Caveat (2020)--Movie Ending Explained with Spoilers!

 

PLOT SUMMARY: Isaac, who is suffering from partial memory loss, is given a job to look after his friend's niece Olga. But there is one caveat...

There's something eerie about Caveat and it's not just the drumming bunny we get introduced to in the first scene. It's the whole atmosphere of the movie that incites creepiness that withers only after the movie ends.

But back to the bunny. What is its deal anyway? The bunny toy is an ugly toy that no child would ever pick. It looks like it was made by a demented mind. The large bulging eyes, the sick grey color, the drum that it holds, all of it looks like a toy a mad person made and perhaps that is exactly what it was. But this bunny toy isn't ordinary.

 In fact, it also acts as an alarm. Anytime a supernatural event is about to occur, the bunny begins to play the drums.

CAVEAT Movie Plot 

In the first scene, we meet Olga, coming downstairs into her basement clutching the bunny by its ears. The bunny starts to play the drums. Olga's nose is bleeding. She goes to a wall and carves a not so perfect hole into it and peeks through it.

In the next scene, we meet Moe who is peeking through a circular window at Isaac. Moe offers his "friend" a great job opportunity. Isaac has partial memory loss so he can't exactly remember being friends with Moe but who cares about that. He's about to make 200 bucks per day for five days. And what does he have to do? Just babysit Moe's grown-up niece Olga.

Isaac may have some problems with his memory but not his intelligence. He straight away asks his friend what the catch is.

Cue title card.

Oh yes, there's a caveat but Isaac isn't told immediately. Moe takes him to a lake and announces the house he's supposed to stay in and watch over his niece, who is actually in the middle of the lake somewhere.

Isaac tells Moe he can't swim and Moe barely blinks. They haven't bought any swimming costumes so Moe tells him he wasn't expected to swim anyway. And then he reminds him what boats are used for.

Isaac hesitates probably because there are no life jackets but he gets into the dingy boat anyway. Two hundred a day is a lot of money after all.

Moe takes him by boat to the island and a long path leads up to a house that looks like it will shatter by a gust of wind. Moe claims to have a lot of money but clearly doesn't offer it to his niece whose father had killed himself, and whose mother recently disappeared. He could have offered a little for repairs but Moe has other things in his mind, like offering drifters a lot of money and placing lampshades on his niece as a way of showing Isaac the best way to play hide and seek is to pretend to be a lamp.

Isaac is not amused. In fact, he feels pity for Olga and takes the job even though he's just been introduced to a caveat...he must not enter Olga's bedroom. To make sure he absolutely doesn't, he must wear a leather harness attached to a long chain that will allow him to move about in the house but gets restricted only near Olga's room.

Isaac almost declines, there's no way he wants to be a dog on a leash. But the lampshade incident changes his mind and he decides that clearly, Olga's uncle is not going to take care of her so he might as well sit around the house doing nothing for five days.

Of course, Isaac doesn't test the chains before Moe leaves. Moe casually places the key on top of a desk knowing Isaac cannot reach it. Isaac isn't too thrilled by his new uniform, as Moe calls it, but obliges and only after Moe leaves, realizes the chains don't allow him to enter bathrooms.

Isaac doesn't even bother asking about his comfort while sleeping or using the bathroom. He's so distracted by the peculiar job opportunity he simply takes it. Later when he is unable to use the bathroom, he realizes Moe has also hired him as a gardener and that he must pee on the plants.

Isaac is about to water the plants but sees a dog tied up and pauses but then thinks it's just a dog and relieves himself.

Isaac does a bit of wandering, sees the dark basement but decides against going downstairs. He prefers setting up a chair and watching the dog and the newly watered garden.

The lights flicker and go off. The dog stares at something behind Isaac. That's when someone raises the chain and pulls. Isaac almost topples over and goes to check it out but can't see anybody.

Bored of roaming around the house with no one to talk to, not even Olga who is still crouched in the corner with hands over her eyes, he decides to go to bed.

But there's a creepy painting in the bedroom of a girl who appears to be whispering. Isaac tosses and turns before turning the painting around. The painting keeps turning back and eventually falls down. Isaac picks up the painting to see the girl has changed her expressions and is glaring at him.

