Windfall is a thriller drama directed by Charlie McDowell that revolves around a stranger who breaks into the vacation house of a tech billionaire but is interrupted by the arrival of the billionaire and his wife. The film is now streaming on Netflix.
Warning: This article contains heavy spoilers
Plot summary
A strange man, quite literally a nobody (Jason Segel) is enjoying the comforts of a grand house with a vast orchard out in the middle of nowhere. After spending some time, he takes one last look around the house and then gets ready to leave after clearing all traces of his visit.
He gets a wave of greed and goes back for more valuables but before he can get out, he’s interrupted by the sound of an approaching vehicle. The owners of the house, a wealthy CEO (Jesse Plemons) and his wife (Lily Collins) have arrived without any kind of notice.
Nobody decides to rush out of the house when the coast is clear but he’s caught by the wife. He grabs her and threatens to harm her unless she cooperates. The CEO comes out to see his wife with some stranger and is asked to sit down and stay quiet.
The stranger gets them to empty their pockets and then goes through the wife’s purse. The CEO offers to give him more money which they may have stashed somewhere so that he can leave. He takes the money and before he can leave, he orders them to go into their sauna and barricades the door.
Before leaving, he remembers to take the handgun that he had found during one of his searches of the house. He goes out to his car but just as he’s about to leave, he notices a security camera that has most probably caught his face by now.
He goes back to the house with the gun and chases the now escaped couple through the orchard and eventually catches up to them. They sit down to negotiate how much money it would take to get him to leave.
After settling on five hundred thousand, the CEO contacts his assistant to arrange the money but she says that it will only be ready by the next evening. The three of them spend the rest of the day doing random things while the CEO and his wife try to build a rapport with nobody to ensure their safety.
The CEO and his wife have a conversation about their goals and dreams for the next 5 years and the subject of having a baby comes up with the couple unevenly enthusiastic about the idea.
The couple is forced to sleep in separate rooms that night while nobody sits outside by the fire and makes sure they don’t try anything funny. He and the wife have a conversation about her life has turned out ever since she married the CEO and how she’s learnt to accept it.
The next morning the three of them sit at the breakfast table together and the CEO tries to get into the mind of the nobody but to no avail. He questions what his motives are and defends his methods of making money because he is such a proud man.
While they’re having this conversation, the sound of a vehicle is heard with the couple none the wiser of who it could be. They head into the hall to find out.
If you have any doubts about the ending, here’s a full breakdown.
Windfall (2022) ending explained in detail:
Three’s a crowd
On further inspection, they see that the sound of the car was of the gardener (Omar Leyva). He walks up to the door and knocks as he has noticed the couple’s car. The CEO goes to answer the door and the gardener thanks him profusely for his job
The three of them sit tight in the bedroom while the gardener gets to work. Nobody takes a peek through the window to see if he’s done but gets spotted. They meet the gardener and tell him that he’s just a cousin to get rid of any suspicion.
Then gardener beckons them out to a spot that he has designed all by himself and shows off his plans to have an oak tree in the middle. When he tries to get a signature to okay the plans, the CEO writes down a message asking him to call 911.
The gardener is being watched by nobody and before he can act on the message, he’s stopped and made to sit down with the other hostages.
Spiralling into chaos
The CEO feels he has had enough. He is being blamed for making a risky call and dragging the innocent gardener into this situation and further threatening all of their lives. He gets up to leave but nobody holds the gun against him and tells him to sit down.
When the CEO does not back down and continues to belittle the nobody, he does so in full confidence that he will not be met with retaliation. Nobody fires a warning shot to the side but the gardener panics and tries to make a break for it.
He trips on the carpet and runs face-first into the glass door, slicing his throat on the broken glass in a freak accident. Everyone else begins to lose their mind as a man lays on the floor losing blood and breathing his last.
The wife tries to talk some sense into the nobody, to assure him that it wasn’t his fault the gardener died and that he should not feel pressured to take drastic measures.
Breaking the camel’s back
They sit in silence with the couple’s feet tied up again as they wait for the money to arrive. Once it does, the wife is sent out to check in the bag and she uses this time to catch her breath after the traumatic time they’ve had so far.
She brings the bag back, and nobody is all set to leave but he decides to have one last conversation with the CEO. He tells him that he hates him and truly hoped he was a good man. He says that life is unfair because of how each of their lives has turned out.
All this while the wife is cutting off her bonds with a piece of broken glass from before. Once nobody steps out of the house and stops to tie his shoes, she frees herself, grabs a heavy art piece from the table and bludgeons the nobody in the head.
She then takes his gun, and with the weight of all that has happened before and her tense relationship with her husband hanging over her, she shoots the CEO. With that, she finally feels free and takes the first steps of the rest of her life.
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