This film has drawn mixed reviews as well as understanding, and that is a major point of Mr. Garland's work: to make the audience think, to feel, and to contemplate what they would do if in a similar situation. Self-destruction is a major theme in this film and it effects every single one of the characters we journey through the story with. We watch as each one of them begin to become undone, and what's important to note is how they come undone. Anya becomes paranoid, Cass dies a horrible death attempting to protect other people, Josie gives in, Ventress becomes a part of "The Shimmer" and is willing to find any way to live rather than die, Kane becomes unrecognizable to his own wife, and Lena - well, Lena is different from the bunch.
Lena is able to kill the entity at the end of the film. This is significant as she is able to destroy the symbol of her self-destructive nature unlike everyone else in "The Shimmer." And while the ending can seem ambiguous to many, let me venture to say that it is quite poignant. Kane represents a soldier who seems to only know war, hard fighting and killing. Yes we see him kill himself with a phosphorus grenade and an entity replicates his body. But, symbolically, Kane is; his body is still alive. He exists in the flesh, but what's inside is not the same, since the entity doesn't even know who it is, and Lena certainly knows that it is not her husband. The reason this matters is that, apparently,Garland is giving us a picture of a war-torn soldier, a person who set out to serve his country and has been stripped of everything except his flesh that made him who he is.
And, Kane hugging Lena at the end is a man clinging for dear life to the one thing he believes he may still recognize. It is a deep and meaningful metaphor, whether or not Mr. Garland intended this is uncertain, but he certainly demands his audiences to participate in his films, and he provided a rich cinematic opportunity to do so with Lena and Kane's relationship.
