The House That Jack Built’s Ending Explained

Spoilers

At the end of The House That Jack Built, a brutal (-ly awkward) serial killer finally meets his end and is cast into hell. Virgil guides him through the afterlife in a dizzying mix of realism, art, and fantasy that somehow manages to make the afterlife feel palpable and authentic. Finally, they reach a horrible pit into which magma pours nonstop, the way to the deepest circle of Hell. That’s not Jack’s destination, though - despite the perfection he sought with his horrific murders, he isn’t destined for the highest Heaven, and he doesn’t even make it to the deepest Hell either. His violence and cruelty are average at best, barring him from the peace of Heaven while still keeping him from being placed among the true monsters of the world.

For Jack, this is unacceptable.

He then notices a staircase on the other end of the pit, inaccessible due to a bridge that Virgil says has long since been broken. As soon as Virgil tells Jack that it leads to Heaven, he is clearly determined to get there, planning to crawl along the walls of the pit to reach the other side. Jack isn’t as unique and innovative as he wishes he were though, so Virgil warns him that others who have tried have failed. Nonetheless, Jack won’t change his mind, so he sets about this final journey, his final desperate reach for Heaven, only to fall off and into the deepest pit of Hell.

The path out of Hell and into Heaven, a bridge over the deepest pit of Hell, is broken.
The path out of Hell and into Heaven, a bridge over the deepest pit of Hell, is broken.

It’s a beautiful sequence, but what does it mean? Art is subjective, but after watching the film and looking more into its Hell, inspired by Dante’s Inferno, the moral seems to be this : there is no greater sin than to believe yourself to be more than you are. Throughout the movie, Jack speaks about his murders as though they were a form of high art, a way of seeking divine perfection and beauty. He speaks as though he were the philosopher of his age, drawing connections across different fields of knowledge and pretending to be a great connoisseur of art and decay. What he fails to realise, though, is that the perfection he is trying to reach is purely vulgar and material, as far from the divine as a person can be. He wishes he were an architect, someone who could create and communicate beauty, but he is and always will be a mere engineer, stuck in the practical and physical without ever having any understanding of soul or spirituality.

The deepest circle of hell is reserved for those who commit treachery, and the deepest pit within that, Judecca, is for those who betray their masters or benefactors. In this case, Jack’s hubris leads him to seek a place in Heaven as though his violent and cruel actions were so easily forgiven. He rejects going to a higher circle of Hell, both dismissing God’s mercy and placing himself on equal footing with God by having the audacity to try to be his own final judge and decide his own fate. In doing so, he throws away his last chance to repent by admitting his wrongs and betrays the highest master that exists in a universe where Heaven and Hell are real: God himself.

And so, having finally proved the depth of his soul's corruption, he falls.

Jack falling into the pit.
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