Night Of Deception (Dajal) Ending Explained & Full Story: Who Was the Goat-headed Man?

South-Asian horror is definitely emerging as the new horror genre, embodying religious horror, gore, and symbolism in its narratives. Spiritual possession, demonic invasion, and satanic worship are common horror tropes, but with a little cultural definition, they can be vessels for carrying culturally significant symbols. Night of Deception, originally Dajal: Satu Malam Dipedajal, is a horror-cum-slasher directed by Mohd. Pierre Andre takes us headfirst into a haunted house for a bone-chilling night. The film plays with the usual horror trope of devil worshipping, navigates through a night of demonic rituals and hallucinations, but takes you ultimately to a juncture where the veil between the spiritual realm and the reality has thinned. Although the characters and their past could have been explored more to feed into the horror of the film, the action-heavy night charged with a demonic chase makes for a reasonable half-hour of nightmarish horror.

Spoilers Ahead

What Is The Film About?

Night of Deception starts with two cleaning guys, Mirul and Fendi, making their journey to a house for a thorough clean-up. Their tire goes flat en route, and a man in a black suit plays the good Samaritan, helping them fix the tire and find their way to the house. As Mirul and Fendi reach house 33, they see a child in pink, and a strange sense of deja vu sets in. As they enter the house, they both part ways for an initial inspection. One goes upstairs, and the other inspects what’s downstairs. What they find is a horrific site–a house splattered in blood that looks like a gory murder site. The two friends eventually reach a bathroom where a noose is hanging. They conjecture that the killer must have gotten in, killed the victims, and then hung himself in the bathroom. Perplexed, the two friends now want to get done with cleaning the house and leave the premises immediately. However, Fendi soon finds a pentagram on the floor under the carpet, and a cabinet full of demonic symbols. He also finds a grimoire, which he ends up activating by accidentally losing a drop of blood on it. With the grimoire activated, Fendi also reads out the name of the demon, and the demon is unleashed into the house. The rest of the night is full of hauntings as the two friends are trapped in the house. In the end, the film leaves it up to the viewers to decide whether they found salvation, or became one of the many spirits imprisoned in the haunted house that devours all.

Who Are The Demons?

Using a house as a site for horror is a popular trope being incorporated in emerging films in the horror genre. A house harbors the memory of the people that have lived there and also imprisons them in its structure. In the beginning, the film feels like it is going to be of the house-as-a-ghost genre. The house is numbered 33–a demonic number–the two friends find splotches of blood that are indelible no matter what they try to do. The cleaners may also be symbolically signifying that even if you clean a house’s surface, the underlying spirits cannot be cleaned out. However, as soon as Fendi finds the pentagram on the floor, the film shifts into a real demonic horror, leaning heavily towards ritualistic satanic worship. Fendi’s discovery of the pentagram on the floor leads the film into a demonic horror space that is explored further when Fendi and Mirul decide to perform the ritual in the book. The hauntings of the night were thought to be a result of reading aloud the demon’s name from the book, so they decide to go back to the book to resolve the matter at hand. However, instead of closing the spiritual portal, the ritual in the book seems to open  it further, inviting more sinister forces.  Following the guidance of the book, Fendi sits in the middle of the pentagram and calls out the names of four demons: Baal Zebak, Yetzur Hala, Samsama Zour, and Mant Gong. As soon as he chants the names, the spirit plate, with a drop of blood in it, starts spinning, opening a portal to the spiritual realm. The spirits rush in from all directions to the house, but instead of the spirits returning to the realm, the two friends are carried into a demonic realm.

Why does this happen?

While Fendi is clueless, Mirul explains that the demonic symbols formed the Sigil of Baphomet. Baphomet is a goat-headed god generally associated with Satan worshippers and ritual sacrifices. There is a belief that when you call a demon by the name, you activate it from slumber. Mirul suspected this as he asked Fendi whether he read aloud the name of the first demon from the book, but later, even with this knowledge, he asked Fendi to read aloud the names of the other three devils. At this point, although the two friends seem to be on a similar mission to escape the house, ideals start to look murky at Mirul’s side. As they are sucked into the demonic realm, visceral demonic figures start appearing, like the goat-headed man that we saw at the beginning of the film, a woman in a red dress and red veil, and multiple corpses. As Fendi navigates his way through the night, he is possessed by a demon and also chased by the goat-man whose face we cannot yet see. The revelation would become the final twist in the film, revealing the motive of the Satan worshippers as the night progresses.

Do the Cleaning Boys Survive?

Parallely, the girl we saw in pink had run to her grandma to inform her that she had seen the cleaners enter house 33. The grandmother, Laila, runs to a young neighbor couple, telling them something ominous is going to take place. While the pair are haunted all night in the spiritual realm and desperately try to find their way out, they realise that a version of them is going to be trapped in the house. However, while they are under the spell of demonic possession, Laila and the couple arrive just in time to save them. Cut to Mirul waking up in a peaceful house and finding Laila. Laila explains that the house has a long history of hauntings. The house belonged to her brother and sister-in-law, who went to Europe and strayed from their faith. They ended up becoming satanic worshippers who unleashed devils through their rituals. Laila mentions that her sister-in-law wore a red dress–a marker of a fallen woman while worshipping Satan. She is precisely the one who appears in the house, along with the goat-headed figure. Laila also says that they have now been rescued from the house, but a part of their consciousness is stuck in the house.

Who Was the Goat-headed Man?

In Night of Deception’s ending, we return to the spirit realm again. As Fendi struggles to escape, the goat-headed man attacks him and sticks an axe in his head. Shortly after, we see the good Samaritan man appear with his wife and join the goat-headed man. The woman removes his mask and calls him Luqman, but we see that it is actually Mirul. The plan looks premeditated now–Mirul had probably lured Fendi into the house to orchestrate the ritual sacrifice.

A possible reason for this can be a common romantic interest they discuss when the car broke down. Mirul was talking to the same girl that Fendi was interested in. Or it may be that the two cleaner boys really fell prey to the Satan worshippers. The film ends with a question about how much of the boys’ consciousness would be able to escape and how much shall remain entrapped forever in house 33. The goat-headed man, revealed to be Mirul, is a final twist that blurs the line between victim and villain. We are left to wonder whether Mirul was always complicit, or if something shifted in him during the night. The ambiguity leaves viewers grappling with the horror of betrayal. Night of Deception may play with the most well-worn horror tropes, but it has surely gained a new and terrifying life.

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