Posted by A psychological thriller with a mystery, a plot that slowly reveals its details, and villains that show their faces only at the ending. It’s perfectly understandable how movies like Locked In, which landed on Netflix in November 2023, are so good at catching the spectators’ passion. It’s one of those typical films that spin around the discovery of what really happened, and that’s why, after watching it, many viewers need to have the events explained in detail. A way to verify that we understood the movie completely: let’s cross-check it together in this article, what happened to Lina, Robert, and Katherine?
The plot of Locked In starts from Katherine’s point of view. She had a bad car accident, apparently a hit and run, and she’s in a vegetative state, so we immediately empathize with her as a victim. However, as we learn what happened in the past, we understand something more about Katherine’s character: she is the mother of Jamie, a problematic kid who often suffers from seizures. When the father dies, he leaves all his wealth to Jamie, and that affects the relationship with Katherine. Katherine needs help with Jamie, so she adopts Lina, her best friend’s daughter, after she becomes an orphan. Jamie and Lina grow up together, and they fall in love. They will marry, and Katherine feels threatened by that: once she was “the lady of the manor,” now she owns nothing and feels like a guest in her own house.
At that point, the movie starts showing Lina’s life after the marriage. Her life is wholly sacrificed: she has no social connections or jobs, and she dedicates her days to Jamie and his problems. Jamie doesn’t do much to get better, using his illness to manipulate others. Katherine and Lina hate each other, frustrated by what their lives have become. In all this, Robert, Jamie’s GP, starts increasing his presence within the family: he’s attracted by Lina, and soon enough, the two begin a secret relationship.
While things deteriorate, Lina wishes to run away with Robert and forget that life. But Robert cannot do that: if his relationship with Lina is discovered, he can lose his license (he entered a relationship with a patient’s wife). He tells Lina that if they want to be together, they need to do “something brave,” and Lina says she’s ready to do anything, not knowing Robert’s real intentions. The plot twist in Locked In arrives in the second half, and its consequences are then explained at the ending: Robert simulates an accident at the lake and kills Jamie, turning Lina into a widow.
Lina didn’t expect this development, and something changes inside her. She no longer wants to leave everything and run away with Robert. That becomes a problem for Robert because Lina could report him to the police for her husband’s death. In that delicate moment, we see Robert in an intimate moment with Katherine, implying that Robert and Katherine are now plotting together against Lina.
This leads us to the movie’s ending, and at that point, the plot has thoroughly explained what happened to Katherine that night. Lina is trying to leave the house, but Robert and Katherine are scared that she will report them to the police and try to stop her. It becomes an actual chase, with Lina running into the wild, Katherine following her on her horse, and Robert with his car. At some point, we see Katherine pointing her shotgun at Lina, trying to kill her. But in that exact moment, she reveals the good part of herself and changes her mind: Lina doesn’t deserve to die, so Katherine will try to stop Robert, who’s still trying to kill her. When Robert realizes he’s alone in his plan, he hits Katherine with his car, sending her into the vegetative state we see in the present.
Now we better understand the events at the movie’s beginning: Katherine starts communicating with her nurse through an alphabet board, and she explains everything: they tried to murder her. Now, both Lina and Robert risk going to jail for their relationship and Jamie’s death, so they act together, taking Katherine out of the hospital and intending to kill her. But as we see in the ending of Locked In, the nurse reveals the truth to Lina: Katherine was trying to save her, and that’s why Robert hit her. With that awareness, Lina no longer wants to kill Katherine: both Lina and Katherine show a good side at the movie’s end, whereas Robert remains the real villain, ready to kill whoever becomes an obstacle.
Lina kills Robert in front of Katherine and then waits for the police to enter the mansion. We see Lina holding Katherine’s hand at the movie ending, and that’s the way Locked In has explained the nature of the characters: after hating each other for such a long time, Katherine and Lina are again together, dealing with the rest of their lives. They both lost Jamie because of Robert; they both have been manipulated, but now nothing more threatens them, and they will deal with the rest together.
