The Lost Patient: the psychological thriller’s ending, explained

This 2022 French film titled Le Patient follows a murdered family being discovered by kid’s playing outside and eventually helping a survivor get back his memories of what happened that fateful night.

Thomas Grimaud and his memories

In the hospital, 3 years after his family was found murdered, Thomas wakes up from his coma. He remembers nothing of that night because of which psychologist Anna Kieffer is appointed to help him. She starts asking Thomas about his past and encourages him to go into whatever his mind is showing and accept it.

He reveals he sees his home and his sister, Laura, there with him. Their cousin Dylan has recently moved in and was murdered too. There’s a man in black coat who Thomas pins as the killer and who’d been troubling his family for some time.

His sister- Laura and the hospital nurse

As he asks about his sister’s whereabouts, Anna reveals that she went missing after the incident. Thomas keeps on revealing little details about his life and how Laura was a bit hostile but he always felt close to her.

At the hospital during his physiotherapy sessions, Thomas befriends another patient- Bastien. At the same time, he starts becoming suspicious about a nurse on duty. He feels so paranoid that one night after a session with Anna, Thomas inserts him into his past memories. He does it to this extent that he believes the nurse is the killer and is out to kill him too.

In his hospital room, he sees his sister watching him from behind a crack in the wall. One night, having moved to the window, he sees Anna and the nurse talking outside. Thomas’ paranoia leads him to believe that even his psychologist is a conspirator.

Thomas’ memories coming back stronger and sharper

Thomas confronts Anna about what he saw and refuses to talk to or trust her. Anna tells him that his disruptive behavior is a result from his parent’s neglect. That somehow strikes a chord in him and that night, as he walks out, he sees a nursery at the end of the hallway. In there are his parents putting on a new wallpaper and getting irritated by a crying baby Thomas.

He sees Laura in front of him and his memories come back. Laura was never really there! She was just a fragment of Thomas’ imagination to avoid reality. All the incident he described with her; it was all him. Even the revelation that there’s a gun in their house to Dylan.

Thomas runs to Bastien and asks him to leave the hospital, almost killing him. He’s taken to his room and restrained. It’s Thomas, he killed his family

What made him kill his family?

Thomas was a violent child. He’s been neglected by his grieving parents- grieving the loss of their young daughter Laura right before Thomas’ birth. His behavior was just a way of getting attention. When Dylan came, his parents showed him affection and care, further neglecting Thomas.

On that night, they had an argument which led Thomas to kill them all one by one with his father’s gun. He went out in the thunder, dressed in a black coat, but returned. He seemed ashamed at what he did, so sitting besides his father, Thomas stabbed himself.

Both Bastien and the nurse were nothing but Thomas’ way of disassociating his reality. In the end, Anna says to the nurse that she needed Thomas to revive his memories so she could help him and get him treatment.

And as for who Thomas visualized as his dead sister Laura? She was the singer/actor in music video playing on the TV which Thomas went unconscious watching.