The Human Hibernation Ending Explained & Movie Recap: Is Erin Dead?

When you take a moment to pause and truly take in the world around you, the staggering beauty of nature becomes clear, just as its quiet demolition at our hands becomes impossible to ignore. After more than five years of research and prep, director Anna Cornudella brings us a world where humans have adapted to live according to nature, rather than uprooting forests and building skyscrapers. The Human Hibernation presents us with a whole new world order, where humans, animals, and plants share the Earth with almost no communication. The makers have stripped humans of their superior qualities, and they must hibernate in the winter to survive. The movie is a captivating slow burn, and if you make it past the first few minutes, you’ll find it to be a truly rewarding experience.

Spoilers Ahead

What happens in the movie?

After a long, dark night filled with silence, we discover holes on the large fields that seem to serve as cozy spots for hibernation. Out of one of these holes, young Erin crawls out, much earlier than he was supposed to. Erin screams and shouts for his sister, Clara, but his call goes unanswered. We see this world where nature is thriving and has overrun human civilization, or parts of it. Trees grow through walls and roofs, and wild animals roam freely inside homes, blurring the line between wilderness and the indoors. While looking for his sister, Erin faces rough terrain and snowstorms and naturally cries out loud for his sister, who was supposed to be guiding him through the process of waking up. Months later, when the rest of the humans, including Clara, finally wake up, she realizes her brother is missing. Determined to find him, she embarks on a journey to track him down.

What do humans do after waking up?

One interesting thing about this world is that, even though humans only hibernate for a few months, the houses look like they’ve been abandoned for years. The wild vines growing across the floor and walls, the extremely dusty floors, and the interior of the houses compel you to think that people must have been gone longer than they’re claiming. This means that nature is less forgiving in this world, and that’s why humans have bowed down to it and not the other way around. However, after the long sleep, we see humans dusting each other off, massaging heads, and helping others to get back on their feet post-hibernation. People  get back to their houses, they clean up, and they try to make their houses habitable again. 

Do the cows have supernatural powers?

In The Human Hibernation, cows are seen as some sort of active observers of the human characters. If you think about how people from the normal world often observe animals, you’d see the cows in the film have a similar gaze. They’re not acting as background animals, as they are most often presented as. The movie emphasizes how the cows are a threatening presence, and I might be going overboard here; but they make sounds like they’re communicating with each other. One character in the film tells Clara that humans should communicate less and embrace the animalistic communication methods, and he wonders if the omnipresent cows can read the human mind. Throughout the film, the way we see cows sharing the screen just as much as the human characters, it wouldn’t be entirely rubbish to think that there’s more to these cows than meets the eye. We see one man dressed as a music artist performing Sinatra’s “Fly Me to the Moon” on a stage to a herd of cows. While it might feel ridiculous to people, it only shows that in this world, humans do not look down on other species, and there’s a profound emotional connection between humans and other species. 

How do these humans adapt to this lifestyle?

It’s a whole different world, and the less you try to draw parallels between this world and ours, the better. Humans are hatched from eggs here, and that reminds Clara of how his baby brother was born with blue eyes. She didn’t help him in hatching from the egg, as this is a process that  the child is meant to navigate on their own. Coming back to the people, one of them tells Clara how his mother abandoned him when he was young, probably because she thought he was not strong enough to survive in the wild. In another instance, a man talks about how every time they wake up from hibernation, they find a slightly different version of the world. In this society, people are also open to accepting new family members if they find someone who wakes up alongside them. The fact that humans let wild animals roam around in their houses is enough to top us off that these creatures have completely different dynamics with animals than we do. 

Are the ponds truly portals to a different world?

Water bodies and ponds have deep importance in the film. We see Erin pulling a bucket of water up from a pond, and the man who was talking to Clara also takes water from the same pond. In The Human Hibernation’s ending, Clara submerges herself in a lake, possibly realizing that her brother is gone. A man tells a story about how he had many different fathers throughout his life, and each one of them believed that the ponds led to a portal to a different world. While that might not be the case at all, the ponds do signify more of a reflective entity for the inhabitants of the planet. Maybe the ponds aren’t portals to another world, but they do feel important. They act like mirrors, helping people reflect on their thoughts and feelings. In a world where people and animals are more or less the same, the quiet, calm water gives them a chance to take a break and feel more in sync with the world around them. When Clara sits by a pond/lake, she sees a herd of cows looking right back at her, and even though there is no verbal communication between them, you do feel they’re talking. 

Does Clara Find Erin, Or Is He Dead?

Even though Clara embarked on a long journey, all she could find was a chicken she really liked. It’s foolish to assume that Erin survived the harsh winter, and he wasn’t supposed to either. Whenever something defies the natural order, it’s bound to succumb by the hands of nature. In this case, that was Erin waking up before he was supposed to, and hypothermia can’t be kind to a young boy, just as nature isn’t kind to cubs and puppies. Erin’s death signifies the importance of the survival techniques humanity has developed in this world. Clara questions this new order by trying to look for her brother, even though she wasn’t hopeful herself; her love for Erin drove her to do so. The Human Hibernation is a commentary on losing people who matter to us and how death is not kind. In this world, humans are no better than the rest of the living creatures who inhabit the planet, and in order to survive, one must walk the tightrope, be they man or animal. 

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