‘Arctic Void’ Ending Explained: Who’s Running This Test?

Amidst the blistering summer heat blanketing most of the United States, it should perhaps come as no surprise that people are turning to escapist entertainment. What better way to forget about the sweltering heat than feeling the cold wind blast of Arctic Void on Amazon Prime? This mysterious thriller might be low-budget, but it’s certainly high-intensity.

What starts out feeling like a straightforward tale of bickering buddies in the freezing Norwegian tundra quickly becomes something much more sinister. Though their boat purportedly steers them toward one of the 14 demilitarized zones on the planet, that does not mean that they are headed into a land absent of conflict. As the characters get a bit lost veering from their original course, so might you as the viewer.

But never fear, Decider is here! Read on for a breakdown of Arctic Void, including a recap of the plot and an explanation of that wild ending. Spoilers, obviously.

Arctic Void plot summary

TV host Ray Marsh (Michael Weaver) and his director/producer Alan Meursault (Tim Griffin) get their trip to Norway off on a bad start from the beginning when they arrive at a small Norwegian airport with no transportation arranged to take them to the boat where they need to be. They get lucky and find a ride through a local that Ray chats up outside, but this proves to be perhaps the last plot development that breaks their way.

Just before boarding, the two manage to link up with their cameraman Sean Tibbets (Justin Huen), a local they find on eerily short notice to come shoot the series for them. Something about Sean seems a little bit off, and those suspicions are confirmed when Ray opens a lunchbox that their third wheel carts around … only to find a sound system and a set of headphones. They each take a listen, Ray for a bit longer, to hear the odd whale sounds emitted by the device.

Sean does his job well enough on board, capturing footage of the charismatic captain Jim (Rune Temte) as well as the various contingents of Swedish tourists, Germans, and Norwegian scientists on board. Alan chats up the latter and learns they are on board to study the region’s auroras. As they explain, these are powerful geostorms with the hypothetical power to disable electronic technology – perhaps even the human brain.

Not long after the passengers witness a large seal with some conspicuous open wounds brutally mauling a younger animal of its own kind on an ice flow, Sean begins to notice a few other things off on the deck. A man seems to be bleeding out of his ear, and a flock of birds begins to circle ominously. Then, in a moment … everyone disappears. Everyone, that is, except Sean, Ray, and Alan.

The core duo emerges from below deck and tries to figure out where everyone went; Sean lies and says he was in the bathroom when it all went down. None of the electronics work, including the boat itself. Alan begins bleeding from strange gashes. They soon piece together that their fellow passengers did not just disembark so much as they completely disappeared.

The trio takes a raft ashore to Svalbard, their original destination, to find no signs of life. Inside an abandoned building, odd and ominous harbingers of abandoned humanity abound like a flickering TV and a skipping Russian record. Alan’s condition further deteriorates, as does his trust in Sean. That confidence completely evaporates when he turns on the digital camera from one of the Germans as they videoed each other just prior to their disappearance … and he spots Sean filming from the deck, thus exposing his dishonesty.

When Ray confronts Sean, their shady cameraman finally admits that he is an ex-military operative assigned to document the effects of the exposure to a sonic weapon. Humans are supposed to be merely disoriented by it, not entirely vaporized. His lunchbox headphones provide a countering vibration to the weapon’s frequency, inoculating the listener but not saving them entirely.

Alan becomes too weak to leave on the raft, and Ray asks him to film a video on his phone for the family he’ll be leaving behind. Sensing a threat, Ray puts the phone and camera inside a waterproof pouch and chunks it out to sea. Walking and talking with Sean, his walkie-talkie lights up with a message: “We have your location. Extraction in 30 minutes.”

They transport Alan out of the building in a wheelbarrow, and Ray stays behind with him as Sean goes outside to meet the people who make eye contact. Alan continues to teeter on the verge of death. Shortly after he expires, Ray presses his necklace with a jack on it – a totem expressing his anguish over the loss of a sibling he couldn’t save at the age of 10 – into his friend’s hands.

In the throes of his grief, Ray hears a gunshot ring out. Sean takes a sniper’s bullet to the back of the head. Inside the room with Ray, an old phone begins to ring … and rings … and rings.

After the credits, the camera bag continues to float in search of someone to discover it.

Arctic Void ending explained

Sean never gives precise details of who employs him, but some kind of military association is likely given that he was recruited to do the bidding of this group after an ex-navy buddy reached out. Either way, it’s clear that this shadowy organization is running some kind of weapons test that is off the books in a location that is out of sight and out of mind. (In a demilitarized zone, how ironic!)

We don’t know where they are based, but it’s clear they have some kind of observational presence established in Svalbard. While Sean is American, the Svalbard landing has heavy Russian influence as seen through the Cyrillic writing across buildings and public architecture. Whoever they are, rather than taking the risk of letting Sean escape and squeal about what he’s seen, they opt to eliminate him altogether.

This proves Ray’s hunch correct about the need to throw the evidence of their survival out into the water. With the phone ringing in the room, whoever killed Sean is clearly looking to determine if anyone else is still alive in Svalbard. We don’t see what Ray ultimately does, but he’s faced with the bind of revealing his existence to the unknown caller or trying to survive inside the abandoned building.

Ray’s willingness to poke the bear, pun intended, did help make him the last man standing among the group. By listening to the countering vibration for longer than Alan, he staves off the worst of the weapon’s effects. He avoids both the bleeding wounds and the violent irritability, both of which Alan exhibits. Considering that we see these in more extreme cases among the animals in the region, it stands to reason that the people deploying the weapon have tested it before utilizing just animals. What we see in Arctic Void is likely their first human trial.

By the end of the movie, we still don’t really know what happened to everyone else on the boat. Nor do we know what happened with Sean before the events of the film … or what will happen to Ray after them. The bag continues to float, too, toward uncertain discovery.

But writer/director Darren Mann, along with co-writers Jay Kirk and William Paul Jones, gives us enough information to connect some of the dots in their slender 85-minute thriller. The rest leaves us with the same gnawing uncertainty about experimentation on unwitting subjects as the characters experience.

Marshall Shaffer is a New York-based freelance film journalist. In addition to Decider, his work has also appeared on Slashfilm, Slant, The Playlist and many other outlets. Some day soon, everyone will realize how right he is about Spring Breakers.