What Lies Below on Netflix: That Baffling Ending, Explained

If you watched What Lies Below on Netflix and are still scratching your head over that ending, you're not alone. The thriller, originally released in December, has found new life on the streaming platform, joining the ranks of other soapy, viral thrillers like Deadly Illusions and Fatal Affair. This subgenre has almost become a signature for Netflix; they're movies that don't necessarily have critical acclaim but are highly watchable thanks to bonkers plot points, campy acting, and Lifetime-esque melodrama.

What Lies Below has all those things and also, as a bonus, mermen! Or aliens! Or some other indiscernible extraterrestrial monster. It's not made clear specifically what John (Trey Tucker) is, but we know he's emerged from the water to wreak havoc on Michelle (Mena Suvari) and her daughter, Libby (Ema Horvath).

But they don't know that. To Michelle, John is just a hunky, bearded, Speedo-wearing 30-year-old who's appeared out of nowhere to woo her. So what if he spends hours in her basement working on spooky “aquatic geneticist” things? Look at his shoulders!

When Libby comes home from camp and meets John, she's cool with him at first, but then things get weird. Like, creepy-uncomfortable-WTF-is-happening weird. There's an incident on a boat where Libby gets her period, after which he licks her menstrual blood. He then spies on her in the shower and sniffs the shirt he used to wipe up said blood. It's all very disturbing and confusing.

And it just keeps getting more disturbing and confusing. By the end, you're not sure what's going on—just that John is bad, he's imprisoned and impregnated Michelle, and Libby needs to save the day.

But she doesn't. In a bizarre, unfortunate twist of events, Michelle dies and Libby is kidnapped by John and a bunch of other scary mermen/aliens who look like him. He then injects some blue light into her and she wakes up in a diamond-shaped cell that's submerged in water. At first, she freaks out because the tank is filling up. But then she…smiles? Boom, ending, roll credits. What is happening?

Writer-director Braden R. Duemmler cleared things up in an interview with E.W. He confirms John is a “species from another planet” who's come to earth to collect specimens. Michelle was his first, presumably, and now he's moved on to Libby. Duemmler also reveals the blue light enabled Libby to breathe under water, and she smiles in the cell when she realizes that.

If you recall, earlier in the movie, Libby goes into town and sees a guy who looks just like John. It turns out that was one of those clones we see at the end. Duemmler explains to E.W., “John is designed by his species. He is an exoskeleton that has been designed as a Venus flytrap. Although the exoskeleton is the same, the algorithm changes for each one. One of them is a scientist and kind of nerdy. The other one is kind of a hipster. The other one is kind of rock-and-roll. They do it to attract different personalities, but they're always after the same thing, which is very clear in the last shot. They're collecting specimen.”

If you really paid attention to this film, you picked up on the fact these aliens are interested only in redheaded specimens. (Libby and Michelle both have natural red hair that's been dyed blond.) Duemmler posits John's species is looking to procreate with humans and take over the planet, and maybe they're compatible only with people who have the redhead gene.

“I felt that that might be a reason why John's species could procreate with us, that the only way he can is because of that one gene,” he says. “It's all part of this one grand experiment that's basically John Smith's species trying to figure out how they could come to this planet and take over.”

As for why John sniffed that shirt, Duemmler says, “His senses are much more advanced than ours. So he can smell genes, in a way.” ’Kay, cool.

There you have it, people. John was an alien the whole time looking for redheads to do experiments on and procreate with. You know: normal, simple stuff!

What Lies Below is streaming on Netflix. Let's all watch it again with this info in mind and see if it makes sense.

Christopher Rosa is the entertainment editor at Glamour. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram.

Originally Appeared on Glamour