FAQ

When they were children, Billy Parks (Jon Abrahams), Julia Lund (Laura Regan), Sam Burnside (Ethan Embry), and Terry Alba (Dagmara Dominczyk) were plagued with night terrors. Now that they're grown and supposedly left those fears behind, the nightmares begin to recur. Billy contacts Julia, babbles incoherently about things in the dark coming to get him, and commits suicide in front of her. At his funeral, Julia runs into Sam and Terry, who confess that their nightmares have also returned. One by one, each of them find themselves branded with a strange mark after which they disappear until only Julia, now a graduate student in psychology, is left. As her fear of the dark worsens and she begins to believe the four of them were tagged as children and that They are coming back to get her, she turns for help to her boyfriend Paul Loomis (Marc Blucas) and to her childhood doctor, Dr Booth (Jay Brazeau).

The screenplay is credited to screenwriter Brendan William Hood.

It may not be that They are targeting children who have night terrors but that They are what's causing the children to have night terrors.

The reason why They target certain children and return later to hunt them down is not answered in the movie. One possibility is that They are doing what human researchers do when we study a species—tag & release—and later use the tracking device to find the particular member of the species again in order to chart its progress and development. Also similar to human researchers, They won't tag and study every single creature in the breed, just a random few to study in depth.

Another question that goes unanswered in the movie. One possibility is simply that They cannot tolerate light the same way we can't tolerate the extreme levels of heat on Venus. Another explanation, that makes sense if you think of Them as interdimensional creatures, is that darkness is how they get in and out of our dimension. This is clear in two scenes. When Julia hits one of the creatures, she can see its corpse lying on the roadside. When she flashes her flashlight on it, it's gone but there again when her flashlight dies. An another scene, the creature in the air duct leaps at Terry but disappears when the flames from the lighter fill the vent. In other words, They can't go into light for the same reason as we can't go into rock: They can't exist in the same space where light exists.

After being attacked by Them, Julia runs to Paul's apartment. He gives her a sedative, but she sneaks away because she doesn't want to sleep. She runs down into the subway and pukes out the sedative. She boards a train but the train stops and the lights start going out, so she jumps off. She runs around on the track through the tunnels looking for whatever light she can find, but every time she finds a light, it goes out. She tries to escape up a ladder and through a grating but gets pulled back down, and They close in on her. She fights them off, then realizes that she's fighting off some tunnel workers who are trying to help her. Julia wakes up screaming on the floor of a room in a hospital. Dr Booth and Paul run to her. Dr Booth assures her that she's safe now, and Paul explains that they found her in the subway. They help her back to her bed, then leave the room. Julia goes to the door, finds it locked, and looks through the small glass window. There she sees all the other patients and realizes that she is in a mental hospital. Suddenly, the window in her door breaks open and one of Them skitters through. Dr Booth hears the glass break and comes running but finds the room empty. He looks in the closet and notices the hangers are slightly swaying. He stares at the wall for a minute as though he senses something, then slowly backs away. In the final scene, Julia can be seen on the other side of the closet wall, frantically beating on the wall and screaming, "I'm here!" Hundreds of Them can be seen crawling around behind her. As Dr Booth shuts the door, blocking the light, They rush toward her.

Yes. Some DVDs also show the following ending: Julia wakes up in a hospital bed. She goes to the door, finds it locked, and looks through the small glass window. There she sees that all of the people in her story—Dr Booth, Billy, Sam, Terry—are patients in a mental hospital and her boyfriend Paul is a doctor. Suddenly, the window in her door breaks open and one of Them skitters through, but the window remains unbroken. It was all a hallucination. As Julia stands in disbelief, notations from her chart flash across the screen:

Patient number 202240: Julia Lund Committed: 5-14-92 at age 16 Diagnosis: Paranoid schizophrenia Recommendations: Patient rquires secure environment and constant medication. Preview status annually.

Apparently, there was a third ending filmed in which Julia convinces the doctors that she's okay, even though she can still see Them crawling on her walls. She goes home to her own bedroom, which is rigged up with dozens of lights. She sits with a flashlight in her hands as the camera slowly begins to move down the hallway, and the closet door starts to open. It's thought that this ending might have been for the test screenings. It doesn't appear to have made it into the theatrical or DVD releases.

Because the movie never explains what They are or even gives a clear picture of what They look like, any explanation of what They really are depends upon which ending of the movie a viewer sees. Upon seeing the theatrical ending, viewers liken Them to monsters, demons, aliens, or interdimensional creatures. Using the alternate ending, They are simply fabrications in Julia's imagination. What most viewers do agree is that that's what makes the film so creepy: not knowing who or what They really are. The original script dealt with a group of four recent college grads who discover that Earth is actually run by a race of organic machines which allow the human race to exist so that they can kill them and harvest their corpses for "spare parts" as Their bodies break down and deteriorate.

The original script is archived here. It is quite different from the movie.

The complete U.S. title for They is Wes Craven Presents: They. Craven was considered an "executive producer" of the movie. However, other than lending his name to the title, he had no part in the making of They. It's assumed that the purpose for putting his name in the title was to publicize the movie and attract horror fans.