The "death-seeking squad" that escaped the Haunted House didn't avoid death in the end; they died one after another in various ways, but without exception, their deaths were identical to the female lead's wealthy boyfriend.
Realizing the gravity of the situation, the three currently surviving members went to the town library to look up information to escape the demon boy's curse. They accidentally discovered that one of the previous owners of the Haunted House was still alive, though confined to a mental asylum. They believed that this survivor must have a way to break the curse.
From the survivor's mouth, they learned he was the father of the previous family of four who lived in the Haunted House. He recounted the tragedy that occurred back then and, during a sudden fit of madness, intermittently and unclearly explained how he had escaped the demon's curse.
The three, having obtained a vague method to break the curse, were terrified, yet they returned to the Haunted House with a desperate determination. Unexpectedly, while exploring the house again, they found a top-secret notebook in the room of the son of the previous family. It clearly recorded the "demon child" nature of the son, Harry Creel, as well as his acts of animal abuse and eventually the brutalization of his family.
Seeing this, both the audience and the protagonists had a sudden realization.
There were no demons in this world; hell was empty, and the devils were among men. The one who had been secretly cursing everyone was not some brutal, bloodthirsty demon, but a naturally evil demon child with powerful telekinesis wreaking havoc on the world.
Suddenly, the demon child appeared. With an unreal, cold look, he appeared stark naked behind the three survivors. Soon, another person died under his attack. In a difficult struggle, the two survivors tried the method to break the curse. As the plot reached its climax, the camera holder died to protect the female lead. At the final moment, she realized how to break the curse, found the demon child's weakness, and killed him. Finally, to completely destroy the Haunted House, she set a fire and burned it to the ground.
Seeing the female lead survive narrow escapes, finally eliminate the demon, and step out of the shadows, the audience, who had unknowingly broken into a cold sweat from the intense plot, smiled with relief. For a time afterward, the female lead carried the camera that recorded all the incredible events with her, using it as a device to record her life. The movie showed scenes of her moving on from the shadows.
But beneath those seemingly normal and heartwarming shots of the lead interacting with her family, there seemed to be some discordant, eerie details hidden. Finally, an observant viewer noticed something and screamed in collapse within the secluded screening room: "Hands! Hands! Look at the bottom left corner!"
Everyone looked over blankly and immediately began to shake like sieves, their breathing quickening as they discovered several deep blue fingers appearing in the bottom left corner of the frame.
No wonder some of the recordings were so strange—some segments hadn't been filmed by the lead or her family at all; they were filmed by the demon child everyone thought was dead!
At the end of the movie, the lead also seemed to notice the anomaly. She screamed in collapse just like the audience. In a series of flickering, sorrowful shots, she wept bitterly toward the camera while saying something, looking as if she were speaking directly to the people watching the movie.
"I'm sorry... to everyone seeing this video... Harry Creel might not be dead... If there are demons in this world, then he must have transformed into an existence that we humans cannot understand..."
"He has, in an unknown way, injected his Will into this camera record; he has become a true curse... Everyone who picks up this tape and watches the recording Will eventually be killed by the demon child's curse... Uh..." At this point, after a flickering scene, the lead's face suddenly became hideous, her eyes bulging, blood seeping from her sockets, as she laughed wildly and cursed everyone in front of the screen, "You Will all die! You Will all die!"
Hearing this, the audience's faces were contorted in terror; some hugged each other, while others curled up in their seats, unable to say a word.
Bleep—
After a screen of static, the audience saw the lead's appearance flickering between normal and the face of the demon child. Sometimes her eyes rolled back, and she hung in mid-air, her head completely leaving the camera's view.
After a series of crisp cracking sounds, in the blurry, misty lens, the lead was dismembered alive, her body parts falling to the ground in a mess.
At the end of the footage, the audience could only see half of the lead's face, her eyes still open in death, and a pair of blue child's feet. The boy slowly walked out of her room. Amidst the screams of horror and despair from her family, it announced the destruction of her home. The screen went black, and the story ended there.
Amidst the eerie music of a music box, a line appeared: "This story is purely fictional; any resemblance is absolutely impossible." This pale and weak reassurance comforted the traumatized moviegoers. Everyone was still immersed in the screams of the lead's family's death; some hadn't even stopped crying. The warm orange lights flickered back on, yet they still failed to dispel the shadows in people's hearts.
This movie was destined to leave a deep shock and fear in everyone experiencing a found footage horror film for the first time. Even with their eyes closed, they could think of that blue-skinned little boy and the powerlessness and despair of the group of young people facing a terrifying, unsolvable curse.
"F*ck! This stuff Chade and the others made is really intense!" Among the crowd, Mike and the others who were familiar with Richard were the first to come to their senses. Mike couldn't help but curse, his pale little face sporting eyes filled with both fear and excitement. "This movie is amazing!"
"I've never seen this type of horror movie before! If I didn't know Nancy and the others, I would've thought it was real," Lucas said with an exaggerated expression, clutching his chest.
"This horror movie is awesome! I'm going to recommend it to my friends!" someone shouted in the theater. Actually, he didn't need to say such things out loud; it was just that the thrills of the movie had spiked their adrenaline so high that they needed to shout like this to release the energy.
Where there is praise, there is naturally criticism. Some cursed the creators for being deviant, filming things intentionally meant to scare people to death.
Regardless, aside from the somewhat unprofessional acting, filming equipment, and techniques, everything else was quite eye-opening. The various horror atmospheres were created very effectively, making it feel immersive.
A guy grumbling about the movie got up to leave and accidentally bumped into a little boy walking in front. In a terrible mood, he was about to curse, "You blind dog," but in an instant, the boy's face overlapped with the demon child's evil face that was etched into his mind. The more he looked, the more they seemed alike. Finally, with a "ga" sound, a rough grown man let out a high-pitched scream like a girl and fled the screening room.
"Are you okay, Will?" Mike asked with concern, supporting the Will who had been bumped into.
Will shook his head and asked in confusion, "What was wrong with that guy just now?"
"Who knows? Probably a psycho," Dustin said, putting his arm around Will's shoulder to comfort him.
As they walked out of the cinema, Troy was reflexively about to crumple his expired ticket and throw it away, but Mike and the others quickly stopped him: "Don't throw it!"
Troy turned back blankly: "Why can't I throw it?"
"With a stamped 'demon child creel' movie ticket, you can get any drink at half price at Heihe Tea next month for Christmas."
"Heihe Tea? Is that stuff actually good?" Troy thought blankly, and the exiting audience members passing by were also extremely skeptical.
"I'm telling you, once you drink that stuff, I guarantee you won't even want to drink Coke anymore," Mike and the others said earnestly, patting their chests as people who had tasted Richard's handiwork.
Hearing this, Troy thought for a moment and said, "Alright then. Since it's a bargain, I'll keep it."
Troy's thought was exactly what the vast majority of the audience was thinking.