MovieChat Forums > Mindhunters (2005) Discussion > Question about the end *spoilers!*

Question about the end *spoilers!*


I was a bit confused by the ending. To be fair I wasn't taking the movie too seriously by this point, and may have missed some crucial plot point, but I don't think so.

Why, after finding Val Kilmer's body, did LL Cool J shoot Johnny Lee Miller? I can understand if he killed him out of paranoia, or even accidentally, but then he proceeds to stalk Kathryn Morris and tell her why he killed everyone. And then Johnny Lee Miller comes back and it turns out HE was the killer, and LL Cool J saves the day by killing him.

What the hell?!? Did the producers make several alternate endings and just couldn't make up their minds about which one to use?

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LL didn't shoot Johnny Lee Miller. Miller used squibs to act like he was killed. What the character Sarah "saw" was Gabe (LL) standing over Lucas's (Miller) body. We as the audience are supposed to believe that he killed him, due to the many shots fired, and the atrocious line he says.

When Gabe confronts Sarah, he never says that he killed them, but in turn tries to psych her out because he believes that she killed the team...hence their whole ramble about how messed up the other is.

I hope that helps...

: )

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It doesn't. I liked it better when I had more reason to not like this film. Still... it's absolutely ridiculous that all would be forgiven that quickly.

Thanks, though.

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He didn't use squibs since his bulletproof vest was full of.. well, bullets :)

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Well, Wikipedia disagrees with me so I'm probably wrong.. I guess I missed that part

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Wikipedia says he used "squids." He never said they were squibs, but there was fake blood on his bullet-proof vest.

Still no one has explained to me why LL Cool J went psycho-stalker.

Anyway, where the heck did the guy get squibs and why the heck did he need to pretend to be shot? Why not just set up two more traps and call it a day?

The ending didn't make a whole lot of sense to me after LL Cool J ended up not being the killer.

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Well, it was pretty clever, but not really dwelt upon. We saw JLM get 'shot' while knowing KM didn't do it, so we assume it was LL - but all LL and KM saw was JLM getting 'shot,' so LL and KM both assumed that the other did it, so were obviously out to get each other which is why LL went rather mental.

What I didn't get was why when LL turned up at the end to find KM, who he thought was the killer, holding JLM at gunpoint, he sided with her?! Or did he wake up a bit early and hear what JLM was saying maybe?

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well, the way I see it, once Lucas attacked him, Gabe knew Lucas was the killer, rather then Sara.

Reason:

Once the attack occured, Gabe has to have wondered why Lucas would save the woman who shot him (In Gabe's eyes). It makes no sense, unless Lucas didn't see the shooter and thought Gabe shot him. BUT Gabe knew he didn't shoot Lucas, and also knew that Lucas knew where Sara was. ("JESUS CHRIST SARAH, STAY RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE!"). If Lucas knew where Sara was, and also knew Sara didn't shoot him, then that would mean he "thought" Gabe shot him. The only problem with that is Gabe knows HE didn't shoot Lucas. Also, Gabe knew Sara was trying to put the shooting on Gabe, meaning she thought Gabe shot Lucas.

If neither Sara nor Gabe shot Lucas, then the only remaining possibility is Lucas "shot" himself, as there was nobody else left alive on the island able to get to the scene of the "shooting" fast enough (Vince was in the main building's basement getting the faulty gun clip at the time, and was dead before Gabe and Sara's confrontation)

Which brings another point up...why didn't anybody think of Vince after they found Harris dead and were turning guns on each other?

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[deleted]

I thought I was the only one who thought that was stupid.

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I just want to know why Johnny Lee Miller looked like he was going to bite Kathryn Morris just before she tumbled down the stairs.

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AH! I thought he was gonna bite her too!

What if they come in through the back door or the bathroom window like that infamous Beatles song?

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To be fair, she did look awfully delicious.

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hmm hmm good!

psycho cannibal has a weakness
bullets

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Yeah well he was a serial killer so i would not be surprised if he was thinking of taking a bite out of her lol

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[deleted]

JLM does indeed have Squashed Bullets in his Bullet proof jacket when he first reveals it. He also then pulls out Squib leads. The two facts are impossible in tandem. He can't have added the bullets earlier just for this eventuality because squashed bullets fall out pretty quickly and without much shaking.

