The Requin: the ending, explained

The Requin is a 2022 horror/thriller movie directed by Le-Van Kiet starring Alicia Livingstone and James Tupper in the lead roles. They are husband and wife who are on a vacation in Vietnam but soon face deadly challenges for survival.

Jaelyn and Kyle’s vacation in Vietnam

The couple went to the beautiful country to overcome something tragic that happened in their past. At first, we just know about Jaelyn’s ‘episodes’ which she has in the middle of the night. In the morning, they stroll the area and we see Vietnam’s beauty and in a cafe, Jaelyn looks out at Kyle by the beach and talks to her mom and sister. In the background, a TV is playing the weather news and warning of a strong storm coming towards the area.

After coming back from their stroll to their floating rooms, Kyle goes swimming where he accidentally hurts his feet and blood starts oozing. Jaelyn, already hesitant of swimming, panics and has another episode, and the reason for the vacation is revealed.

The couple had just gone through an awful miscarriage during Jaelyn’s water delivery. Their baby was a stillborn and Jaelyn is under guilt that she strangled the baby. Flashbacks of her in a tub with blood in water, crying, Kyle holding her are seen. They have an emotional fight where Kyle consoles her.

The start of their nightmare

At night, while asleep, they get a call from the hotel to warn them about the weather. Deeming the strong storm as tropical, they both decide to stay in their room, rather than accept the hotel’s offer for relocation. However, soon the storm takes an ugly turn and starts getting violent, smashing mirrors and topsy-turvy’s their floating room and breaking it free in the sea.

Kyle breaks and injures his leg and convinces Jaelyn that it’s better to stay grounded in the room struck against a rock than go out to ask help in this storm, a decision which Jaelyn reluctantly accepts.

The next morning, Jaelyn wakes up and realizes that they are adrift in the middle of the sea. This leads to a fight between them. Kyle’s leg is badly injured and Jaelyn has to dive in and collect whatever she could. They see a plane and a ship and try catching their attention. However, instead of them noticing the adrift couple, the room catches on fire while they try to send a smoke signal, leaving them on a lone piece of floating wood.

And then comes the deadly school of sharks

As Kyle’s wound isn’t tended properly, the blood leaks in the ocean. Sharks being attracted to it attacks the couple’s only stable ground and breaks it into two pieces. While Jaelyn tries to hurt the sharks away from her husband, she isn’t very successful because they inflict severe damage to his body.

She realizes this as she drifts to a small shore and sees Kyle’s unconscious body. She has a vision of him in perfect state but soon wakes up to realize she is still being attacked by the sharks. As she tries to outrun them, they bite her on her thigh, giving her wounds. But she musters up the courage and breaks free. On the shore she just sees a big rocky elevation which she painfully climbs, and sees a small semi circular boat with a fisherman in it.

Hopes, tensions and the long awaited ending

The fisherman tends to her and stitches up her wound, but the sharks are still after her. When the fisherman goes underwater to check his traps, they attack him and Jaelyn isn’t able to save him. The sharks even topple her boat but through quick thinking, Jaelyn wounds the shark with the anchor.

After all this chaos, struggles and hardships, Jaelyn drifts closer to a shore where people notice her. In the end, she survives to tell the story of her survival, coping and getting over her traumas.

According to Le-Van Kiet in his interview with Fandomize, he wanted the viewer to, “…love the protagonist enough to follow them to 90 mins of dread, thrills, and fun. That’s my ultimate hope is that audience will see this as a character piece.”