Yellow Eyes Ending Explained And Movie Recap: Does Julia Manage To Save Her Husband?

The real horror isn’t the ghosts or the spirits, but the thought of losing the person you love more than anything in the world. Possession horror is probably one of the most popular horror subgenres, I mean, who could forget films like “Jennifer’s Body,” “Talk to Me,” or the 1981 classic “Possession.” So when one of the characters in Jesse Korman’s “Yellow Eyes” hints how horrible it gets to live with someone you’re falling out of love with within the first five minutes of the film, you already know you’re in for a treat. Korman leans into the cult-like madness surrounding a demonic entity, an ancient evil that predates Christianity, and uses it brilliantly to drive the story toward one wicked ending. Made with a very limited budget, “Yellow Eyes” is a genuinely gripping film which is best enjoyed if you overlook its tiny shortcomings.

Spoilers Ahead

What happens in the film? 

A creepy old man named Theos draws an evil eye on a door, and asks a demon to possess him. When the demon takes control of Theos’ body, his eyes turn bright yellow, and he pretty much proceeds to butcher himself to death. A few months later, Ronnie, who’s a lawyer, reaches out  to Theos’ nephew, Brad, who had no idea about his dead uncle’s existence until now. Brad’s mother is old and being kept in an asylum, his sister doesn’t want anything to do with her family, so he inherits Theos’ house. His wife, Julia, is a stylist who’s very good at her job, and judging by how she talks about Brad, she’s very much in love with him as well. Brad and Julia live in a small apartment where they have a good life, but upon knowing that he’s inheriting a house, Brad is too excited to ever go back into their apartment again. Initially, Julia tries to negotiate with Brad, but a month later, we see them moving to the house. Julia’s boss, Lana, and her boyfriend, Carl, help them move in. Brad has decided to renovate the house all by himself, while promising Julia that he’d build a dedicated salon corner just for her so that she could charge her clients more for a more private experience. However, while cleaning up the house, Brad and Julia discover a hidden door with the evil eye drawn on it. I think all of us remember how the evil eye drawing came to existence, and it only gets weirder when Brad breaks the door down and discovers a hidden room inside. The room is empty, except for a statue of a deity standing right in the centre. The statue has a sword in one hand, a shield on its back, and some sort of funnel in the other hand that leads directly to its mouth. The statue’s eyes are bright yellow, just like Theos’ eyes before he killed himself.

How does the deity take hold of Brad? 

At first, Brad thinks that Theos was hiding this antique relic which is probably worth a small fortune and he can sell it to get rich. But hours after discovering the statue, it starts to play with Brad’s mind, and keeps pulling him towards it. Brad goes to inspect the statue once again, and when he rubs the statue’s bright yellow eyes, a black oil comes out of it. Without thinking twice, he decides to consume that oil, just like Hitchcock from “Brooklyn Nine-Nine.” Meanwhile, Julia gets a nightmare where she sees uncle Theos sucking her fingers, while Brad with glowing yellow eyes is latched onto her other hand, consuming her flesh. The next morning, Brad’s sister Maddie informs them that Theos was a professor of religious history and comparative religion at the University of Chicago. Theos was suspended from the university after he started attacking his students. Brad also starts showing signs of losing his mental stability after consuming the oil from the statue. Julia finds him touching live electric wires and laughing, and when she asks him about his day job, he refuses to go back to work and he makes it a point that his primary job is to fix the house. A professor who worked with Theos, Doctor Gross, comes to the house to check out the statue, and deciphers what’s written on it. The language appears to be a bizarre blend of Akkadian, Sumerian, Ugaritic, and Sanskrit, languages from different cultures and periods that were never historically used together like this. Gross says that the statue is a sacrificial altar, and it’s a fertility god, signified by the pregnant belly and the exposed phallus. He also mentions that this deity drives people to act on their carnal desires to an animalistic level, so much so that it leads to self destruction. When Julia mentions that all these things sound like this deity is the devil, Gross corrects her by answering that this deity is older than the very concept of Devil by two thousand years. Now if you happen to possess such an antique statue in your house, it’s probably best to sell it off immediately, right? But Brad refuses to give the statue to Gross, as he is already attached to the statue, so much so that he calls it a family heirloom, and that oil he’s been drinking must be addictive. 

Does Brad kill Carl? 

Julia starts researching about the statue, and she stumbles upon Father Penrose, a man who’s fought with the victims of Yellow Eyes. Penrose claims that it’s impossible to perform an exorcism when Yellow Eyes makes you a host, and he’s seen many good, innocent people losing their soul to this evil. Simultaneously, Brad is coughing up black goo in the washroom, as his behaviour and facial expression is getting  worse every minute. Julia’s patience and courage runs out when she starts looking for Brad in the night, while the house is pitch dark. When she does find Brad, he now looks completely possessed, and he can’t even hide it. Brad finds a raccoon and hammers it to death, and Julia can’t quite believe her sweet husband has turned into a blood-thirsty maniac who keeps pounding on the dead animal with the hammer. Unable to process this on her own, Julia calls Lana and Carl over the next morning, and Brad is hiding his yellow eyes by wearing sunglasses. While the three of them chat, Brad sneakily goes to his statue again to kiss it; you can see the amount of hold this ancient deity has on this poor man. Julia takes Lana and Carl to show them the statue, and while the ladies go away after taking a glance at it, Brad asks Carl to stay back. Carl was fascinated to see such an antique, not knowing that Brad is planning to imprison him. While Carl is busy examining the statue, Brad catches him off guard and forces him to cut off one of his arms with the sword held by the deity, quenching the statue’s thirst with yet another person’s blood. Brad lies to the women and tells them that Carl bounced, while poor Carl remains stuck in the basement, losing his soul to Yellow Eyes. 

