Like I said, I felt that little things he did and certainly the way he structured the film left me feeling like he wanted folks talking about it. It's interesting to hear that he doesn't find the specifics matter-- he clearly knew that the rest was working so well that he wanted to give the apocalyptic ending viewers enough to work with to build their argument, since the mental illness vision ending viewers were going to see it their way regardless due to the emotional build they felt.

I disagree with some of astralblak's points above, specifically the point about it being just a really bad storm-- I think the reads are it's either a vision or apocalyptic storm, I'm not convinced there's an in-between established in the film-- but I appreciate the further evidence he brings.

Furthermore, I don't think the arrival of the apocalypse necessarily means Curtis isn't mentally ill. He's clearly seeing and experiencing things that aren't there for the first part of the film, so I can't justify an argument that he's the only sane one. I think there's an argument to be made that at least those who are paranoid and crazed about "the end" are prepared for what's coming. They have a clarity regarding the impending collapse of society that sane people entrenched in the day-to-day might not. It might make Curtis' delusions correct in the long run, but I don't think it makes him not crazy. If that makes sense. Those guys that are saying "THE END IS COMING" on the side of the road are *technically* right, after all-- they're just deemed crazy by us until the moment the end arrives.

I will say when I showed it to my students this past weekend, there was a big debate about whether he was crazy or not, with some convinced he wasn't: "he saw the storm, then there was a storm, end of story."

It is pretty reassuring to see that Nichols was going for a level of ambiguity, and the part about the possibility of hope is especially fascinating, because while I think the apocalypse arrives at the end, I'm not left totally crushed and destroyed and hopeless about the human race like I am at the end of, say, We Need To Talk About Kevin.