The Rental’s ending, explained — Who is the man behind the mask?

The Rental, now premiering on Amazon, is sure to serve up some chills and make the viewer think twice when booking a weekend getaway destination. The simple plot follows the mysterious incidents faced by two couples during a stay at a rented holiday house. They soon find out that there is someone else spying on them but fail to understand the depths the spy would go to keep himself unseen. In a mysterious and suspense-filled ending, the film ends with one final twist that left many viewers questioning the meaning of the ending.

Mina discovers a hidden camera

Michelle and her husband Charlie make one couple while Charlie’s co-worker Mina and his brother Josh are the other. During the first night, Charlie and Mina have sex in the shower and vow to never tell anyone about what happened. However, Mina sees a hidden camera on the showerhead, meaning someone knows about their little secret.

Meanwhile, Josh’s dog, Reggie, had gone missing and both couples suspect the culprit to be Taylor, the host who rented the house. When Taylor arrives to fix the hot tub, Charlie confronts him about the camera while Josh confronts him about Reggie. A fight ensues and Josh knocks Taylor out.

Taylor is murdered and the lodgers get rid of the body

A masked man enters the house and smothers Taylor to death, making the couples think that Josh killed him during the fight. Charlie, Mina and Josh go to get rid of the body by dumping it off the cliff. Michelle, now alone in the house and ridden with guilt, is lured to a room with a television playing a recording of Charlie and Mina having sex in the shower.

She confronts Charlie and Mina about the leaked sex tape and drives off, but hits some spikes and crashes into a tree. While she texts her husband to come to rescue her, the masked man approaches her. Upon receiving the test message, Charlie runs to the vehicle to see the body of a murdered Michelle. The masked man attacks Charlie and kills him too.

Josh receives the sex tape and goes to confront Charlie

Meanwhile, at the house, Josh and Mina start searching for the camera equipment but fail to find any of them. Just then, Josh gets a text from Charlie’s phone with the sex tape. He hears someone coming to the house and runs off to attack him thinking it was Charlie. But it was the masked man, and he kills Josh too.

Meanwhile, a visibly distraught Mina panics and starts running out of the house. While running, her vision becomes diminished under heavy fog that she doesn’t realize she’s running toward a cliff’s edge, and she falls.

The masked man had succeeded in killing all 4 lodgers of the house, except Reggie, the dog.

After killing both couples, the man enters the house, gathers his equipment, and takes off his mask. But the camera doesn’t show his face. With his mission complete, he leaves the house and installs his signature surveillance cameras at a new property. The film ends with the masked man coming out of a hidden closet while a couple sleeps peacefully at night.

He will strike again!

Who is the masked man?

Although the film doesn’t reveal who the masked man is, the director and scriptwriter Dave Franco reveals him to be another lodger who previously had stayed at the house. Talking with the Los Angeles Times, Dave says;

“I just tapped into that idea of wondering why we trust the people we’re renting to and thinking about how there must be people who stay in these rental homes and then make copies of the keys and come back at a later date to do whatever they want. It’s just a very creepy idea that I felt was worth exploring.”

Dave also reveals that all four main characters were destined to die in each script they wrote because they didn’t do the right thing in being faithful to their partners or calling the police. This was also the reason that Reggie was kept alive.