Someone please explain the ending.....

don't try to figure it out...just a bad movie.

I think he was turned when he used the phone at the end. Ray told him to use it at the end of the line, when he knew it was time. I think the explosion and the clip of him walking with his son was what was going on in his head after he was turned by using the phone.

This was a pretty damn good movie COMPLETELY WRECKED by the ending. And I mean totally ruined. Damn shame. Anyhow, from how it's edited, there is no man in the red hoodie, that's all in his head, cause there's no dead red hoodie laying next to the van in the closing shot. He drove the van into the center of the tower, and from there, it or whatever got him. When he started hearing his son. There's certainly some significance to the red hoodie cause they put one on his wife too (boy was that scene confusing) and there was probably more symbolic red throughout the film, who cares. Would have been far stronger to have the film end with the fluffy bright out of place walk down the tracks. That would leave you to interpret the ending one way or the other. Nope. They botched it.

"I said no camels, that's five camels, can't you count?"

No.

It is based on the novel "Cell" by Stephen King.

Unfortunately, the movie kind of jumped 70% of the plot. The "zombies", the "virus", everything was very well explained and detailed in the book. They've kept the tower without actually explaining any of it.

You could have paid as much attention as you want, it is hard to understand without the reference material. I'll post the wikipedia link for the book, it explains a lot more. Link under spoiler tags below.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(novel)

The Dean thought the takeover might be ultimately benign, the next step in human evolution with every person in harmony for the greater good. Clay said no to that but that is how he ends up, in his own personal nirvana (which is unity with his son) working for the greater good like a worker bee. A moron of sorts. The joke is Nirvana is in Canada.

Sigh come on people. So easy:
The moment he opens up the phone the tower homes in unto it and he is turned. Hes running along with his head up in the sky like all the rest of em seeing what they all want to see, in his case, finding his son, blowing up the transmitter, somehow miraculously survive, and then tracking down the rest of the group who left the trail for him to follow. While in fact, that all never happens, he is turned before he can dial in, note the in comming cellphone call noise.
And the red hoodie guy is just the personification of the evil entity at work here, he doesnt exist, he is just "the signal". Thats why he only shows up in his imagination, dreams, survives a full head on collision with a truck etc etc.



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Collection
http://www.imdb.com/list/4zXrE3AAzT4/

What I got was that when he got to the tower and saw that his son was a phoner. His son opened his mouth and transformed the father into a phoner now. While transformed he can believe whatever the hell he wants to. He's just a mindless drone now. That's why there were two endings. The fake one with him and his son going to Canada. The real one with him circling the tower as a phoner.

It felt like they shot three different endings:

Happy ending - Railroad track - Saves kid, heads to Canada

Melancholy ending - Truck goes boom - Finds kids, kills the tower with the truck bomb

Sad ending - Gets to tower, but somehow ends up being turned and shuffles endlessly round the tower.

And then couldn't decide which one to use so decided to stitch them some how together but the three different endings didn't have any footage shot that would allow for that sort of ending, hence why none of it really made any sense.