The Florida Project Ending Explained: What Really Happens to Moonee? (2024)

This article contains major character or plot details.

What happens inThe Florida Project?

Seen from a child’s-eye view, 6-year-old Moonee’s (Brooklynn Prince) neighborhood is tinged with magic. It’s in the name of the motel where she lives, the Magic Castle Inn & Suites, aka “the purple place” for its grape-gum hue. When she and her motel kid friends Scooty (Christopher Rivera) and Jancey (Valeria Cotto) strike out past the parking lot, they roam down Seven Dwarfs Lane, past the Wishing Star motel, and buildings shaped like mermaids and wizards, giant ice cream cones and oranges. Moonee prefers to see the world like this, a place where creepy uninhabited condos are “the abandids” and a cow field becomes an exotic safari — but she’s wiser than her age and can name which motel resident drinks beer all the time, which one gets repeatedly arrested. She’s probably more aware than she lets on when it comes to her young mom, Halley (Bria Vinaite), a spirited and willful out-of-work strip dancer, and what Halley has to do in order to make their weekly rent and avoid a social worker stepping in. Motel manager Bobby (Dafoe), has come to their rescue plenty of times, but as Halley’s struggles grow increasingly desperate and alienating, it may not be enough.

Christopher Rivera, Brooklynn Prince, and Valeria Cotto in The Florida Project

What is the meaning of The Florida Project?

The Florida Project is about growing up in the shadow of fantasy: the struggle to survive in real life while finding sheer and boundless wonder in the unreal. No matter what you decide to make of The Florida Project’s deliberately ambiguous ending (more on that below), the film points to the inherent power of the imagination against the most heartbreaking odds.

Influenced by The Little Rascals’ comic adventures amid the Great Depression in the Our Gangfilms, director Baker had wanted to make a film about childhood; then his Tangerine co-writer Chris Bergoch suggested a story about the “hidden homeless,” people forced into poverty and transience in the long wake of the 2008 recession and the housing crisis. Baker decided to do both: He and Bergoch set their script in Florida, where the contrast between the dream of Disney and the lives of kids growing up in its shaky, marginalized midst is keenly poignant. The Florida Project borrows its title from Walt Disney’s code name for the large swaths of cheap swampland he bought up in the ’60s before building Disney World — areas now studded with the souvenir shops, tourist traps, and pastel motels that orbit the theme park and are the backdrop of the film.

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Who’s in the cast of The Florida Project?

With the exception of Dafoe (Poor Things, Platoon, The Last Temptation of Christ), and actor and musician Caleb Landry Jones (Get Out, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri) as Bobby’s son, Jack, Baker was adamant that he wanted to work with largely unknown or lesser-known actors. With casting director Carmen Cuba (Behind the Candelabra, Stranger Things), Baker cast Mela Murder, who’d had a notable appearance in the short film Gang, as Ashley, Halley’s estranged friend and Scooty’s mom. On Instagram, Baker came across a video of a young Lithuania-born designer of marijuana-themed clothing, apparently smoking a blunt (“She was self-deprecating,but at the same time she had a real attitude and she was funny,” he’d tell Indiewire): First-time actor Vinaite held her own as Halley and has since appeared in The OA and Lost in Transmissions.

Some of the most significant casting came straight from the film’s setting. At an Orlando-area Target, Baker discovered Cotto, then just 5, in line with her mom and knew he wanted to cast her as Jancey. Crew members staying at the nearby Paradise Inn spotted Rivera, living with his mom there — the then-8-year-old made enough money playing the role of Scooty to move his family into an apartment (and received a scholarship from Rollins College for his future education). To cast Moonee, Baker worked with Orlando agent Patti Wiley (Iron Man 3), who’d lived in Florida motels with her housekeeper mother as a child: from hundreds of too-polished auditions, Prince’s video made it clear she was Moonee.

“Brooklynn has a great set of skills,” Dafoe said in 2017 of his young co-star. “She’s a little firecracker, and comes up with a lot of interesting things. She can improvise, but she’s a kid first.”

Prince won Best Young Performer at the Critics’ Choice Movie Awards and has gone on to appear in Home Before Dark and Cocaine Bear.

Willem Dafoe and Brooklynn Prince in The Florida Project

Who called DCF in The Florida Project?

Probably Bobby. When agents from the Department of Children and Family knock on Halley’s door, she immediately suspects Ashley of calling them. It’s possible: Ashley’s kept strict boundaries around herself and Scooty, but after she confronts Halley about her sex work, Halley lashes out and physically attacks her. It’s more likely, though, that Bobby made the call (we can guess he’s seen Ashley’s badly bruised face and asked questions). As manager, Bobby’s had to contend with everything from broken washing machines to marauding wildlife, irate tourists, and suspicious strangers. He’s gone out of his way to help Halley even in her most frustrating outbursts, but he’s got to balance this latest situation against his job, the motel, and the kids there, for whom he’s a stern but protective figure. As manager, Bobby also has the security footage that would help prove that Halley’s customers have been visiting in Moonee’s presence. Above all, he’s worried for Moonee’s safety.

Did Moonee die in The Florida Project?

No, though her plight is tragic and dangerous. When it dawns on Moonee that the cops are indeed investigating her mother and planning to plant Moonee in foster care, it’s the last straw. Totally beside herself, she manages to break away and tear off through the parking lot —and she’s long gone before anyone can reach her. Watching a child race away alone in the direction of a busy highway is a terrifying situation for the cops and social workers charged with her care, but it’s a well-worn trail for Moonee, who’s ridden across six lanes in a stolen shopping cart. She also knows every square inch of swampland and every footbridge and dirt path between “the purple place” and its motel and fast-food neighbors. Out of breath, she reaches Jancey’s family’s room at the Futureland Inn, too upset to put what’s happening to her into words.

Brooklynn Prince, Bria Vinaite, and Christopher Rivera in The Florida Project

IsThe Florida Projectbased on a true story?

No, The Florida Project is fictional and not based on any one true story, but it’s inspired by the real lives of people similar to its characters. On trips to visit his mother in Florida, Bergoch had begun to notice children and families staying in motels long term. When developing the film, he and Baker and other crew members visited with local motel residents, and Dafoe met with a manager like the one he portrays. Some of the newcomer cast brought their own motel life experiences to bear, or absorbed those of the other motel residents who were still living on-site around them during filming.

How does The Florida Project end?

Where does The Florida Project take place? Where was it filmed?

The Florida Project is set in and around the Magic Castle Inn & Suites, a roadside budget motel in Kissimmee, Florida, that Baker chose for the significance of its name and the color (it was already painted purple at the time).“For me, a place becomes a character,” Baker told Film Comment.

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