Bull (2021): the crime thriller movie’s twisted ending, explained

Bull, a mob enforcer, mysteriously returns after 10 years and leaves a carnage. But where was he all along? Let’s find out.

Like a man on a mission

Right from the beginning, Bull starts brutally killing people. He asks them about his son Aiden & ex-wife Gemma but nobody knows. A butchered couple. The woman told him he has something evil inside him. Next, a man found with a knife in his throat.

All these people are connected with the mob leader Norm, the first his sister-in-law and the second his man. Bull was also one of those and married Norm’s daughter Gemma. But neither was their marriage a happy one, nor was Norm with him. Like a typical sociopath father, he believed everything Gemma said and fulfilled her wishes.

Everyone is shocked and disturbed at his appearance and believe that it can’t be happening.

Flashbacks of Bull’s past

While he’s on a rampage, snippets of his time with his son at a fair are shown where they are both happy. Scenes of his work with the mob are also shown. Once, he cuts the fingers off a person because he refused to sign a contract.

Bull wasn’t good but was devoted to Aiden. He wanted the best for him and when he finds Gemma having an affair with another member of the mob- Gary- he wants his son and nothing else. But Norm being a man with conservative ideas, doesn’t want to send the blood of “his” family with Bull.

And that’s where Bull’s troubles start.

Getting closer to his goal

In the present, Bull is hunting down people. The next is Colin, another enforcer, whom Bull finds with his two kids. He asks him to call Gary to the fair. At the fair, he takes a shocked Gary to a ride and after fishing vague information about Gemma and Aiden, cuts his thigh and makes him bleed throughout while laughing like a maniac enjoying the ride.

He goes to Chardfon, where Gary had seen Norm go. Gary told him that Gemma was on heroin from what he knows. In the town, Bull makes a drug dealer take him to Dave, who deals heroin. In Dave’s home, he butchers his wrist (even cauterizes it) and asks him about Gemma. Dave knows and they leave.

His revenge & a shocking twist

He scares Gemma and asks him to call her dad. When Norm comes, at Gemma’s instruction, he shoots the man in the back of Bull’s car before coming in. That was Dave. And as he finds his way in the dark house, a hiding Bull stabs his thigh and Norm shoots, accidently injuring his own daughter.

Bull says it’s a long story when Norm asks him how’s he here. Then he suffocates him and Gemma tells him Aiden is down at the bridge. He tells her that Aiden deserved better but she hooked him up on drugs.

Bull kills her and goes to find Aiden who’s intoxicated. He carries him to the church and lays him down in the front. The next morning, when the vicar comes, she rushes to him but screams at seeing Bull. His eyes are all black and he asks for salvation- for his son, and goes off. He keeps the money he stole from Dave for Aiden’s treatment.

The ending: what- or who- is Bull?

At the fair of the flashbacks, Norm planned to take Aiden away from Bull while holding him. Then, Norm, Colin and Marco (man with knife in throat) take him to a trailer-van with hands tied. Gemma comes there and, on her assent, they cover the van in alcohol and burn it down.

Somehow, Bull comes out in flames, but Aiden sees him and screams for him while Norm finishes him. The first scene of the movie shows 3 men going away from a grave. The last scene shows Bull standing over that same place.

Bull says in the start that he came from hell. After the end, it can be true. Since he was indeed dead, he could’ve made a deal with the devil, done something, to come back and take his revenge and also save his son. That’s probably why he kept on killing without caring about evidence. The twist was unexpected and shook the perception of reality.

Talking to SlashFilm, director Paul Andrew Williams says, “I didn’t know that he was going to get killed. It was just when I write, I tend to have very little idea of where it’s going and just make it up as you go along.”