I See You ending explained: What is Alec’s secret?
I See You spoilers follow.
The thriller I See You, starring Helen Hunt, had a brief cinema release in the US in 2019 and has just landed on Netflix UK, ready for you to puzzle your way through the plot’s mysteries.
The movie introduces us to the Harper family – mum Jackie, dad Greg and teenage son Connor. While they live in an impressively big house, all is not well with Greg sleeping on the sofa following his wife’s affair, and Connor glaring at his mum every chance he gets for betraying his dad.
Spooky things start to happen in the home – all their cutlery goes missing, photos disappear from picture frames on the wall, Greg gets trapped in a closet, and a repairman talks about how nice their daughter was, letting him in… except they don’t have a daughter.
Meanwhile at work, cop Greg is made lead detective on a case involving a missing boy named Justin, who disappeared while cycling through the woods on his way home, the second local boy to disappear in recent months. Greg is teamed with detective Spitzky, who worked on a similar abduction case involving six boys 15 years before, although that case was solved and the abductor, Cole Gordon, is in prison.
With the mysterious happenings at the Harper home, and the missing boys case to resolve, there’s lots to unpack in this thriller. Read on but beware there are major spoilers ahead if you haven’t had a chance to watch the movie yet.
I See You ending explained
Investigating the recent abduction of Justin and another missing boy, Greg and Spitzky go to visit Tommy, one of two boys who survived being abducted by Cole Gordon. A green pen knife was found where Justin went missing, and similar knives had been found at all of Gordon’s crime scenes suggesting there is a link, but when they arrive to talk to a now-adult Tommy, he just screams when he sees them.
Outside the Harper home, Jackie is visited by her ex-lover, Todd. As she tries to get him to leave, he is hit in the head by a mug that has come from the roof above. Assuming her son Connor threw the mug, she takes Todd inside to the basement to tend to his head wound and tells him to stay there while she drives Connor to school.
While she’s out, Todd is hit in the head from behind by someone, and when Jackie returns home she finds him lying dead on the floor and presumes Connor killed him.
When Greg returns home, Jackie asks for his help, and the pair end up driving out to the woods where they bury Todd’s body.
When they get back from their little outing, Greg and Jackie find son Connor tied up in the bathtub, with a green pocket knife close by. Jackie rushes Connor to hospital while Greg says he will stay to find out if the intruder who attacked Connor is still in the house.
The movie then flashes back a few days, and shows us two strangers sneaking into the house. They are Mindy and Alec, two homeless people who call themselves “phroggers” because they jump from pad to pad and hide out in family homes, only coming out when the owners aren’t home.
While Mindy usually hides away from families in basements and attics and stays in a home for just a few days, Alec wants to mess with the Harpers and it turns out between them, they are behind all the strange occurrences – it was Mindy who let the repairman in, and Alec (wearing a spooky frog mask) has been hiding the cutlery and photos, as well as peeing on Greg’s bed while he was sleeping (yuck) so that when Greg woke up he thought he had wet himself.
It was also Alec who knocked the cup that hit Todd in the head, but as the flashbacks show, it wasn’t him who dealt the fatal blow to Todd’s skull – that was Greg, who found Todd in the basement and smashed his head in with a baseball bat while a hidden Mindy watched in horror.
After Greg leaves, she rushes to tell Alec what she has just seen, and finds him attacking and tying up Connor. Understandably, she says she is going to call the police as things have gone too far, but Alec accidentally pushes her and Mindy hits her head on the stairs. Alec carries her unconscious body downstairs and hides her in the trunk of Greg’s car.
It’s at that moment that Jackie and Greg come home and find Connor unconscious in the bath, so Alec has to hide again – and when Jackie and Connor leave for the hospital in her car, Greg drives off in his, unaware that Mindy is in the back.
When the car stops in the forest, Mindy is awake but stays silent. After Greg walks off, she discovers the bloody baseball bat, a bag with a handful of green pocket knives inside, and a shirt belonging to the missing boy, Justin, that was mentioned on the news.
She gets out of the car and calls 9-1-1, but the call gets cut off thanks to bad reception in the woods. She then discovers a caravan and hears screams for help, and realises it is the two missing kids being held inside. However, before she can free them, Greg sneaks up behind her and attacks her.
He takes her back to the house and shoots her, making it look like she had invaded his home and he had killed her in self defence. Greg is then attacked by Alec, but he fights back and knocks Alec out, and then stabs himself to make it look like he was attacked by both of them.
Who is Alec revealed to be at the end of I See You?
While the big reveal may have been that Greg was the one who abducted the recently missing boys, there is one more major revelation to come. Alec gets up from the floor holding the gun and tells Greg he knows that he abducted those boys, and he shoots him. So how did he know, as Mindy only just found out before she died?
It becomes clear moments later when Spitzky comes in and shoots Alec (still holding the gun) in the shoulder – and is shocked when Alec recognises him and says his name.
As Spitzky discovers the evidence in Greg’s car that proves he abducted the two boys, and Alex is carried to an ambulance, there is a flashback showing a young Alec (with a frog Pez in his pocket, the same as the one we have seen him using while hiding in the house) and Tommy meeting a younger Greg, who shows them a green pocket knife.
This reveals that Greg not only was responsible for the recent missing boys, but also for the disappearances of six other boys – including Alec and Tommy (now we know why he screamed earlier in the movie upon seeing Greg) – 15 years before, and that Cole Gordon was convicted of a crime he didn’t commit. Alec had remembered Spitzky from when he had interviewed him after he was rescued.
Mindy had earlier mentioned that it was Alec who specifically chose the Harper house for them to hide in, which suggests that Alec had planned all along to be there and finally take revenge on the man who had kidnapped him 15 years ago.
I See You is available to watch now on Netflix UK.
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