Takeout Movie Ending Explained And Full Story: Is Grady The Dollkeeper?

Working at an all-night-open American diner and earning minimum wage is quite lucrative for people like us living in the subcontinent. But unfortunately, actual Americans, who are stuck working there don’t feel the same way. In their defense, things can get especially worse if a serial killer pops by for a meal, like what happens in Jem Gerrard’s Takeout, a pretty good slasher movie that never lets you zone out or get bored. Most of the characters are annoying, but you also end up rooting for them. With some brilliant performances by the cast and a solid, raunchy, and exciting screenplay, this film definitely deserves to be on your watchlist.

Spoilers Ahead

What happens in the film? 

No one really goes to the Big Dripper to celebrate their big days. The desperately small town diner that Harper, Nova, and Benny reluctantly work at falls somewhere between one of your worst days and a last resort sort of situation. You can hardly find any fault in the staff’s lack of enthusiasm when you see their work condition, remember that they’re working for minimum wage, and, worst of all, meet their boss, Susan. Susan would just about dodge all her responsibilities had it not been for her, uh, let’s just say a very inappropriate crush on Benny.  Fixing the very dangerous deep fryer that’s been splattering hot oil is the last thing on her mind.  All of that is just too much to handle for Nova, the fresher who’s been working hard to take care of her little sister and put herself through school. With an abusive, drunk stepdad at home and a boss who wants to pin the toilet duty on her, Nova has it really hard. The last thing that she needed was to find the dead body of a woman in the trunk of a car. So, she just calls the cops and washes her hands of it, right? Not so fast. The car with the corpse is in front of Big Dripper because the driver, a very creepy guy, who might just be the serial killer who’s been hunting people all over this town, is inside the diner. 

Is Grady the Dollkeeper?

So the creepy-looking Evan Peters-core customer might be the Dollkeeper, the serial killer notorious for leaving identical dolls of his victims, and there’s a manhunt going on for him. His name’s Grady, and Benny and Noah decide to make sure that they get their hands on the reward money for catching the man, and Harper obviously wants in. When they find that Grady has a date with a girl named Emma, Noah swipes his car keys while cleaning the table, and when Grady loses his patience and makes Benny walk to the trash bin to look for it, Benny attacks him. Grady holds his own, and it takes Harper to hit him with a lid of a trashcan to knock him out, and they have him tied to a chair in a bowline knot, completely secure. Noah obviously doesn’t agree with it, but Benny didn’t get to finish the call with the family offering the reward money, and the rowdy cops might ruin their plan if they call them right away. But things take a really bad turn when Emma decides to look for what’s wrong and finds her date tied up. Benny and Harper try to explain the situation to her, but in a moment of haste, she trips and hits her head straight into a wooden chair and dies immediately. With a murder on their hands, Harper thinks that they can just pin the killing on Grady and then kill him so that they can claim that he killed Emma. But the real twist comes when Noah sees that her baby sister, Millie, has found a doll inside Mr. Greenwood’s bag. The same happy-go-lucky schoolteacher who once taught Harper and now teaches Noah herself. When Noah checks his bags, she finds a jammer inside, which explains why none of them were getting reception in their cells. Meanwhile, Harper decides to let Grady speak, and Grady tells her that he stole the car earlier, and he didn’t even know what was inside the trunk. Although Grady is clearly pissed that his possible girlfriend is dead, he attacks Harper, and in the heat of the moment, she kills him in self-defense. 

How does Greenwood evade the cops? 

Although Noah and Harper both know that Grady isn’t the killer, poor Benny didn’t have the same information. When he asked Greenwood to help him out with fixing the service box outside the diner, little did he know that he’d get his throat slashed in a jiffy. Meanwhile, Noah turns the jammer off and calls 911 for help, but before she could describe the situation, Greenwood walks through the door once again. Greenwood admits that he indeed is the Dollkeeper, and the dolls he leaves are vessel dolls who bear their master’s sufferings, fears, and whatnot. He’s sure that he’d make one for Noah too, meaning that Noah can’t be alive after knowing his truth, so she can forget about completing the book review. When the two cops show up, they’re in their usual bully mode, and even though Harper puts a note in their takeout bag, Greenwood spills a coffee cup on it and asks Noah to pack them a new one. Noah intentionally doesn’t put the BBQ sauce in, and when they come back, Noah even dumps some hot coffee on Greenwood to shout the truth out loud, but Kate is too slow to pull her gun from the holster, and Greenwood slashes her throat. Her partner is too busy vibing with the music in his car outside, and Greenwood gets rid of him as well. 

Does Noah manage to kill the Dollkeeper?

Noah was the only one who wanted to do things the right way since the beginning. So when Harper tries to save herself by deleting her video of killing Grady from Greenwood’s phone, she doesn’t care about saving Noah, who’s stuck in the freezer. Millie crawls through the vent to set Noah free, and Noah finally takes on Greenwood by force. She pushes him into a hot skillet first, burning his hands, and the broken fryer splatters some hot oil right on his face as he’s about to kill Noah. Despite that, Greenwood manages to grab her throat, and the man even expresses his frustrations over Noah’s resilience. But Noah finally grabs a knife while he tries  choking her to death, and she stabs him in the neck; and it’s game over for the Dollkeeper. What’s sweeter is that both she and Millie don’t have any critical injuries, and a detective informs her she’s getting the reward money, thanks to Benny’s phone call. So not only does she get the money, but she doesn’t even have to share it with anyone; they’re all dead. 

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