But it's a dream. Isaac wakes up to see that the painting is still turned away from him. Isaac goes back to snooping around the house and sees a drawing of circles on black paper.

Olga comes to find him and tells him her mother played a trick on her father by locking him up in the basement and then refusing to give up the key.

As they continue to talk, Olga shows him a jacket that Isaac remembers as his. When he asks how it came into her possession, she reveals that Isaac has been here before.

Isaac is befuddled. He presses Olga who tells him that it was actually he who locked the door to the basement trapping her father in madness.

Isaac tells her it isn't true and forces her to call Moe to corroborate the story. She does and puts it on speaker. Moe admits that Isaac was sent by him before and he was the one who locked the door. Isaac gets nervous as Moe tells Olga to get off the speaker. He then gives her some instructions that prompt Isaac to go running around the house and hide in spaces and peek through holes.

He finds one through which he can spy in Olga's room and see the key. He reaches for it but before he can get it, Olga who is standing there and watching the hand with indifference grabs his hand and twists his finger.

Isaac howls and runs around the house to hide in the kitchen. Olga comes following around armed with a crossbow. Isaac, after being able to straighten his finger,  runs to the basement and tries to tug on the chains but of course, it doesn't budge.

He finds a hole in the basement and the little bunny toy. When he peeks into the hole that Olga made in the first scene, he is shocked to find the missing mother. Isaac freaks but then notices the key around her neck and uses it to open his harness.

Olga comes down just in time to be overpowered and made to wear the harness. Now it is her turn to sulk and uselessly pull at the chains.

Meanwhile, Isaac finds some quiet time after all that running around to remember the events that led up to his stay here.

He remembers that Moe had come to him when Isaac used to know how to use a razor and shaving cream. He had given Isaac a job to lock Moe's brother in the basement and let the claustrophobia act as a catalyst for him to commit suicide.

Isaac does go, not making a fuss about using boats on that trip. When he reaches the house he can't find anybody and when he notices the black paper art book, he leaves a note saying that Moe was trying to kill his brother.

CAVEAT Ending Explained with Spoilers! 

He does roam around the house a bit more and comes to the basement to find it already locked. He opens it and finds that Moe's brother is already dead.

Isaac leaves and when Moe comes to see him later, informs him that he doesn't need the money because he didn't do the job. Moe is surprised when Isaac tells him about the locked door but insists he takes the money as he also found the note Isaac left behind that could have landed Moe in trouble with the police.

That night, Isaac is drunk on the balcony when Moe comes to see him. It is implied that he pushed Isaac off the balcony so that he can remain quiet forever and not let the world know what a terrible brother Moe was.

Isaac now knows the truth and feels he was brought here to be killed. Moe also comes to the house and there is more running around with Isaac hiding in crawl spaces and seeing the mother jumping around with a mad smile on her face.

There were some genuinely creepy scenes here. Credit where credit is due.

Isaac lands in the space with the mother and is scared of seeing her staring at him. He uses the hat he found to cover her face but later when he shines his flashlight on her, she has managed to poke a hole through to show him one eye.

Olga comes down to shoot at Moe as well as he tries to talk to Isaac. Olga goes away for a bit so that Moe can try to convince Isaac to come out. Moe has his weapon ready to bash his head.

The knife begins to move again, cutting a larger hole and Moe comes closer.

Just then he hears Isaac's voice from the intercom telling him he's leaving but that he will bring help. Moe wonders who could be coming out of the wall now if it isn't Isaac.

Surprise! It's the mother grinning at him.

Isaac leaves the house through a hatch and makes sure to take the dog away from the house of insane people.

This movie was surprisingly good and the scary parts were, scary of course.

It still required a bit more clarity as to what exactly happened in that house?

Olga was quite proficient with the crossbow, so was she the one who killed her parents?

Was it really the mother who had gone mad, thrown her husband into the basement and then used the key as a necklace? Maybe Olga saw her mother do this and then decided to kill her with a crossbow and hide her body?

And then Olga probably felt guilty about it or haunted by her mother which is why she uses the bunny in the first scene to see if it reacts to the place where her mother is hidden. It does and that terrifies Olga to the point that she goes into catatonic states and gets nosebleeds.

This is probably what happened.

CAVEAT is a genuinely creepy atmospheric movie you should definitely watch.

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