Inheritance, the shocking revelation at the end, explained
Lauren Monroe (Lily Collins) inherits a strange inheritance after her father’s sudden death. But what does it mean for her? Let’s find out!
Spoilers got inherited here!
The prestigious Monroe family
The Monroe’s are a well-established influential family. Lauren is the rebellious child, choosing to shun the privileged corporate law and becoming a district attorney. Archer, her father has always been preferential to her younger brother, William, who’s running for elections. After Archer’s sudden death, the bias was clear- William got $20 million in the will while Lauren got only $1 million.
But he left something solely for her. A pen drive in which he told her to take this to her grave.
What was this inheritance?
The drive showed her a clue. It was in their family summer home’s backyard- a secret underground bunker. And there, a man collared up with chain. Lauren takes his fingerprints but the man knows everything about the family.
He tells her his name- Morgan Warner. And after demanding steak and other foods which he hadn’t had in 30 years, he tells her that her father killed a guy in a car accident and after burying him, he put Morgan in here because he was the one who knew about it.
Hence, he was tortured by Archer, left in near darkness, like a caged- worse than a caged- animal. He also revealed to Lauren that his father had a mistress- a whole other family at that, bound by an NDA.
Her belief in the man’s words starts to intensify
With every secret Lauren tried to testify ignoring her own life, family and at times even career, the more she starts believing in him. She wants to save the reputation of her family, and handle Morgan at the same time. She doesn’t want her mother to be hurt by this. She wants to save her brother’s campaign. And she’s turning into what her father wanted from her- to honour family over anything.
Lauren does follow up to get a missing person’s report from when Morgan vanished but it’s taking time. Ultimately, having her belief set through his words and obvious truths, she sets him free. With a million dollars and a plane ride to Cayman Islands.
A package arrives at the summer home
While Lauren is cleaning up the bunker, the missing person’s file comes. It’s her mother who picks and opens it up. And she questions Lauren as to why it is with her. She says the man in the picture is Carson. And he’s an evil man. Lauren, realizing she’s made a big blunder, goes off to the airport. What she see’s there is their family lawyer’s body who was accompanying Morgan.
She rushes back home but finds her mother nowhere. She then goes to the bunker. And there she engages in a fight with Morgan- or Carson and he handcuffs her to a chain while her mother is lying there in pain. He starts saying that the accidental kill was real, but stuff happened before that too.
The day the accident happened; he’d been forcibly physical with her mother. She told that to Archer and the accident happened when he was taking him away. Being a witness to it, Carson was kept as an insurance so nothing gets out. But soon enough, Archer started talking to him and telling him stuff. After much planning, Carson killed him using the poison brought to kill him.
The ending and a huge secret
In the end, after everything is revealed, and a verbal match, Carson shouts to Lauren that he is her father. At just that point, Catherine shoots him. A stunned Lauren sits there while her mother tells her that she’s a Monroe and they take care of each other.
Lauren burns down the bunker with Carson’s body. At the end, she commits a crime, even if had rightful basis, to protect her family. And is more bound to them with this dirty secret.
In an interview with Borrowing Tape, Director Vaughn Stein details the concepts used by him to show the essence of the movie in relatable terms as, “…the notions of privilege, legacy, what we will do to protect our own, and the sinister secrets that pass down through the generations… the skeletons we all have in our closets, the monsters lurking in our basements.”