The ending of the 2018 movie Rust Creek resolved the protagonist’s desperate bid for survival—for better or worse. The movie, directed by Jen McGowan and written by Julie Lipson, follows a young woman named Sawyer Scott, who heads out from her college near Louisville, Kentucky, for a job interview in Washington DC. However, when the GPS gets her lost in the deep of the Appalachian Forest, and she is confronted by a duo of criminals, Hollister and Buck, she flees on foot into the trees with a stab wound in her leg. After two days of desperate wandering, Sawyer is found by an unlikely savior.
Lowell Pritchert, a cousin to Hollister and Buck, is a meth cook who lives in a secluded trailer in the Appalachian Forest. After finding Sawyer unconscious, he takes her to his home, holding her captive but promising to take her to safety once his cousins leave their car with him to make their meth delivery. Lowell and Sawyer develop an unlikely friendship until Hollister and Beck discover the girl. Sawyer cleverly blows up the trailer and escapes, but after Rust Creek‘s villain character, Sheriff O’Doyle, murders Lowell and finds her in the woods, things quickly go south.
In the final scene of the survivor thriller movieRust Creek, Sawyer realizes that the Sheriff who picked her up on the side of the road wasn’t on her side. When O’Doyle says, “I’m the chief, you’re the Indian“—the exact phrase Sawyer heard Lowell’s boss say outside the trailer—she understands that this man will not bring her to safety. Instead, O’Doyle leads Sawyer to the titular Rust Creek, and after ordering her to wade into the water, he attempts to drown her. Thankfully, Sawyer had already proven she was an exceptional fighter, and she still had Lowell’s tool hidden away in her pocket.
Sawyer had stolen a sharp, handheld tool from Lowell, intending to use it against him to escape. Of course, their friendship meant she never had a need to, but when she attempted to return it to him, he told her to keep it as a souvenir of her meth-cooking adventures. It’s a good thing he did since the tool was Sawyer’s saving grace during her battle with O’Doyle. After stabbing him in the leg and slashing him across the face, Rust Creek‘s protagonist stabs the Sheriff in the chest, and the last we see of him is his body floating down the creek.
After stabbing O’Doyle, Sawyer exhaustedly makes her way back to the road and sets off in the direction Lowell had instructed her before his death. She focuses entirely on the winding road ahead of her and pays no attention to the half-dozen police cars that pull up behind her. Though the ending of Rust Creek keeps these cars out of focus, it’s assumed that these are the Kentucky State Police, sent by Commander Douglas Slattery, who had taken over Sawyer’s missing person case. Unlike Sheriff O’Doyle, these officers are there to legitimately help the girl, but she just keeps walking.
This is how Rust Creek ends, so it’s never explicitly stated why Sawyer pays the State Police no attention. However, Lowell and Sawyer’s earlier discussion provides some answers here. During their conversations about chemistry, Lowell points out that people are just like chemicals. When two meet each other, they create a reaction that changes them forever. They become something new, so when they go out and meet other people, they make a whole new chemical reaction. Rust Creek demonstrates how these changes can be for better or worse.
Sawyer meets several characters in Rust Creek, and they each change her chemistry in various ways. The friendship she develops with Lowell leads to positive changes for them both, but someone like O’Doyle would cause a far more dangerous reaction. Lowell had told Sawyer that an acid would neutralize a base like Lye but would create devastating and destructive heat. The meth cook’s lesson in chemistry wound up being a metaphor for Sawyer’s ending, and the cost of “neutralizing” O’Doyle was catastrophic. Her trauma was so extreme that she couldn’t comprehend or trust her own saviors.
As much a relief as Sawyer’s survival in Rust Creek was, it was bittersweet when considering Lowell Pritchert’s death. He was the most unlikely of heroes—a meth-cooking hermit hidden away in the Appalachian Forest—but Sawyer slowly learns throughout the film that he was far smarter and gentler than anyone would assume. This is demonstrated in his decision to take Sawyer in and keep her safe until he can get her to safety and in his final decision to put himself in harm’s way to keep her safe.
After movie villains Hollister and Buck discover that Sawyer had been in Lowell’s trailer all along, they burst into the meth cook’s home with the intention of finally killing her. However, Lowell convinces them that he had beaten Sawyer into submission, requesting that they leave her to be his plaything until the time came when he would “deal” with her. Lowell orders Sawyer to warm him up some coffee to demonstrate that she will follow his every order. She immediately understands that he means the anhydrous ammonia that he had previously shown her was stored away in a coffee thermos.
Sawyer fills a coffee cup with anhydrous ammonia and places it into the microwave, and Lowell instructs her to sit on his knee so that his body would be between her and the inevitable blast. The subsequent explosion kills Buck instantly and greatly wounds Hollister and Lowell, who winds up with a large shard of glass embedded in his back. However, Sawyer is left with only minor injuries, all thanks to Lowell’s selfless sacrifice. The meth cook’s wounds meant he couldn’t escape with her, and he was shot and killed by Sheriff O’Doyle.
By the time Sawyer got lost in the Appalachian Forest, things were already getting pretty intense with Sheriff O’Doyle and the Pritcherts. Rust Creek‘s heroine just happened to be unlucky enough to drive through as Hollister and Buck were burying the evidence of their recent murder. Edwin Garro, a Mexican man from outside of town, is revealed to have been involved with a drug cartel and was selling meth to an unknown customer. Hoping to steal their client, O’Doyle ordered Hollister and Buck to get Garro out of the way—and evidently, they did.
Lowell tells Sawyer in Rust Creek that he had been cooking meth since he was 14, and it’s assumed that this was something of a Pritchert family business. It’s unclear when O’Doyle got involved, but since he tells Hollister and Buck that the sale to Garro’s clients is meant to set up his retirement, it seems that the Sheriff had been dealing meth in the minor leagues up to that point. Replacing a Mexican cartel as a meth supplier would elevate him to the next level. Of course, this also meant higher stakes, so things between O’Doyle and the Pritcherts went sour quickly.
Since Rust Creek ends with Sawyer determinedly hobbling down the road, it’s unclear precisely what happens to her. It can be assumed that the Kentucky State Police officers would catch up with her only moments after the film’s sudden ending. However, given Sawyer’s recent traumatic experiences, this might not have been a pretty sight. Throughout the majority of the movie, Sawyer stays remarkably optimistic. As she wandered the Appalachian Forest, she kept saying everything would be okay. She was clever and strong, but this final altercation with Sheriff O’Doyle broke this resolve.
Still, everything we know about Sawyer after Rust Creek supports the idea that she is a survivor through and through. She had seen how Lowell had slowly found his way back to the light after the death of his wife, all thanks to the chemistry of humanism he had experienced through his time with her. The police would have difficulty getting Sawyer to go with them, but after reuniting with her parents and finding help and trust in other human beings, she would eventually heal. It would be a painful road, but Lowell had already shown her the way.