‘Blood’ Ending Explained: Michelle Monaghan’s Horror Movie Is a Dark Way to Celebrate Mother’s Day (2024)

Spring is in the air, but there’s never a wrong time to watch a horror movie—like the 2022 horror movie Blood, which is now streaming on Hulu.

Directed by Brad Anderson and written by Will Honley, Blood is a movie about a mother who sacrifices nearly everything for her child, who is, quite literally, a monster. While the movie itself is not a revelation, it’s worth a watch purely for the lead performance from actor Michelle Monaghan. In addition to her role in the Mission Impossible movies, Monaghan has been on a Scream Queen kick recently, including the critically acclaimed Sundance horror flick Nanny, which released on Amazon Prime last December.

But in Blood, Monaghan gets to be the hero, not the villain. In fact, Monaghan’s character in Blood ought to get some kind of award for Mother of the Year. Like many horror movies, Blood keeps it vague when it comes to why, exactly, all of these horrible things are happening. If you got confused, don’t worry—Decider is here to help. Read on for the Blood movie plot summary and the Blood ending explained.

Blood movie plot summary:

Jess (Michelle Monaghan) is a recovering drug addict and nurse attempting to maintain custody of her two kids through a messy divorce. Her ex-husband Patrick (Skeet Ulrich) gets the house, so Jess moves her two kids into her aunt’s old house. While outside exploring, the two children—Tyler (Skylar Morgan Jones) and her younger brother Owen (Finlay Wojtak-Hissong)—stumble upon a dried-up lake, containing a creepy dead tree and the skeleton of a large animal. The family dog, Pippin, bounds into the lake and gets stuck in the mud. The kids manage to free the dog, but their troubles are only beginning.

After the lake incident, Pippin the dog is increasingly jumpy and eventually runs away. Owen is distraught. In the middle of the night, Pippin returns… but he’s completely feral. Pippin attacks
Owen, biting his neck. Jess manages to kill the dog and rushes her son to the hospital. Owen’s vitals are not looking good. He’s lost a lot of blood and needs a transfusion. Suddenly he wakes up and drinks the bag of blood next to his bed like a vampire. Et voila! All better. After witnessing Owen get better after drinking blood twice, Jess realizes this is the only treatment that can help her son.

Jess takes Owen home and steals blood from the hospital to feed him. When the hospital realizes blood is going missing and increases security, Jess begins taking blood from rabbits. When that doesn’t seem to work as well for Owen, she starts taking blood from herself. But she can’t sustain the blood loss and is getting light-headed at inopportune times. Jess hatches a plan to kidnap an old lady at the hospital who previously asked Jess about assisted suicide options. This old lady has cancer, only has a year to live, and doesn’t have any family or friends. Jess offers the woman, Helen, a ride home. Helen tells Jess she’s found the will to live after all. Oops! Jess goes ahead and drugs and kidnaps Helen anyhow. She keeps her alive, but regularly drains Helen for fresh blood.

Tyler discovers Helen tied up in the basem*nt, and Jess confesses everything. Tyler agrees to keep the secret and help keep her brother alive. Unfortunately, Owen is getting worse, and requiring more and more blood. Helen escapes the basem*nt, and impales herself on the wire fence. Owen drinks her dry, and is pretty much a full vampire now. Social services comes to take the kids away from Jess, because Owen hasn’t been to school in weeks. While at their father’s house, Owen very nearly kills his half-baby sister, seeking more blood. Tyler, remembering the weird tree at the lake, decides to take Owen to the tree and burn it down. She believes this will cure him. Why? Don’t worry about it!

Blood 2022 movie ending explained:

When her ex-husband accuses Jess of hiding the kids at her house, Jess remembers that, just before they were taken away, Tyler was trying to tell her mom about the tree at the lake. She realizes that’s where her children have gone. Jess shows up at the lake just in time: Owen, in full vampire mode, was just about to kill his sister and drink her blood. Mom manages to save Tyler, and subdue Owen. Tyler screams that Owen is no longer himself. Jess takes those words to heart, after a struggle, she kills Owen by suffocating him in the mud under the creepy tree.

Jess and Tyler manage to make Owen’s death look like an accident, but Jess still loses custody of Tyler. At the end of the film, Tyler hugs her mother and assures her that she did the right thing by killing Owen. In the very last scene of the movie, Jess burns that creepy dead tree.

What does it mean, what does it all mean? Honestly? Nothing! Blood doesn’t bother explaining why that mud and dead tree turned Pippin, and then Owen into a vampire, nor does it explain why Tyler thought burning it was the solution, beyond the fact that it appeared to have been burned before. All we know is that some other vampire creature was presumably drowned in the mud, hence, the animal skeleton. If you’re looking for a metaphor, you could say that Owen was literally sucking his mother dry, mirroring the way mothers sacrifice everything for their children.

My advice? Don’t overthink it. It’s a silly horror movie on Hulu. It’s more about vibes than it is about making sense.