A spooky, disturbing thriller

Rating: 5/10 (2 May 2006)

My husband chose this movie as part of our "date night". It ended up working out well for him because I spent half the movie in his lap with my eyes closed. e-gad. Usually horror movies don't bother me. It's not the blood (heck, I'm in nursing school, I love to pick out the anatomical inaccuracies). What bothers me are the monsters that are grossly deformed and that lurch through dark hallways with eerie moaning. The monsters in this movie are highly disturbing--especially when a body who was previously tied up with barbed wired gets up, inverts his body and starts crawling around in unnatural positions. The visual effects are quite stunning. The scene where Rose is in the bathroom and everything starts "peeling upwards" is really cool.
What I can't figure out is the ending, which leads me to ask--and here is the spoiler-- was Rose dead the whole time? In the scene where she crashed her jeep we think she just hurt her head. She ends up running in a town where ash falls like snow and the original road that lead her in is broken off. When her husband arrives to look for her, the road is fine, sun is out and there's no ash. Then when she runs through the school hall, everything is blackened and dark, but her husband run through the same hallway that just looks old and deserted--then he "senses" her. I didn't think much of it at the time. Yet in the end when she goes home, everything is grayish. Then we see the husband in the house, and everything is a normal color. hhhmmmmm, did she die when she hit her head? It makes sense because the cop could also be dead--remember she crashed her bike. Part of the girl's revenge was "killing" those that burned her way back when, but because most everyone died in the city fire, those people were dead too. Part of "killing" them was destroying their ghost or soul, or whatever you want to call it. Hhhhmmmmm, what do you think?