"Shutter" Ending Explained: What Happens to Tun?

A photographer meets his mate—and a grim fate—in this Thai horror classic.

Note: Spoilers follow for the plot and ending of 2004’s Shutter. Thanks, Sukrit M., for the great recommendation!

Have you ever heard of sexual cannibalism? It’s when one mating partner consumes the other mating partner before, during, or shortly after conception. This mating ritual is most commonly associated with the praying mantis, wherein the female will devour the male’s head for nutrients¹. Sometimes, the female will continue mating with the male’s headless corpse until fertilization is complete.

In the 2004 Thai horror classic Shutter, one of the protagonists, Tun, learns this lesson in nature all too intimately.

Shutter follows a young woman named Jane and her photographer boyfriend Tun, who, after a dinner out with friends, accidentally hit someone with their car. Over the next few days, they notice a ghostly woman appearing in the background of Tun’s film negatives. It even takes on a more corporeal form, following the couple around Bangkok. As the hauntings grow more malicious, Tun grows paranoid and his sanity unravels. He also develops severe neck pain. Meanwhile, his friends begin to wind up dead in mysterious suicides, with each jumping to their death from their apartment balconies. Jane, believing that the entity behind all of this is the vengeful spirit of the woman they hit with their car, sets off on an investigation that uncovers shocking secrets about her boyfriend’s past.

The ghost is Natre, Tun’s former girlfriend and classmate. She was a social outcast, ridiculed for her shy, awkward demeanor. Pitying Natre, Tun started talking to her and they grew a strong connection. Eventually, they fell in love.

Disturbed by his relationship with Natre, Tun’s friends hatched a plan to, in their mind, free him from her clutches. They cornered her in a room and sexually assaulted her. Tun, who was there as a witness, proceeded to film her rape. Some short time later, Natre committed suicide.

Years pass until one night, once Tun has forgotten the whole thing or at least forgiven himself enough to find a new girlfriend, Natre exacts her revenge. How? By emulating the mating ritual of the praying mantis.

Like a female praying mantis, Natre’s diet is big on heads. Unlucky for Tun, his is on the menu.

The movie provides subtle clues about Tun’s fate. For example, late one night, Tun, in a foggy stupor, is seen watching a nature show detailing the praying mantis’s mating habits. We also see a praying mantis perched on a leaf by the side of the road, as Tun and Jane drive by en route to Natre’s house, where her body is decaying in her bedroom.

In a series of blunter hints, Natre, posing as Jane, grabs Tun’s head and gapes her mouth, as though making to bite his face; she emerges under the covers while Tun and Jane are in bed; and she pursues him through his apartment complex, clinging to the ceilings and crawling down a fire escape ladder, much like an insect.

It’s as though Natre is priming her victim, as she prepares to fuck his brains out. Literally.

Eventually, she decides it’s time to make her final move. Inside his apartment, Tun turns to face a mirror. To his horror, he discovers the source of his neck pains: Natre’s ghost has been sitting on his shoulders this whole time, feeding on his mind.

She covers his eyes, causing him to lose his balance, and he falls out of the window to his almost certain death. Only, Natre won’t grant him the luxury of an unceremonious death, like his friends whom she coerced into killing themselves. Instead, she has special plans for her eternal mate—and meal.

In the end, we find a psychologically lobotomized Tun rotting in what appears to be a hospital psych ward. A final shot shows Natre straddling his neck, her shoulders hunched as she continues to feast on the scraps of life remaining inside his skull. His fate is no different than that of a male mantis just trying to get it on.

So why does this fate make such perfect sense? The female praying mantis acts almost like a bridge between life and death. It ends a life so it can create life anew; it, too, dies in the process. In Shutter, Natre is taking a life to completely end her own, to liberate her soul still tethered to the world. It’s why Natre’s mother can’t bring herself to dispose of her body, as she believes the spirit has yet to fulfill its purpose. Indeed, it seeks a bridge to cross into the afterlife.

That bridge? Tun’s brains.

1. We can only imagine the level of ecstasy both parties feel.