Netflix’s Swedish thriller, Red Dot, builds a gripping narrative around a young couple’s attempt to fix their troubled marriage with a baby on the way.
Red Dot revolves around David and Nadja, who begin their journey as a married couple when the former graduates as an engineer. The two move to Stockholm where Nadja continues her studies to become a doctor. However, with David working most of the time, she is burdened with unnecessary responsibilities that creates tension between them.
Furthermore, her discovery of being pregnant leaves her conflicted as she questions their preparedness for parenthood. To fix things, David calls in sick from work and takes the love of his life for a ski trip up in the mountains of North Sweden.
They have a rift with a pair of hunter brothers on their way but think nothing of it as they look forward to their therapeutic getaway. Unbeknownst to them, the hunters decide to tail them with an intention to kill.
Do David and Nadja make it out alive?
Here is the Red Dot ending explained in detail:
The real hunters
Absolutely certain that the pair of brothers they had a tussle with are the ones after their lives, David and Nadja escape into the snowy wilderness and take refuge among the trees.
As a storm begins to brew, they return to their tent and find their dog, Boris, decapitated. To add salt to their wounds, David’s arm gets caught in a bear trap, hidden by their attackers. Desperate to find shelter and call for the help, they have no option but to scale the tumultuous terrain on foot.
Chancing upon an abandoned cabin, they radio mountain rescue for help and Nadja stitches up David’s wound. While the onset of a new dawn sees the storm go away, a new surprise awaits the duo.
A rescuer shows up to the cabin who turns out to be one of the brothers. Sensing danger, the two hide and Nadja shoots him with a flare gun, setting his jacket on fire. Remembering that the bartender from their motel, Einar, had offered his own cottage as a resting spot, they decide to head there next.
Due to severe blood loss, David starts hallucinating and refuses to walk further, but Nadja carries on to get help. Unfortunately for her, she runs into the other hunter who curiously has a very confused reaction to her fear. Before they can converse, David appears from behind and stones him to death.
The couple steals the deceased man’s snowmobile and rush off to the Einar’s house. However, their encounters with both brothers seem to hint there may be more to their pursuer’s identity than meets the eye.
Sins of the past
Throughout their desperate survival journey, David hallucinates of a young boy and cries to Nadja about how she was right and they don’t deserve to be parents. These conversations hint at a dark past the two share which somehow involved the kid.
As they reach the cottage, they plead to Einar for help who makes a phone call to a mysterious person. Sensing trouble, Nadja confronts him, but he suspiciously tells them to remain calm. Unable to take any more secrecy, the duo tries to escape but Einar threatens them with a knife and they cower into a room, locking the door.
What follows leaves them shook to their core. David notices the wall plastered with their pictures pointing to a long term stalker. Also, he notices an image of the same boy haunting his conscience. As the puzzle pieces start assembling, in comes Tomas, their neighbour from back home.
It is revealed that shortly after David’s graduation, the couple accidentally hit the young boy, who was Tomas’ son, with their car, killing him on the spot. Thinking that the road was deserted, they panicked and fled the scene.
Tomas was flying a drone nearby and saw the incident via the footage on his screen. Post the accident, his life crumbled as he couldn’t cope with this loss. Incidentally, he managed to capture the car’s license plate, figuring out David and Nadja’s identities. Hell bent on revenge, he refused to involve the police and moved into the house opposite them.
Building a friendly relationship, he tracked their every move, formulating the perfect plan. Before leaving for their trip, Nadja had opened up to Tomas about her marital discrepancies and her pregnancy. He used this opportunity to gift David the holiday package, and lure them to a place where he could finish them off.
It is also divulged that the lady at the motel reception is Tomas’ wife and Einar is his brother-in-law.
Fatal blow
After finally capturing them, Tomas beats the couple unconscious and ties them up. David and Nadja plead for their lives and express their guilt and regret for the murder of his son. They even agree to confess everything to the police but Tomas has other ideas.
He admits that his initial plan was to murder them but that won’t do anyone any good as Nadja is carrying something much more precious in her belly. He instead points a gun at her and asks David to abort their baby using a drilling machine.
Before this gruesome request can be fulfilled, the mountain rescuer, now severely burnt, barges in with a weapon and demands answers.
In a chaotic series of events, Tomas shoots the rescuer who in turn puts a bullet in Einar’s neck. The couple use the resultant ruckus to run out of the house but David’s wounds spell the end of the line for him. Unable to exert anymore, he asks Nadja to run for the sake of their baby, bidding her a final goodbye.
Teary eyed, she expresses her love for him and bolts. David collapses next to a tree stump as Tomas steps out of the house and points the gun at him.
Just when everything seems done and dusted, Nadja reappears with a gun of her own which she picked up from the corps of the second hunter, and points it at Tomas, who smiles in return.
As he casually tells her that she should’ve turned around long go, a stray bullet pierces Nadja’s head, and drops her dead. It is Tomas’ wife from the motel who kills David’s beloved wife before his very eyes.
Sensing he has lost everything, David begs to be killed as well. However, Tomas spares him to feel the sense of loss and pain which he experienced because of losing his son.
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