Trigger warning: this article contains discussions of sexual assault and murder.
When your dad is surrealist filmmaker and cinema legend David Lynch, following in his footsteps is never going to be easy. Yet, his daughter Jennifer Lynch has made a good effort at breaking into the cinema world, and her fourth film Chained is probably one of her better movies.
Nowadays, the younger Lynch tends to focus on directing episodes of television shows (credits include The Walking Dead, Jessica Jones, and Agents of S.H.I.E.l.D), but in Chained, a pyschological horror about a disturbed man who keeps a young boy prisoner for years, she showed that she could make a compelling (and horrifying) film. And, unlike much of her dad’s work, the movie’s plot doesn’t hurt your brain to think about. With that said, the ending of the film is a little ambiguous, which has led a lot of viewers to wonder what it all means. If you’re one of those people, then read ahead for our take on Chained‘s shocking conclusion.
Who stars in Chained?
There are a lot of familiar faces in Chained. Fans of the MCU will recognize the actor in the lead role, Vincent D’Onofrio, who also plays Kingpin/Wilson Fisk. D’Onofrio has also appeared in Men in Black and the incredible Full Metal Jacket, so his acting chops are second to none.
He’s joined by some other faces that may be familiar to viewers. Child star Evan Bird (The Killing) is in the first section of the film, and the older version of his character is played by Aussie actor Eamon Farren, who worked with the director’s father in his 2017 Twin Peaks revival, and has more recently appeared as Cahir in The Witcher.
Also in the movie are Jake Webber (Meet Joe Black, Dawn of the Dead, Medium), Conor Leslie (The Man in the High Castle, and also Wonder Girl/Donna Troy in the HBO/DCEU series Titans), and Emmy winning English actress Julia Ormond (The Walking Dead: The World Beyond, Nurse Jackie). Jennifer Lynch herself also has a small cameo.
What happens in Chained?
The movie begins innocently enough, with a woman named Sarah (Ormond) and her son (Bird) taking a cab home from a trip to the cinema, only for the driver Bob (D’Onforio) to abduct them. A childhood victim of abuse himself, Bob has become a sadistic serial killer. After sexually assaulting and murdering Sarah, he chains her son to a wall and begins calling him Rabbit.
We jump a few years and Rabbit remains Bob’s slave. However, the killer attempts to get more involved in Rabbit’s life, including teaching him about the human body. He then tries to convince Rabbit that only he cares about him by telling him that Rabbit’s father has remarried. Believing he’s brainwashed Rabbit enough, he releases him from his chains.
In a further attempt to get Rabbit under his spell, Bob finds a local high school yearbook and asks the teen to pick a victim. After forcing him to pick someone named Angie, Bob finds her, abducts her, and leaves her in a room with Rabbit. The young man struggles to hurt her, instead bonding with her, but when Bob threatens them both Rabbit stabs her in the stomach. Bob orders him to drag her body to where the rest of his victims are, then decides that he and Rabbit are going to go to the city to find new blood to spill.
During the drive Rabbit says no to every possible victim, angering Bob. Bob then sees Rabbit has been trying to escape by writing the word “help” on the side of the cab, and immediately realizes that the tortured teen had used the anatomy knowledge he’d gained to stab Angie in a non-lethal spot. In a fit of rage he knocks Rabbit unconscious, then heads back home to finish off Angie.
Angie, hidden, manages to outsmart Bob and cut his achilles tendon. Rabbit wakes up and joins the stuggle, murdering Bob and burying him next to his victims. A disturbed Rabbit then goes in search of his father, Brad, and confronts him. It quickly transpires that Brad was Bob’s brother, and paid his psychotic sibling to get rid of his wife and child so he could remarry.
With the truth out, Brad goes into a rage, attacking Rabbit (who we discover is called Tim), and then his new wife Marie. Tim manages to overpower him and end his life, before Marie tells him to run away. She then calls the cops and claims a burglar murdered her husband.
With nowhere else to go, Tim returns to Bob’s house. We see him shut the garage door behind him, then hear him following a routine that seems horrifyingly similar to Bob’s. All the while the credits role.
Chained movie ending, explained
Lynch and other members of the cast and crew have never really truly explained the ending, which can be read in a number of ways. As we hear Tim engaging in activity that sounds similar to Bob’s actions, it could be surmised that Bob did manage to brainwash the teen into becoming a sadistic killer. After all, we don’t know what happened to Angie, as the last time we saw her she was resting in the house after her traumatic few days.
One of the biggest clues we get is the sound of Tim cutting pieces of paper. Throughout the film we saw Bob cutting newspaper articles about his victims. Perhaps Tim was cutting one out about Bob himself, who despite being a loner, did have colleagues and other people around him, so his disappearance could have made the news. Or, he might have been snipping around an article about his birth father, whose murder by an alleged burglar would have certainly made the papers. Then there’s the chance he’s cutting out a piece about Angie, as she had been missing for quite some time. If that’s the case, there’s a heavy implication he finishes the job in a way that would have made Bob proud.
A lot of Chained is about generational trauma, and repeating patterns of abuse. The cyclical nature of these kinds of horrible crimes in real life is well documented, and Lynch makes sure to show this in her film. Throughout the movie we see flashback scenes of Bob’s childhood with his abusive father, who even forced his son and wife to have sex for his own pleasure. So, while we see Bob as a monster, we also get to understand the forces that shaped him. Now, we’ve seen Tim suffer through something similar, so the message could very well be that he is trapped in the cycle of pain and abuse too.
However, there is a more positive ending that could be taken from the film. Rabbit, while definitely a killer, was only violent when he was protecting others, or attempting to free himself. He killed Bob to save Angie, and Brad to protect Marie. However, we’ll never truly know if Bob managed to poison Tim’s mind enough to turn him into another sadistic killer, or if the cycle of abuse was broken and Tim was simply exhibiting other patterns of behavior learned from the only adult he ever truly knew.
What did critics think of Chained?
Chained received mix reviews for a number of reasons, but overall it’s seen as one of Jennifer Lynch’s better efforts. While the tense, absorbing nature of the film was praised, as was its unflinching portrayal of violence, many critics felt it leaned too hard into the gory and unmentionable, sacrificing story telling for shock value. Others felt it was nothing but “torture porn” and considered it anti-feminist, given Bob’s victims are by and large women. With that said, the way it tackled patterns of abuse and violence that can snake through generations was seen as a big plus, as were many of the performances, especially that of Farren.