'Take Me To Hell' Ending Explained & Movie Recap: Who Died? Who Survived? 

In 2025, making a bad horror movie should be considered blasphemous. I might be exaggerating a bit, but we are getting good to great horror movies from all over the world; keeping that in mind, my hu statement is justified, especially for movies like “Take Me to Hell.” The Indonesian horror may have a similar-sounding title to Sam Raimi’s iconic “Drag Me To Hell,” but is straight up terrible in every possible way. The writing, acting, and direction—nothing whatsoever actually works here. We are, of course, going to do a dissection of the film and its shoddy climax in this article. Let’s get on with it.

Spoilers Ahead

“Take Me To Hell” opens with an ominous visual of the Astri boarding house. Inside of it, a resident, a young guy named Bobby, is freaking out for some reason. He is continuously trying to convince his friend Min to leave the boarding house and live somewhere else. Mon, however, fails to understand what’s going on with Bobby, and also refuses to leave. Bobby is so scared that he almost pleads with Min to sleep in his room for the night, to which Min agrees. Bobby’s sleep gets interrupted by a horrible nightmare, though, where he goes to the banana plantation outside, starts digging up the ground, and finds a dead body inside a bag (with the head exposed). The dead body happens to be his own. Bobby wakes up in horror, but this premonition actually comes true, and the writers of the film never bother to explain if Bobby has some sort of abilities. Had this entire opening scene not been in the movie, things wouldn’t be much different. 

Anyway, the narrative then slips into the set template of these movies, as we are introduced to Lena, our de facto lead character. She has come to Malang to study; needless to say, Lena is going to stay in the Astri boarding house, which is run by Mrs. Astri and her husband, Wiryo. Lena’s elder brother, Benhur, aka Ben, has been a resident at the boarding house for many years already. There’s this subplot of Ben having trouble with his parents and not quite having a bond with his sister, but like most things in this movie, it is half-baked and doesn’t leave much of an impact. Anyway, Lena befriends Bobby, Min, and this girl, Rina, who seems nice and helpful. She also meets Astri and Wiryo’s son, Rian, who is their age. Soon after, we see Bobby freaking out again during this sort of get-together dinner—where Astri has cooked for everyone. On that same night, Bobby starts feeling sick and abruptly leaves. Before leaving, he keeps talking about seeing this hanging ghost—the whole body inside a dirty body bag, with the head exposed, scary face, and burning eyes. Everyone dismisses his claim, including Astri and Wiryo, who keep saying there’s nothing out of the ordinary going on in the boarding house. However, right after Bobby leaves, the lights start flickering for a while, and Astri and Wiryo seem concerned about Rian, all of a sudden. Well, the concern is legitimate, as Rian is suddenly very sick, with pus oozing out of his hands, all infected. The next morning, Lena wakes up with a headache and finds out everyone is sick as hell. Upon trying to get pills for her headache from Astri’s place, which is right beside the boarding house, she gets a peek at Rian’s room. Things soon turn stranger and grimmer for Lena when she herself sees the ghost that Bobby saw. When she tells Ben, he dismisses her claim. But Rina also sees the same ghost; it’s like the ghost roams around everywhere. Ben still seems to be nonchalant, which makes you believe he might be involved in some sort of devilish scheme, but no, the only devil here is bad writing. Anyway, tragedy befalls the boarding house when Rina is found dead one morning, with her body looking like every trace of life was drained out of her. We do see how she dies, though, as the night before, Lena and Rina become suspicious about Astri taking the plates from dinner to the storage at the back of the house. While Lena decides not to pry further for the night, Rina can’t resist her curiosity. She breaks into the storage and comes across the ghost again, who, upon seeing her, takes his slithering tongue out and puts it down her throat and does the deed. The scene seems like they’re trying to imitate “Stranger Things,” with absolutely zero originality there.

There’s no point delaying this, right? Especially given how the movie keeps circling around this question without giving any viable answer for almost ninety percent of its runtime. Forget about Bobby’s leaving or Rian’s sickness or Rina’s death; even Wiryo’s death doesn’t push Astri to come clean. Well, why would she, considering she herself is part of the problem? So, here’s the deal—Astri and Wiryo, who are Muslims (religion hardly matters though), made a pact with this bodybag devil years ago, and they were blessed with Rian. Astri says they lost everything to God—she refers to him as “your god”—but it is not quite clear what she’s talking about. Anyway, the equation is simple. There have to be ten residents in the boarding house at all times, and the devil will feed on their souls. How does that work? Astri takes the unwashed dishes to the storage, and the devil licks them clean, as simple as that. We’re expected to believe that this has been going on for as long as twenty-two years, and only now, all this chaos is happening. Back to the deal, the boarding house must always have ten residents; otherwise, Rian will get sick and eventually die. The only way he can be revived is by letting the devil feast on four human beings. After Wiryo’s death, everyone but Ben, Lena, and Min leaves, which automatically makes it easy for Astri, who has three out of four sacrifices readily available. The only reason these three can’t leave is because they haven’t got the money to, and their parents are ignoring them. They do find some hope, though, when Bobby calls and tells them he is returning to pick them up and take them to his new boarding house, which is all fine (with no devil with a slithering tongue roaming around). He also warns them about black magic being done on them, which is no surprise as we already know they’ve consumed rat meat, passed off as something else by Astri. Sadly for Bobby, his life was always supposed to be cut short, like what he saw in that dream. Nothing would have happened had he not come back to save his friends, but fate decided his time over. So Bobby arrives, only to get knocked out by Astri and have the life sucked out of him by the devil. Astri manages to abduct the other three as well. She keeps them tied up before dragging Min to hell.

Knowing their turns will come soon, Lena and Ben freak out, but obviously, this is not the kind of horror that kills off off the good guys. Thanks to Rian helping them from the adjacent room by telling them where to find scissors, the siblings free themselves, and like what every good friend would do, they make saving Min their priority. And they almost pull it off, but ultimately end up at this very cult-like place where the sacrifices are to be made, with Bobby’s lifeless body already waiting for them. Astri attacks both Min and Ben with a sickle, making it difficult for them to fight back. She then puts Lena inside the body bag, as we see the devil coming out in all its glory. Just when you think all is lost, Rian appears magically and decides to end the whole thing once and for all by taking his own life. With him gone, the devil also vanishes, and Astri soon follows by killing herself. Ben, Lena, and Min survive, and we see their parents apologizing to them. The final shot of the movie shows the boarding house with the hanging bodybag devil in front of it again, but I don’t think it means anything. Also, I’ve tried and failed to find any viable explanation for there being more than one body bag ghost, but for the sake of the plot, let’s just believe it happened somehow, just like how Palpatine returned.