Was Chloe Real? How Did He Die?

Netflix’don’t moveA woman has only a few minutes before she is completely paralyzed and at the mercy of a man. serial killer. The story begins in a state park in California, where Iris goes with the intention of killing herself. He is stopped from falling by a stranger who introduces himself as Richard and talks to him about grief and loss. As he tries to connect with Iris, he tells her his own story about the death of his girlfriend Chloe and how it changed him forever.

At first, Richard appears to be Iris’ savior, pulling her away from the abyss of suicide. But it soon turns out that everything Richard has been projecting about himself is a lie. In fact, he is a serial killer who is skilled at manipulating people and their emotions. Lying comes naturally to him, which raises a very important question. Was the story about Chloe really true, or did she make it up to gain common ground with Iris in order to gain her trust? SPOILERS FIRST

Richard’s Story About Chloe Was True

One of the things we learn about Richard throughout the movie is how easily he reads people and tells them what they want to hear. We don’t know how long he’s been killing, but he seems pretty adept at seeing the signs in a person and crafting a story to push their buttons exactly the way he wants. He does this with William, getting him to tell the story about the old man’s wife and then using that against him, eventually killing him. He tries to do the same to a police officer and almost succeeds in manipulating him too, this time using Iris’ story about her son to gain sympathy that will make it easier to trust him.

All the lies he’s told in the few hours we’ve known him indicate that he probably made up the story about Chloe, too. Or maybe one of his victims told him the story and he filed it away for future use. Iris assumes the same thing, but interestingly, it turns out that the story about Chloe is not only true, but also the moment when Richard becomes aware of something so drastic that it turns him into a serial killer. This occurs after he kills the cop and enough time has passed for Iris to regain her ability to speak and make small movements. He mentions Chloe and the accident as a way to publicize Richard’s lie, but what he says next confirms that he wasn’t lying to Iris when he told her about Chloe.

The incident occurred years ago when Richard was still in high school. He had a car that he loved, and he was in it with his girlfriend Chloe a few weeks before his graduation. They were fighting about something and this continued while they were in the car. The argument between them ended when the car crashed into the wall. The accident was devastating. It cost Chloe her life and left Richard bedridden for more than two months. Meanwhile, he saw the accident and Chloe’s final moments from a completely different perspective.

The Accident Reveals Richard’s Inner Killer

Even before the accident, Richard admits that he always felt alienated from the world around him. He felt disconnected from things and people, and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t understand the truth behind it. But then the accident happened and he saw Chloe die before his eyes. Instead of being traumatized about it, watching his girlfriend take his last breath made him feel the connection he had missed his entire life. That’s why he said “thank you” to her as he was dying. This was the moment he returned to again and again throughout the weeks he spent bedridden. He tried to make sense of the emotion he felt after the accident, and the more he thought about it, the closer he got to God. It made him feel like a God, and he finally came to the conclusion that he needed to feel that again.

Considering that he found his first touch of this emotion in the moments of a woman’s death, it made sense that Richard would recreate the same thing. But this time it didn’t have to be an accident. He could control the entire process, perhaps even prolong it. This caused him to begin killing women, a process he had perfected over the years. Oddly enough, he always only killed women; not only because they are easier to kidnap and manipulate, but also because it connects the divine feeling to the dying breaths of a woman, not a man. Over the years, he took action to turn this event into a full-fledged ritual. Instead of killing the woman and moving on with his life, he would take his time and spend a whole weekend with her before ending her life. But the more he did it, the more he wanted to do it.

By the time he came to Iris, he had killed many women with alarming frequency. In fact, it is so alarming that his wife begins to notice his strange absence and decides to intervene, even though she has no idea what her husband is up to. This shows how desperate he is for his next kills, and also explains why he’s become sloppy. He thought that by scratching the wound regularly, he could keep his violent nature at bay. But his desire to kill only got worse over time, and if Iris didn’t put a stop to it, he wouldn’t have ended up sneaking away for a weekend to get his next kill.