The parents of little Benjamin abducted the wrong prisoner.
The wrong prisoner genuinely had amnesia and all because he recalled Benjamin's name does not detract from this fact.
The real killer was living rough near by and used the medicine that was stolen from the ambulance prior to the prison van crash.
The wrong guy ended up killing himself because he had amnesia and genuinely thought he was the paedo-killer of Benjamin.
End of!
I got confused because it was badly written.
I get that when we see the guy crawl out of the van, we recognize that they have the wrong man. But there wasn't enough done to make it definite this was the wrong guy. We haven't seen the killer in an hour, and we don't know what the tortured guy looks like, so it's still possibly ambiguous.
It would have worked better if, for example, there were two guys in the house, but one of them had no idea about the kid. Then we see them both and superficially they're pretty unique looking, making it a) easier to worry that they're torturing the wrong guy, and b) absolutely positive they had the wrong guy at the end. Or, for truly ham-fisted direction, give the killer a big fat tattoo on his face.
When the tortured guy said Benjamin's name, I took that as he was faking the amnesia, and when he hanged himself with the sincere note, again - I thought it was the actual killer finally seeking repentance.
And it appears that the couple were completely oblivious to the whole "crossed identities" thing when they drive away at the end, which was also totally bizarre.
I get that they tortured the wrong guy, but the writing was sloppy enough that I didn't get that "OH MY GOD" moment - there were too many uncertainties at each stage of the conclusion, so when the credits rolled, I was pretty sure they had the wrong guy, but not positive.
I don't understand how people would be confused, you explained it how the ending was. What a flawed film, the ending is pretty unbelievable for many reasons:
1. When the father of the murdered child steals the van, he would have obviously known there was two convicts in the van.
2. The couple seen the murderer's face clearly at trial and should have never mistaken the man they tortured.
3. He looked nothing like the killer, this kind of relates to number two but I was even thinking this guy is different looking than the real killer.
The Tortured sucked, it's far from a horrible film but it contains so many plot holes, it is just impossible to look through that.
OP, in order to know that some people didn't get the ending, you must have read some threads to that effect. If you had, certainly you'd have noticed that a dozen people have already explained the ending. Why the need to start your own thread to repeat this answer? Get over yourself.
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