‘False Positive’ Ending Explained: What Does That Chilling Final Shot Mean?

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If you’re hoping that False Positive, the new A24 horror movie on Hulu will be one of those horror movies that’s also funny, think again. Though the film stars, and was co-written by, comedian Ilana Glazer, best known for playing a messy version of herself on Comedy Central’s Broad City, False Positive is a deeply disturbing and serious psychological thriller.

Directed by John Lee, False Positive explores a lot of different themes involving motherhood, women’s bodies, and how the patriarchy attempts to control both of those things. Not everything in the movie works, but the film certainly succeeds in keeping viewers on edge throughout the story.

As for the False Positive ending, well, you might want to brace yourself for some graphic imagery. It’s an ending that blurs reality with hallucinations, so if you got a little lost, I don’t blame you. Don’t worry, because Decider is here to help. Read on for the False Positive plot summary, as well as the False Positive ending, explained.

What is the False Positive plot summary?

Lucia “Lucy” Martin is a woman who has been trying and failing to get pregnant with her husband Adrian (Justin Theroux) for two years. Adrian convinces Lucy to see an old friend of his, Dr. Hindle (Pierce Brosnan), the head of a prestigious (and creepy) fertility clinic. Dr. Hindle promises Lucy the best chance of getting pregnant with a new method of IVF that he invented himself, and it works. Actually, it works a little too well—Lucy gets pregnant with triplets.

In order to avoid complications, Lucy is told she must have a “selective reduction” procedure. She has a choice: Either she can have twin boys or a single girl. Lucy wants to keep the girl. Adrian and Dr. Hindle want her to keep the boys, but ultimately agree to defer to Lucy’s decision to keep the little girl, who Lucy names Wendy.

Then things start to get weird. After a few health scares and strange interactions with both Dr. Hindle and Adrian, Lucy starts to suspect something has been done to her baby without her permission. She decides to secretly start seeing a midwife named Grace Singleton (Zainab Jah). Then things get even weirder when she starts hallucinating, though Dr. Hindle insists it’s just “mommy brain,” and gives her medication.

Reality starts to blur. Lucy discovers paperwork that suggests Dr. Hindle is experimenting and spying on her. She shows that paperwork to a friend, who promises to have her lawyer husband look at it. But she soon realizes her friend is in on it with Dr. Hindle, too.

What is the False Positive ending?

Lucy gives birth not to her baby girl, but to the two healthy twin boys. Wendy, an underdeveloped stillborn, is removed from her body. Lucy realizes that both Adrian and Dr. Hindle never intended to respect her wishes to keep the girl, and made the decision on her behalf to keep the boys.

Adrian believed that once Lucy had the babies, her maternal instincts would kick in, and she would take care of them and forgive him. But Lucy goes nuclear instead.

Lucy shows up at Dr. Hindle’s fertility clinic and finds the underdeveloped fetus of her baby girl, Wendy. She confronts Dr. Hindle, who tells her that he impregnated her with his own sperm. Lucy attacks Dr. Hindle, and his creepy nurse (Gretchen Mol), leaving them incapacitated. She takes the Wendy fetus, and the paperwork showing what Dr. Hindle did her, and leaves.

Then, to the song “Who Am I?” from Peter Pan, Lucy returns home to her two twin babies. We watch as Lucy holds her babies out of the window, and they float away. You think for a minute that perhaps she murdered them—but then the scene resets, and you realize she was just imagining it.

Instead, she hands the two babies to Adrian and tells him to go. Then she holds Wendy’s tiny fetus to her chest and imagines (or maybe really does see) that the fetus begins to nurse. With that disturbing image—a tiny, blue-faced, underdeveloped baby gently sucking on Glazer’s nipple—the movie ends.

What is the False Positive ending, explained?

False Positive was originally advertised as a contemporary take on Rosemary’s Baby, which is a 1968 psychological horror film about a pregnant woman (Mia Farrow) who suspects her neighbors are in a Satanic cult, and that they want her baby for a dark ritual. Spoiler alert: After Rosemary is told she gave birth to a stillborn child, she finds her baby alive, but with mutilated eyes. The cult members tell her the baby is Adrian, Satan’s son—aka the same name as Lucy’s husband in False Positive—and tell her that she must mother the child. At first, Rosemary resists, but when she hears the baby cry, her mothering instincts kick in, and she rocks the cradle.

False Positive offers a different ending: Lucy refuses to mother the twin boys that Dr. Hindle forced on her. If we see Dr. Hindle as the devil (Pierce Brosnan does rock a Satan-like beard), we can see both the twin boys—and Adrian—as Satan’s children. But by walking away from her babies and from Adrian, Lucy signals that she will not take care of either of them. Though she does not actually murder the babies, she does imagine it. She lets go of them in her mind. In other words, she does the exact opposite of what Rosemary does in Rosemary’s Baby.

However, just because Lucy refuses to take care of the children she never asked for, that doesn’t mean she rejects motherhood altogether. Interpretations of the final shot may vary. Lucy has been hallucinating throughout the movie—including hallucinating her Black midwife’s mystical vibes—so it’s very possible she is hallucinating Wendy breastfeeding, grieving the child that was taken from her.

My take? Lucy is not crazy—she knows that Wendy is not alive—but rather, she sees Wendy as herself. She is only imagining Wendy is nursing, just as she imagined her twin boys flying out of the window. Lucy is being reborn and is now ready to finally stand up to the patriarchy. Either way, it’s clear that Lucy will not stay with Adrian and raise Dr. Hindle’s children.

Well, that was incredibly disturbing and depressing! Now let’s go watch something happy, shall we?

Watch False Positive on Hulu