Santiago Menghini's Netflix horror flick features an inescapable boarding house with a sinister past. Did Ambar manage to break the curse and get out alive?
'No One Gets Out Alive' is a 2021 Netflix horror film directed by Santiago Menghini.
The film centers around a mysterious house with a sinister secret. There hides an evil creature from the early Mesoamerican civilization, hungry for human sacrifices.
Desperate and struggling in a foreign country, a young immigrant gets forced to rent a cheap boarding house. But when she discovers the horror that lies within its walls, she realizes that she made a huge mistake.
Was she able to break the curse and get out of the house alive? Let us find out.
Ambar Cruz (Cristina Rodlo) is an illegal immigrant in her twenties. Originally from Mexico, she moves to Cleveland after the tragic death of her mother.
Ambar finds a job at a clothing factory run by an overbearing and boss. She stayed at a cheap motel for two weeks, but when asked for an ID, Ambar gets forced to move into a boarding house in Schofield Heights.
The boarding house is ginormous but old and deteriorated. Thomas “Red” Welles runs the place. After inquiring about her job, Red asks her for a one-month upfront payment for the room. Although strapped in cash, Ambar gets forced to pay.
Ambar found out from Red that she is the second tenant in the females-only boarding house.
The first tenant is Freja, who lives in 104, right under Ambar's room. Red also tells Ambar that Freja does not speak English, which Ambar later learns is a lie.
On one occasion, Ambar bumps into Freja in the staircase. Freja tells Ambar that Red is 'full of shit."
While at work, Ambar asks a co-worker, Kinsi, to get her a fake ID that declares she was born in Texas. Kinsi tells Ambar that her guy demands $3,000 for the fake ID.
Ambar is short of cash, so she is forced to ask Red to return her room deposit. Unfortunately, Red said he had already spent her money on repairs.
Kinsi asks Ambar why she should not get an Ohio ID instead, which only costs $1000. Ambar divulges that while she was in Mexico, she called her mother's cousin, Beto. She asks him to help her find a job, but Beto can not do so if she is not an American Citizen.
Desperate for a job, Ambar lies to Beto and says she was born in Texas. Her mother used to live in Texas, so Beto believes her.
That job interview is finally happening on Friday. Ambar must secure her fake ID soon, or she will have no other choice but to get stuck in her job at the horrible clothing factory.
Kinsi pretended to sympathize with Ambar's dilemma. She offered to lend her the remaining amount so she could get her fake Id before Friday. Ambar was ecstatic, and she gave Kinsi all her savings.
However, Kinsi disappeared the following day. Her boss tells Ambar that Kinsi already resigned. Ambar asks her boss' help, but he refuses to give her confidential details. Ambar insists, and the boss gets annoyed and fires her.
Upon returning to the boarding house, Ambar sees malevolent apparitions. She saw a woman named Maria frightening and trapping another spirit, who screamed for help.
Horrified, Ambar calls Beto and asks him to give her some money. But Beto refuses to wire her the amount, forcing Ambar to run away from the house to escape.
But with no money in hand, Ambar ends up contacting Red again, hoping to get her deposit back.
Red meets Ambar in a diner and promises to return her money. But she has to accompany him back to the boarding house because he left the cash there.
Although hesitant, Ambar gets forced to go with Red.
When she arrived at the house, Red's brother, Becker, attacked Ambar and locked her in her room.
Arthur and Mary Welles, Red and Becker's parents, used to run the Schofield Heights. The opening scene of the film reveals that Arthur was an American archaeologist. He discovered a stone box during his excavations in Mexico in 1963.
Red said that his father brought the stone box home, and he got possed by the sinister monster that lives inside the box.
Throughout the film, we see Ambar dreaming of the mysterious box. A pair of hands emerge from it.
It turns out that Red's family has been offering human sacrifices in exchange for good fortune and good health.
Becker has a mental illness, so they tried to stay away from the house. But when they were unable to afford his medical bills, the brothers were forced to return home. Upon returning, they found out that their father brought women to the house and sacrificed them to the monster. Their mother helped him in the rituals, but he later offered her to the evil creature too.
Red admitted that he killed his father to put an end to the killing. He wanted to leave, but Becker thought he could still fix the house.
Soon enough, the evil monster started going after Becker, luring him to take his father's place. Red wanted to stop Becker, but he noticed that his mental condition improved.
Becker asked Red to continue performing the ritual, and after he gets fully cured, they will stop.
Red opened the boarding house and started accepting tenants. They mostly lure illegal immigrants because they have no records in the country and are therefore untraceable.
Soon after Ambar rented the room, two other immigrant women, Maria and Petra, also came. They are about to get sacrificed, too.
Maria and Petra seek refuge in Ambar's room, aware that something awful will happen to them. There, they talked about their dreams and paranormal visions. Ambar falls asleep and has another weird dream. When she wakes up, she sees Becker and Red attacking the girls.
Ambar tries to help, but Becker knocks her out. When she wakes up, Red and Becker are already preparing her for the ritual sacrifice. Ambar's uncle Beto came to the boarding house and tried to save her. But Becker viciously kills him.
After sacrificing Maria, Becker takes Ambar and chains her on a stone platform in the basement where the opened stone box is hidden.
The monster slowly crawls out of the box. Beto arrives and sets Ambar free. For a second, we think she will escape, but we soon learn that the monster was only feeding her a dream.
Ambar finds herself in a hospital room with her dying mother. The monster was using her weakness to trap her.
While the monster feeds Ambar with false memories, it slowly walks towards her actual body to devour her.
However, Ambar fights back. In her dream, she suffocates her mother and kills her. Her action symbolizes that she finally moved on from her grief.
She wakes up just before the monster can devour her and complete the sacrifice. The creature crawled back to its cage in fear.
After escaping from the basement, Ambar fights Red and Becker using the ancient sword she got from Arthur's room. Ambar managed to kill Becker with the sword, but she broke her ankle while Petra died in the process.
Ambar then takes Red to the basement, chains him on the stone table, and opens the stone box. She watched the evil monster devour Red's head. In his dreams, Red probably sees Becker killing him.
After Red's death, Ambar walks out of the basement and locks it. We saw Red's spirit in one of the rooms, which means that his soul will get trapped in the house, just like those who got sacrificed before him.
Ambar's broken feet magically heal, and the butterflies that represent the evil spirit flew around her.
The film ends with Ambar smiling. Ambar has nowhere else to go in the foreign country, so she is probably staying in the house and continue the legacy of sacrifice that Arthur has started.
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