Like Lucy, Thomas Grimaud, the protagonist of The Lost Patient, is searching for answers and dealing with a ticking time bomb. Christophe Charrier feels the palpable tension as he delves into the dark world of truths about his mother and shows regrets about his past. The film was released on Netflix a few days ago, leaving viewers scrambling for answers. The trick in plotting and pacing creates suspicions about what really happened to Thomas' family and how he ended up in the hospital.
There's the bitter truth of a conspiracy against him, and The Lost Patient does a decent job of keeping the central mystery alive until the end. Read Netflix's The Lost Patient synopsis and a detailed review of important plot points below.
Well, to understand The Lost Patient, you need to see the plot as two and a half. One covers the day Thomas spends in the hospital and the other Anna tries to treat Thomas. She is a therapist and watches over his family as he tries to recover from the trauma of losing him overnight. The one in the "black coat" killed them all, and he saw the same man who had visited him in his hospital room come for him.
The male nurse takes a special position in the truth he perceives and even guesses him as a murderer. Thomas is also desperate to find out the whereabouts of his sister Laura, who is perhaps his closest ally and the only one who understands him. Both timelines are so intertwined that most of the time you don't know what is true and what is false.
Who is Bastien?
Apparently, Bastien is another patient at the hospital where Thomas is being treated. The story really developed her as someone significant with a connection to Thomas. Even as he discovers the truth about his life, Thomas tries to cling to the last glimmer of normality and innocence by entering Bastien's room.
That room number. 307 was with Bastien and Thomas tried to force him to flee the facility. But Bastien knew the reality of the situation and sought medical attention in time to prevent fatal damage.
It must be said that Bastien is used well in the narrative. It was another red herring that, while not critical, kept us as far from the truth as possible.
It turns out that it was Thomas who killed his family. In the flashback, we see the dark and tragic truth about Thomas' life, not from his point of view, but from a neutral point of view. Anna was correct in her diagnosis that Thomas suffered from frequent and sudden outbursts of violence. All this was due to the family's attitude towards him. They were devastated by Laura's death at such an early age and were unable to "bond" with Thomas. As Anna explains with the analogy of Frederick II, if a baby is not given love and attention and does not bond with its parents, "it dies."
The part of Thomas that was supposed to love family and grow into a warm person died of neglect. Matt and Betty almost withdrew from the birth of Thomas, and so he grew up a very lonely and depressed child. During one of these outbursts, Thomas took a gun from his parents' room and started on Matt. The trigger for this episode is when Betty and Dylan move into an upstairs bedroom believed to be Laura's, berating Thomas for killing the neighbor's dog.
Thomas felt as if he had been replaced. He also felt betrayed because he loved someone else's child when his parents neglected him. Although he wished for his love for years, he could not get it. Dylan, who had arrived a few weeks earlier, had already won their favor. This was the trigger that finally made him grab the gun from his parents' room and kill them all.
Where and how did Laura Grimaud disappear?
Laura hadn't really disappeared. She died in a car accident before Thomas was born. The adult version of Laura we see in Thomas' memories is actually a ghost he created in the image of the actress he saw on TV when she was dying.
Thomas grew up a neglected child and felt an emotional void in his life. This made him violent and he fantasized things to create an imaginary reality to find solace. Laura's predictions were part of it, and Anna wanted to bring her back to reality through hospital treatment.
What was the identity of the man in black?
The man in black is actually Thomas himself. In the final flashback of the story, when the contents of the night clear in his head, he remembers everything. After killing all the members of his family, he realizes what he really did. The horror of killing them in cold blood overwhelmed him and he grabbed a knife from the kitchen intending to commit suicide.
As he stabs himself and starts to collapse unconscious at the bottom of the sofa, he notices a song playing on the TV. It's the same song Dylan was listening to in the car with Laura when he brought her home.
Laura's reality was that she imagined her as the actress in that video. In a rather surprising revelation, we see that every memory Thomas has of an adult Laura is of that actress. Of course, she wore the same outfit as the girl in the video throughout the movie. To cope with the trauma of growing up alone and without a sister, she fantasized about the details of the actress as Laura, believing her dreams to be true.
So who was the "man in black" then? It was Thomas himself. The part of him that killed the family became the monster in his head. In order to investigate his guilt and get rid of the stain of killing them all, he found someone else to blame. This often happens when you try to avoid what you are doing.
It scarred him for life, and we see in the final scene, he was indeed wearing that black coat and he went out after killing them. Still, startled, he suddenly saw that part of her in the shadows and went back in to stab himself.
The Lost Patient stayed true to its psychological thriller DNA with this ending and made sure to give us some important answers. However, the makers failed to explain much in the plot and we are not satisfied with that. What do you think about the movie? Leave your comments below!
0 Comments