Would You Rather follows Iris (Brittany Snow), a young woman struggling to care for her sick brother, Raleigh (Logan Miller, Blumhouse's Prey); the film's ending explores the often harsh consequences regarding decision-making. In the movie, Raleigh clearly feels guilty about the burden he causes Iris, who seems to be willing to help him at any cost. As the movie progresses, Iris struggles with her increasingly costly choices. In the film’s ending, she comes to the horrifying realization that those struggles were all in vain: while she was out, her brother committed suicide.
Iris’ desperation makes her the perfect target for psychotic philanthropist Shepard Lambrick (Jeffrey Combs, Re-Animator), who invites her to a dinner party where she will have the opportunity to play a game of Would You Rather. Lambrick promises that if she wins, then all her problems will be solved and her brother will have a chance to live a normal life, no strings attached. It turns out that Lambrick was lying about the strings, and that to win the game, she must give up something that might be more valuable than her brother’s salvation: a clear conscience.
In Lambrick’s version of the game, the winning player must eliminate her competitors, and elimination equals death. Players are forced to choose between sadistic punishments that they must either inflict upon themselves or upon another player. Iris and some of the other players try to minimize the damage, but to no avail. One player after another is eliminated until only she and nice guy Lucas (Enver Gjokaj, Agents of SHIELD) are left for the final round.
Why Did Raleigh Kill Himself In Would You Rather’s Ending?
After Iris kills Lucas and wins the game, she goes home, thinking the worst is behind her. When she goes to check in on Raleigh, she discovers that he has committed suicide. He was worried that she was sacrificing too much for him, and he killed himself to ease her burden. Because of Raleigh’s decision, the horrors Iris lived through were all for nothing, but in truth, she has no one to blame but herself.
Before she left for Lambrick’s dinner party, she chose to lie to Raleigh about where she was going that night. It is safe to assume that if she had been honest with him and told him that she might be hours away from solving all their problems, he would not have killed himself. Or at the very least, he might have waited.
Why Does Lambrick Play Would You Rather?
As the film progresses, it becomes obvious that Lambrick is a misanthropic sadist who enjoys watching people inflict punishments upon themselves and each other. He plays his sick version of Would You Rather for his own pleasure. He is no philanthropist, despite his repeated claim that he is; forcing the deaths of seven people to help one is far from philanthropy.
Not only does he play the game for his own pleasure, but he also plays it as some kind of childish obsession. He admits that, at its core it’s a children’s game, and he indeed behaves like a child throughout the film. He changes the rules whenever he wants and justifies it by saying that it’s his game, and he makes the decisions. To him, the players are not human, they are his toys. The game is not a test of their character, but a testament to his.
What Is The Real Meaning Behind Would You Rather?
The real meaning behind the film is that desperation can force people to commit extraordinary acts of cruelty as well as kindness. However, this desperation does not provide a “window into a person’s character”, as Lambrick says. Instead, it clouds their judgment and can force fatal errors. Raleigh committed suicide because he didn’t want his sister to make such an error in his name. Despite that, Iris’ desperation forced her to make a terrible error at the end of Would You Rather: she made the choice to murder another human being.