Travis Stephens' 2019 horror movie Girl on the Third Floor explained that a home renovation became a nightmare, and just when the story might have had a happy ending, it throws in a chilling final twist. Philip "CM Punk" Brooks stars as Don Koch, a married man with his first child on the way, who is fixing up a house in the Chicago suburbs to make it fit for a family. Unfortunately, both the house and Don himself are harboring darkness inside. After an illicit one-night stand with a mysterious local girl called Sarah (Sarah Brooks), Don starts to experience escalating supernatural occurrences inside the house.
It's revealed that the family home Don is trying to renovate used to be a bordello that catered to grotesque and violent fantasies, and that both Sarah and a girl with a mangled face called Sadie (Elissa Dowling) are the ghosts of sex workers who died inside the walls of the house. Eventually, Don falls victim to the house's violence, and that's when his pregnant wife Liz (Trieste Kelly Dunn) arrives in town to surprise him. She finds the house empty and begins to grow concerned. When Liz arrives at the house, she received a disturbing glimpse into its past bordello days and faces a final showdown with Sarah and Sadie in Travis Stevens' horror movie.
Who Is The Girl On The Third Floor?
The Girl on the Third Floor explained that Sadie was one of the girls who worked at the bordello and lived in a tiny room on the third floor of the house - where men would gather around a balcony to watch the performance below. She had a childlike mind, as evidenced by her drawings which depict various sex acts she witnessed and portray the man with the bird mask as a benevolent figure caring for her. When Liz experiences the flashback to Sarah and Sadie's life in the bordello, she sees Sadie crouched in her room, given marbles as a gift by the man in the bird mask. Though shrouded in shadow, it's clear Sadie didn't have the facial deformities she has as a ghost.
Sarah sheds more light on Sadie's death. She tells Liz, "he played with her for months and then killed her, dumping her body at the train tracks." This explains Sadie's appearance as a ghost: wrapped in what looks like a tattered sheet and tied up with rope, with her face mutilated beyond recognition. When Liz is confronted by Sadie again downstairs, she uses a mallet to smash her head until it splits apart - in a grim reenactment of how Sadie died the first time around.
Sarah's Real Identity And Death
Girl on the Third Floor explained Sarah was another sex worker at the bordello, though she implies she was "not so innocent." After revealing the details of Sadie's death, she tells Liz, "when he killed me, my body never left the house." The "he" in question is identified in a newspaper article Liz finds earlier in the movie: Theodore Geoghegan, the owner of the bordello. That article also reveals Sarah was an English immigrant who took a job at the bordello when she was unable to find any other work. She became a star at the bordello, working there for eight years before she was killed and stashed inside the walls.
Just as Liz unwittingly reenacts Sadie's death, Don killing Sarah and walling her body up in the basement reflects her original death as well. In her afterlife, the Girl on the Third Floor ending explained Sarah's role in the house is to test the families who come to live there. For the men, if they prove they are different from the men who used to come to the bordello, by resisting Sarah's seduction and not hurting her, they pass. This is a test Don thoroughly fails - first when he sleeps with Sarah, and then again when he lures her into the kitchen and kills her. Don failed his test, but Liz passed hers.
Why Liz Decides To Stay In The House
Perhaps the most baffling aspect of the underrated horror movie, Girl on the Third Floor's ending is Liz's decision to move into the murder brothel haunted by violent ghosts and raise her baby there. While her actions defy logic, they fit with what Ellie says about the house: families who pass the test can live there happily for years with no disturbances. The specific moment when Liz passes the test is when Sarah (posing as Don) begs her to forgive him for cheating on her again. Had Liz buckled and decided to take him back, she would have demonstrated her own brand of weakness to match Don's.
Instead, she finds the strength to shut him down. Sarah tears Don's skin away and reveals herself, saying, "I'm proud of you, Liz. Thought you weren't going to make it there at the end," confirming this was Liz's test. After killing Sadie and exhuming Sarah's body from inside the wall of the house, Liz has no reason to fear living there anymore. Running away from the house could be interpreted as her backing down from a position of strength, whereas staying there with her baby is a gesture of her power. Of course, Girl on the Third Floor's ending explained this gesture was a bad idea.
Don's Return in Girl On The Third Floor's Ending
After Liz leaves the baby in the nursery, the infant becomes fascinated with the vent above its crib. Suddenly, Sadie's green marbles drop through the vent and land next to the baby. That alone is frightening, but then Don's face appears behind the vent, and with a smile, he says, "That's my girl." Throughout Girl on the Third Floor, the marbles were more than just evidence of a haunting: they're a symbol of the house's corruption. Cooper the dog swallows a marble, which foreshadows his horrible death at Sarah's hands.
Don dies when the marbles get under his skin, and he attempts to cut them out. And in the flashback to the bordello's past, we see the origin of the marbles - a perverted gift from the man who would go on to brutally murder Sadie. It's significant that, after passing her test, Liz slips on the marbles, but she doesn't fall. By dropping the marbles through the vent, the Girl on the Third Floor explained that Don wants to corrupt his baby daughter in the same way he was corrupted, perhaps even killing her so she can join him as a ghost in the house. Ultimately, Girl on the Third Floor's final shot is another creepy twist in a very twisted tale.
Travis Stevens Had A Surprising Inspiration For Girl On The Third Floor
Director Travis Stevens had a lot in mind when he came up with Girl on the Third Floor and what the movie meant. As the Girl on the Third Floor ending explained, Don was a bad person all along - lying, cheating, and swindling, and he had no intentions of changing. This led Stevens to want to put actor CM Punk in a house that was already scary - and not one dressed up to look scary. He found that in Frankfurt, Illinois. Stevens said, "This story takes place in an actual house that has a history of being haunted... [it] was reported to be a bordello before. So those dynamics were there. That's all real." (via SyFy.com)
From there, Stevens said he wanted to subvert the horror genre. Instead of offering up a damsel in distress or a Last Girl, he wanted to bring in a tough guy and put him in danger of the vindictive ghosts. This allowed him to take the pain of the women abused in the house and send all the repercussions to this one guy who thinks he is the alpha male. He said he wanted to create a hard R-rated horror movie people would enjoy, while maybe "slowly encouraging them to maybe be a more decent human being."