How does Julia escape from Brad? 

Isn’t it funny how people in films don’t immediately realise that their partners are possessed or there’s something wrong with them? Julia falls under the same trope, yet she can literally see Brad’s glowing yellow eyes under the sun, or the fact that he’s eating like a mukbang influencer on coke. Brad growls like an animal while stuffing his mouth with meat, but he also manages to break free for a bit and tell his wife that he’s trapped. The same night, Brad crawls on top of Julia, and tells her how he’d like to kill his sister and her babies. Julia can’t help but reminisce about her wedding day, hoping that the old Brad would come back to her if she talks about the best moment of their lives. But Brad’s eyes say otherwise; he’s not Julia’s husband anymore. The next morning, one of Julia’s clients, Gretchen, shows up at the house looking to fix her hair. Even though Julia tries her best to send her away, Gretchen won’t stop bugging her, offering her more and more money. So Julia hears some noise in the basement and thinks that Brad is downstairs, so she locks the door. But as soon as Julia leaves Gretchen alone, Brad shows up behind her, and the man uses his wife’s scissors to butcher her face and hair. Julia realises she’s made a horrible mistake when Gretchen is missing, after she checks the basement and finds out that it’s yellow eyed Carl who’s in the basement, while Brad is nowhere to be seen. She calls Dr. Gross to take the Yellow Eyes statue away for good, and when the man listens to everything Julia has to say, he’s in disbelief. Gross feels that what Brad might be experiencing is psychological fervor, which can drive some individuals unhinged while artists or innovators benefit from the extra zeal. He also says that Theos was suspended from the University because he was grooming his students for occult activities, and he was throwing these debauched and perverse parties. It’s not that hard to understand that Yellow Eyes had Theos under its control as well, since it took Brad hostage so quickly. Brad finally shows up, looking like his normal self, but that’s only a ruse to make Gross feel safe around him. As he asks the man to come down to the basement to collect the statue, Brad sacrifices Gross to the deity’s knife as well. Now the interesting thing is, even though it looks like the knife should kill people, it doesn’t. Yellow Eyes only likes to take over people’s minds, so the ancient deity is only starting a cult, which now includes Brad, Carl, Gross, and Gretchen. Julia has seen enough by now, and she runs away like a bat out of hell. 

Does Julia manage to save her husband in the end?

Julia leaves home with nothing but the clothes on her back, no money, no phone, yet somehow tracks down Father Penrose, a man who has faced Yellow Eyes and its victims before. Penrose has a tattoo on his arm that says you cannot triumph over evil, which is pretty pessimistic for a preacher. He’s also very clear about the fact that Yellow Eyes doesn’t fear the power of God, and he asks Julia to put a knife through Brad’s throat if she wants to live. But Julia is adamant on saving Brad, and she tries to shame Penrose for giving up on people. When she sees that this preacher isn’t falling for her stupid arguments, she asks him to do something that can at least ensure that she sees Brad’s true self for one last time. Penrose agrees to help, even though he knows that he can’t possibly do anything to defeat this ancient evil. Meanwhile, Lana shows up to Brad and Julia’s house to burn some sage and purify the house, and you can’t help but wonder how come this woman doesn’t care about the fact that her boyfriend has been missing for days. Anyway, Brad sneaks up on her, and he tries to seduce her into sleeping with him. Even though Lana is kind of into Brad, she refuses to give in to her lust over her friendship with Julia, but Brad adds her to the cult of Yellow Eyes nonetheless. When Penrose and Julia show up in the basement, all of Yellow Eyes’ followers look like zombies, and they mock Penrose for being a failure. Penrose too, agrees with them, as he tries to distract them for long enough to get to the altar. When Julia starts yapping about Brad and her love story once again, it seems like the real Brad is trying to break through the possession, but that gets over in two seconds. The group of zombies grab Penrose and try to drain his blood for the deity, but Julia grabs Penrose’s holy knife and strikes the statue’s eyes, plucking them both out. This act sends the zombies into a frenzy, and Julia manages to grab one of the eyes before running away. 

Penrose and Julia hide in the bedroom, blocking the door, while Penrose hopes that without the eyes of the statue, Yellow Eyes’ hold over the victims would wear out slowly. But that’s not exactly the case, as the film skips ahead a few days, when Theos’ attorney, Ronnie, shows up at a party celebrating Brad and Julia successfully inheriting the house. We see all the zombies along with Brad and Julia acting like normal people, and you already know that Ronnie is doomed. As the poor attorney drinks the wine Julia gives him, judging by the color, it’s clear that it is no wine, but the oil Yellow Eyes produces. The film ends with Ronnie ending up as the last victim, and you can be assured that these people will soon take over the whole neighborhood. 

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