Don't Look Now: What Does The Ending Really Mean?

2. The Powers

Arguably it's no coincidence that she's wearing exactly the same colour coat as the one his daughter did on the day of her death, or even the very same coat altogether. In fact, if we take it a step further, throughout the film we've only ever been shown John's powers in relation to the premonition of his own murder - he doesn't quite have the same reach and power as Heather. Whilst she can communicate with the dead and has a clear line to her psychic abilities, John's only relate to his own fate. What if the whole film in itself - everything from Christine's drowning onwards - is all a part of the warning?

It would explain why she was wearing a coat on a sunny day, and why her death was so still and silent, submerged face up in the water rather than looking as if there was any sign of struggle. It would explain why she drowned in a pond in a watery link to Venice's own city and didn't suffer any other type of random accident, as well as the iconic red of her mac in the boldest, most obvious sense of a warning. It also explains why she dies as a child, a replication of the stature of the dwarf woman that ends up as John's last waking memory.

John doesn't have wider psychic abilities, just one premonition of his death, and his whole life has been interwoven with his final moments as his own timeline folds and collapses in around himself.

The snapshot we get to see of the Baxter's existence has plenty of ominous inclusions of red to reinforce this too - from the blood-like spill appearing across the photograph of a church that spells out his doom in the Venice cathedral, to the Cardinal's hat as he acts as an overseer to John's last project, with red becoming more and more frequent the closer he gets to his own impending doom.