The Lost Patient is a decent mystery thriller that has a morbid truth at its core. The Lost Patient does a good job of preserving the central mystery until the very end, but our ending explainer will help you understand all of the key plot points. ..
The Lost Patient is a story about the power of memory and how it can be used to hurt people. The flashbacks show Thomas’s experience in the hospital and how he deals with the aftermath of his family’s death. The present day is where Anna tries to help Thomas and her efforts are met with resistance from him because he still remembers the person who killed his family. Despite her best efforts, Thomas is able to hurt her in ways she never thought possible.
He sees various signs that there is a conspiracy against him. A male nurse takes a special position in his perceived truth and he even theorizes him as the killer. Thomas is also desperate to find out the whereabouts of his sister, Laura, who was perhaps his closest ally and the only one who understood him. Both timelines are intertwined in such a way that on most occasions, you do not know what is the truth and what a lie.
Who is Bastien?
Thomas is in the hospital with Bastien. Bastien is just another patient, and Thomas is trying to hold on to some sense of normalcy and innocence by going into Bastien’s room.
That room 307 was the one with Bastien and Thomas tried to get him to run away from the facility. But Bastien knew the reality of the situation and called the doctor just in time to avoid any fatal damage.
Bastien was used effectively in the narrative. He was yet another red herring, albeit not a critical one, to move us away from the truth as possible.
Who was the killer of the Grimaud family?
In the flashback, we see that Thomas was the one who killed his family. In a neutral standpoint, we learn that he suffered from frequent and sudden episodes of violence due to how the family treated him. They were too broken over Laura’s death at such an early age and failed to “forge a bond” with Thomas. Anna explained this analogy of Frederick II in her interview with the detective. If a baby is not given love and attention and does not form a bond with the parents, “he dies”. ..
In a family tragedy, the son who was supposed to be the glue that held the family together died with no one paying attention. Matt and Betty were almost repulsed by Thomas’ birth and hence, he grew up a very lonely and depressed child. In another one of those outbursts, Thomas took the gun from his parent’s room and started with Matt. The event that triggered this episode was Betty berating Thomas for killing the neighbor’s dog and Dylan moving into the bedroom upstairs, which was supposed to be Laura’s.
Thomas felt as if he was getting replaced. He also felt betrayed that his parents were loving a child of another when neglecting him. He craved their love for years but did not get it. Dylan, who came in just a few weeks back, had already won their favor. That was ultimately the trigger that compelled him to take the gun from the parents’ room and kill them all.
Where and how did Laura Grimaud disappear?
Laura had actually not disappeared. She died before Thomas was born, being hit by a car on the road. The adult version of Laura that we see in Thomas’ recalls is actually an apparition in his mind created from the image of an actress he saw on television while supposedly breathing his last.
Thomas’s life was a mess and he felt an emotional vacuum in his life. That made him violent and imagined things to create an illusory reality to find comfort. Laura’s projections were part of it and Anna wanted to steer him into the actual reality through treatment in the hospital.
What was the identity of the person in black?
In the final flashback of the story, when the night’s contents become apparent in his head, Thomas remembers that he killed all his family. After murdering them in cold blood, he realized what he actually did and retrieved a knife from the kitchen intending to commit suicide. ..
As he stabs himself and falls unconscious at the base of the couch, he sees a song playing on the television. It is the same song he listened to “with Laura” in the car when they were bringing Dylan home. ..
Thomas had imagined the actress in that video as Laura, his sister who he grew up alone and without. In a striking revelation, we see that every memory of an adult Laura that Thomas had was of the actress in the video. Sure enough, she wore the same clothes throughout the movie as the girl in the video. To combat the trauma of growing up alone and without a sister, he dreamt up the details of that actress as Laura and believed his delusions to be true. ..
The “person in the black” then was Thomas himself. He killed the family, and became a monster in his head. To process his guilt and recover from the smear of killing them all, he found someone else to blame. That often happens when you try to run away from what you did.
In the final scene, we see that the man who killed his family in cold blood was wearing a black coat and went out after killing them. Still, in a daze, he suddenly saw that part of him in the shadows and went back inside to stab himself.
The Lost Patient, a psychological thriller movie released on October 15th, 2017, was met with mixed reviews from audiences. While some found the ending satisfying and gave the film a thumbs up, others were disappointed with the lack of clarity in the plot and felt that many questions were left unanswered. What did you think of the movie? Leave your thoughts down below!
The Lost Patient is a gripping, heart-wrenching film that tells the story of a patient who is lost in a hospital. The patient’s story is told through the eyes of his loved ones, as they try to find him and bring him back to life. The film is full of suspense and heartache, and it will leave you feeling raw after watching it.
