The 2020 movie What Lies Below was added to Netflix in April.
Since its arrival, it has left a huge mark on the streaming platform, becoming one of the many new movies taking over the trending list in the United States.
Currently, What Lies Below is the top trending program on Netflix in the United States. It has beaten the newer releases of the Netflix series Who Killed Sara and The Serpent and the 2020 movie Concrete Cowboy, which Netflix released on April 2.
Described by Netflix, What Lies Below tells the story of an awkward teen named Liberty “Libby” Wells who “begins to suspect that a sinister force lurks beneath the surface of her mother’s too-perfect new lover.”
The science-fiction thriller is averagely reviewed, garnering a 62% from Rotten Tomatoes and a 4.5 on IMDb.
How does What Lies Below end?
The movie had a totally bizarre ending — one that left its viewers confused. Towards the end of What Lies Below, Libby’s concerns are confirmed. Her dismissive mother’s new boyfriend-turned-fiance, John Smith, is revealed to be a weird fish-hybrid monster.
This revelation isn’t a big surprise as, throughout the movie, John was obsessed with water creatures and boating and had a strange fascination with eels.
Much too late, Libby finds her mother trapped in a water tank. While her mother urges her to escape the situation and leave her be, the young daughter works to free her mother.
Alternating between watching John induce the birth of his fish-hybrid offspring, which is inside of her mother, and hiding in the corner of the room, Libby eventually succeeds in freeing her mother and making a run for it.
With all of the glory of an over-saturated and low-budgeted horror flick, John transforms into his slimy full-fish identity while Libby is on the phone with an emergency responder.
The mother and daughter duo make it outdoors when Libby stops to help her mother fully regain consciousness. Her mother yells, “run,” and then the scene fades to black.
When Libby awakens, she is tied to a chair in a dark room with John and several strange men. It is then insinuated that John impregnates her with his fish babies as he spits a blue egg-like thing into her mouth and forces her to swallow it.
At the very end, Libby is shown to be struggling inside of an encapsulated water pod, alongside other cocoon-like victims. In a quick flash, before the screen fades the black, she smiles at the camera.
What do Redditors think?
Regardless of how many in-depth watches one does of What Lies Below, many things are left unexplained. Here is what the lovely horror buffs on Reddit think of the ending.
In a post written by Redditor u/subwoofie in the Horror thread, they expressed, “The movie had some good acting I thought, especially by the guy playing seaweed sean the love boat/fish bro. But I did not understand it.”
As one might guess, the comment section is filled with everybody’s keen observations and thoughts.
Reddit user SilverLight111 suggested that Libby “was smiling because she realized she could breathe underwater when she quit holding her breath. I think she became one of them when that blue light went into her.”
Another user suspected that the movie showed hints that John and his posse were extraterrestrial beings rather than aquatic hybrids. They wrote that there were multiple parts of the movie that “seem very unworldly” to them.
Listing their points, they shared, “These kinds of clues still make me think they could be from another planet.”
Lo and behold, there is a lot of confusion and conversation online about the ending of What Lies Below.
While one may argue that “the unknown” is one of the most glorious characteristics of a good science-fiction thriller, the rest of us would appreciate some answers.
What Lies Below is currently streaming on Netflix.