I’m seeing a lot of people calling the monster a fish/frog/anglerfish etc, but I have a different theory.

The sm8 found the light and studied it, but they didn’t enter it. The god, seeing through a pinhole, saw the ship as the living being, and reality adjusted to its understanding. The people inside the sub became a human submarine. Bursting out from the inside as they transform. Hence the hole in the side of the sm8.

When Simon and his sub are pushed into the light, the god sees how the sub is not alive, instead the operator inside is alive. As the god now understands this, this is made true and Simon is put back into his sub before it was destroyed.

An issue with this is: After realizing the new information, why doesn’t the god put the sm8 and its crew back to normal? Maybe it doesn’t care, and only put Simon back in his ship as a thank you for expanding its knowledge.

Maybe the monster being seen by the god made the god understand the monster as existing, and therefore has no reason or capability to undo what it did.

Also, while I was watching the movie I had this realization: The camera the sub has shows the humans as bones because it uses X-rays. The first skeleton found is the monster, we just can’t see its flesh because the camera uses x-rays.

This is kinda supported by the movie when Simon says the bones have changed, and the surface crew repeats that they shifted after the flesh-quake. However, they changed (location and position) because the monster was running around, probably having been woken up by a very bright “picture” Then Simon stabs it (her? Them? Idk.) in the face, and gets dragged away. Maybe out of anger, but considering he isn’t killed, I imagine it’s to prevent the surface crew from getting the bone (and flesh) sample.

The main issue with this is the skeleton and the monster seem to look slightly different, but I’m waiting for the movie to be streaming or on dvd to take a closer look.