The indie horror film The Fearway delivered plenty of mind-bending thrills, but its existential ending left a lot of deeper questions still unanswered. Released in 2023 and directed by Robert Gajic, The Fearway follows a couple named Sarah (Shannon Dalonzo) and Michael (Justin Gordon) as they travel down a desert freeway while trying to escape a mysterious monster that seems to know their every move. With its blending of monster mayhem and time loop thrills, The Fearway stretches its limited means to the absolute limit and delivers a few tense scenes. Simplicity is the key to the underrated horror film, and it uses its spooky moments as effectively as possible.
Though the movie has garnered limited attention from critics in general because of its independent nature, critic Lesley Felperin had less-than-flattering things to say about the movie (via The Guardian) which echoed the general sentiment from others. Nevertheless, The Fearway joined the copious amount of low-budget horror films available on the free movie app Tubi TV, and has managed to stand out for at least being an original take. Even if it may have been an overextension of sorts, the ending of The Fearway was a surprisingly challenging twist for an indie horror film, and its complicated nature both amazed and left a lot to be desired.
The Significance Of The Coins In The Fearway
The key to understanding a movie like The Fearway is to delve deeper into the symbols presented throughout the film, as the actual finale reveals the importance of their meaning. At the very beginning of the film, the injured woman (Robin Bookhout) is seen burying a pair of coins in the sand, and coins appear once again when the Waitress (Jessica Gray) gives some to Sarah and Michael for the jukebox at the diner. While the movie never explicitly states what the coins are for, it is clear that they have symbolic meaning as the audience eventually learns that everything around the couple is a realm outside the bounds of reality.
Coins have a historical connection to death in many cultures, and ancient Greek mythology actually dictated that one must be buried with coins in order to pass on to the other side. According to Navy Times, a deceased person was required to take coins to the underworld, in order to pay the ferryman who presided over the river Styx. The river separated the land of the living from the land of the dead, the dead person couldn’t pass over until they paid their due. In The Fearway, the coins could also be seen as the potential fare for Sarah and Michael when they are ready to pass over.
Why The Car Was Smashed In The Fearway
As is the case in most time loop movies, Michael and Sarah attempt to escape their predicament by deviating from the usual path of repeating events. They ignored the sudden impact, drove past the diner, and even outran the mysterious black car that tormented them. However, though they seemingly broke the chain of events, they hadn’t gotten any further than they had before, and even discovered their own car was smashed once they set out on foot. The couple saw their car smashed because they were actually witnessing the scene of the accident that had claimed their lives and put them in the time loop in the first place.
Who Is The Fearway’s Mysterious Man?
The thing that elevated The Fearway from being a simple time loop movie to being a bona fide horror experience was the presence of the mysterious man (Briahn Auguillard) with his pointed teeth and menacing eyes. Besides his creepy appearance, the character credited as Ferryman is actually much more symbolically important to the story than just being the movie’s signature monster. Since the twist ending revealed the actual fate of Sarah and Michael, it helped to make Ferryman make more sense, especially when taken in conjunction with the coins seen earlier in the film.
The monster is likely the ancient Greek mythological figure known as Charon, who is tasked with conducting souls across the river Styx and into the underworld. Charon has a price and that explains why Sarah and Michael were given coins to pay him off. Unlike other depictions of the afterlife which have shown the underworld to be a cavernous abyss, The Fearway likens it to a purgatory of sorts, with Charon recast as a creepy monster instead of just a looming boatman.
The Fearway Time Loop Explained
Time loops in movies have been a clever plot device for decades, but The Fearway made it decidedly more scary by setting its loop in a desolate stretch of desert highway. Michael and Sarah experience the same series of events over and over, and they actually represent the imagined continuation of their journey if they hadn’t gotten in the car wreck that took their lives. They experience the thump of an impact, see a mysterious ice patch on the road, and eventually make it to the diner. The thud could be explained as the impact of the crash itself, and the ice patch is possibly what caused it.
The figures at the diner are the other mythical beings who conduct souls to the other side, and they assist Ferryman (Charon) with his task of shuttling souls into the afterlife. The time loop is inescapable because the pair are locked in limbo and can’t go any further because they have yet to pay Charon his proper coinage for the trip. The Waitress tries to push the process along by giving them the coins, but like the other woman with the injured hand, Michael and Sarah have yet to accept their fate.
Do Michael And Sarah Live?
Despite being very active throughout the entire sub-90-minute horror film, Michael and Sarah are actually dead the whole time and therefore don’t live to see the end of the movie. While that twist has been done to death in better movies, The Fearway doesn’t squander its twist because it actually imbues its own story with symbolic meaning by having the characters in limbo. While Sarah and Michael don’t live, it could be speculated that the sudden realization that they are actually deceased could help them accept their fates and finally pass over. Though the Ferryman is frightening, he is their only hope to escape the loop.
The Real Meaning Of The Fearway’s Ending
With ancient Greek myth, purgatory, and even a time loop to play around with, there’s no denying that The Fearway had much headier ideas than the usual blood and guts cheapo horror movies found on free streaming services. The ending was a twist, but there was also an inevitable aspect to it which further paid off the themes seen throughout the story. In an earlier scene, Michael speculates that the Ferryman is the Grim Reaper, which is partially correct. While the movie doesn’t spoil its own twist ending, it does drop enough hints where it doesn’t really come as a surprise.
In the end, The Fearway is about acceptance and the acceptance of death in particular. What was sinister in the beginning, takes on a comforting aspect as the true intentions of the people at the diner and the Ferryman are finally revealed. Like death itself, the Ferryman is a terrifying thing, but the ending of The Fearway makes it clear that the only way through the challenge is for the heroes to actually accept that their times have finally come.
