cover done in vain introduced your truest pain.
And I who brought your doom, now stand in this very room.
If correct, we claim only the one, misdirect and all will become none.
WHO AM I?”
The sand timer flips over. Paul tells Alice the game wants him to say it’s her and send her to hell. The sun is coming up, the rays worming their way into the room. They hit Cliff’s hand and burn him. Sam asks them all: what if the answer is not Alice but one of them?
They rush around the apartment trying to avoid the encroaching sunrise. Alice tells Paul that Troy was texting her for ages begging her to leave Paul (one of the secrets revealed earlier is that Cliff found Troy and Alice kissing at Cliff’s beach party eight years before, and never told Paul). She then accuses Cliff of trying to get her drunk so she was wasted all the time. All of them are holding Paul back she claims, while she’s only ever wanted what’s best for him.
He says the riddle is referring to him, and he finds himself on the swing.
When Paul wakes up, his friends are standing over him. They go to the door to see if they can leave, and find the pizza they ordered the night before on the step.
The four realise they are now free, and arrange to take Cliff to hospital to get his leg fixed. On the way back in Sam’s car they stop off at Alice’s so Paul can sign the divorce papers as agreed. Sam tells Troy she can fix him up with a producer she knows. She’s also decided to go on holiday.
Paul knocks on the door which is opened by Alice’s much older boyfriend Andre. Alice storms out with her bags and goes to her car — she’s leaving Andre, as he wants an open relationship.
She apologises to Paul for what she’s like, and gives him the papers. Andre appears, telling Paul he must have the patience of Job to have stayed with Alice for so long. Paul is invited in but says no, but then returns to the house and gives Andre the GATLOPP game before leaving with Sam, Troy and Cliff.
The movie finishes with Andre calling all his white-clad, beautiful guests to come and play the game.
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