More importantly, who the hell was LL cool J's character. he claimed to be a Profiler, then an investigator, then a profiler again. Why did he keep changing his story? Why gid he switch back and forth at the moment he was trying to convince everyone he was trustworthy?

Moving on, is the Killer supposed to be a genius at preparing or McGuyver because I don't buy at all that he can be bloody great at being both. In a few hours he set up a bunch of intricate and specific traps, none of which failed (even the water/electricity one was simply a preamble to set off the harpoon one). He had never been to the place, hadn't been able to search the place alone to gather materials and he clearly wsn't loaded down when they landed with a bullet proof vest, various remote controls and squibs (ever hear of searches and metal detectors at FBI bases and helicopter launch sites?)

Nor that an seriously unhinged serial Killer (remember folks, serial killers always escalate) could stop killing to go through fBI training and then profiler training in the hope that maybe some strange and maverick trainer would put him and his 'prey' in some perfect serial killer location?

What happeend to the Puppeteer? Val Kilmer says one more person, 'the Puppeteer' would be joining them in the morning and thier job would be to profile and catch him. If this person (or the FBI agnet playing the role) hadn't been going to show up, then all the DNA sequencing and blood testing equipment was worthless (nothing to compare evidenec to) and basically nobody would ever sign off on the 'island holiday' expenses for an exercise that could be done in a classroom.

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I think Val Kilmer himself was supposed to be this "puppeteer".

The movie relies on the pacing so that everything happens too fast for us to think clearly, but you're right spikey-5 about the killer. His character is a bit unrealistic. If we are to believe that he's so good then he shouldn't have failed.

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Well he was the "puppeteer". But to me thats no the reason why he was killed in the way he was. See the Puppeteer was a killer either made up or pulled from an old case file for the sake of the exercise to put the trainees through the steps. I think the reason he was killed in the way he was however was that he was seen by Lucas as the puppeteer of the trainees, constantly pulling the strings and controlling what was going on.

The reason why Lucas didn't set a trap for Sara was because, though as she stated, water was one of her weaknesses he was her other one, or so he thought. He probably wanted to kill her him self when she would, as he thought, inevitably, freeze up and fail to put him under and that is where Lucas failed. He didn't expect her to raise the bar and become him in a sense. While he hunted them she turned and began to hunt him.

There is a lot of intricate little pieces to this movie and I loved it, however upon watching it again I noticed a flaw that until becoming more of a gun person my self I never saw. Vince's gun kept changing during the elevator scene from a Barreta to his Glock.

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I don't get why anyone was confused, although I am NOT defending this movie at all.

Johnny Lee Miller rigged his vest so that it appeared he was getting shot. Both LL Cool J and the girl thought the other had shot him, so LL Cool J was hunting her because he was convinced she killed him. Finding her next to Vince's body probably didn't help things.

The problem is that Mindhunters was being gratuitously manipulative at this point. If you read between the lines, LL's dialogue towards her does suggest he thinks she's the killer. But he's also acting uncharacteristically unstable and that line about Miller being fearless is a pretty forced red herring. The only justification is a brief mention that they're all suffering from Cabin Fever, so might be breaking down mentally.

In essence, it makes perfect sense, it was just really stupid. I think the only reason they did that 'twist' is it was obvious that Miller was the killer. He was involved in every character death and it's common movie logic that if someone becomes a suspect early on, they will be innocent. At no point does anyone really suspect Miller's character outside of a single line (odd, as it was spoken by the dumbest character in the movie). So by pretending that LL was the real killer, it would throw us off.

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...it's common movie logic that if someone becomes a suspect early on, they will be innocent.

Well, that wasn't the case in the first Scream movie.

Life is like a beautiful melody, only the lyrics are messed up.

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Well wasn't that made that movie so good is that it went against all the usual slasher horro psycho killer cliches and tropes?

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[deleted]

That part ruined it for me too. Same way she just didn't shoot him outright when he started playing games with her

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