The Cure Ending Explained And Movie Recap: Did Ally Escape Her Parents’ Clutches?

Dysfunctional parenting gets a new meaning in Nancy Leopardi’s thriller, “The Cure,” which follows a teenager afflicted with autoimmune disease as she tries to uncover the truth about her extremely rich adoptive parents. As far as medical thrillers are concerned, “The Cure” does well by building up the narrative tension as a slow burn, offers some decent scares, and delivers a shocking revelation even though it fails to stick the ending. The movie also boasts its own brand of campiness, which complements the horror aspects of the narrative and adds a unique flair to it. 

Spoilers Ahead

Why Did Ally Start Suspecting Her Parents?

Ally is the adopted daughter of real estate tycoon Jeff Braun and his wife, international biotech firm owner Georgia. She was diagnosed with autoimmune disease, lupus, when she was six years old—almost at the same time when the Brauns adopted her and brought her to their luxurious Malibu beach villa. The overprotective Brauns have gone out of their way to ensure Ally has a safe, healthy future, keeping her isolated from the rest of the world and on regular medication round the clock. At present, having grown up to be a teenager, a perceptive, smart Ally has developed body dysmorphia issues due to her physical ailments and lack of human connection. Brauns, who sustain on a strict diet and extreme form of healthcare, themselves haven’t aged a day. Also, the Brauns keep Ally under constant surveillance, which might have precautionary reasons; at least that’s what the narrative tries to hint at initially. During her 16th birthday celebration, the Brauns remain engaged in conversation with their socialite friends, while Ally spots teenagers loitering on their family property in surveillance footage and sneaks out to meet them, thanks to her curiosity. Ally meets Brooke in the friends’ group, and the duo quickly hit it off. However, upon learning about Ally’s recent misadventure, Georgia drives off Brooke along with the rest of the friends’ group, as she doesn’t trust outsiders to get close to Ally. Seeing Ally hurt, Jeff makes his wife see reason, and to keep Ally’s mental health in prime condition, they agree to bring Brooke back, paying her to accompany their daughter. Ally at times experiences nightmarish visions of being confined in a lab and of grotesque bodily imagery and confides in Brooke about her experiences.

Ally, who didn’t have any growing up, Ally quickly forms a strong connection with Brooke; especially because unlike her overbearing parents, Brooke allows Ally just to be herself. The friends get close, and Brooke shares a kiss with Ally. Needless to say, as a teenager who lived her whole life in isolation, Ally’s first romantic connection with her only friend is pretty special to her. Brooke herself has a rough upbringing; thanks to her schizophrenic mother, absent father, and also having to take care of herparaplegic brother, Robbie, who is a tech nerd. While she knows Ally is privileged to experience all the amenities of life on a silver platter but she still can’t shake off the feeling that something is wrong with the Brauns and becomes even more alarmed after Robbie finds out the Brauns have apparently erased everything about their past off of the internet. It should be mentioned at this point that Brooke regularly steals stuff from the Braun household, not that taking from the one percenters is that gross of a crime. To pay off the gas bill, Brooke steals Ally’s meds to resell them, and Robbie gets sick after taking one. Convinced that the Brauns are hiding a secret, Robbie decides to send the meds to testing by finding an expert by scouring the dark web, and it is revealed the meds are actually the reason for Ally’s physical ailment. On one occasion, Brooke opens up about her troubling parental connections and questions Ally about whether she trusts her parents. Offended by the question, Ally asks Brooke to leave. 

The next day, Ally is shocked out of her wits upon being attacked by a hideous, extremely old woman inside the villa, who repeatedly demands something from her. Villa security detains the woman, and the Brauns dodge Ally’s questions about the sudden appearance of this woman. Brooke learns about Robbie’s med test results and is convinced that the Brauns are keeping Ally in a drugged state for reasons unknown to keep her forever confined in their house. Desperate to save her friend, Brooke reconciles with Ally, meets her at the villa, and drugs both Georgia and Ally to escape from the villa and bring an unconscious Ally along with her. Ally is surprised to find herself inside Brooke’s car, who tries to warn her that her parents are planning something sinister for her by keeping her drugged. Unfortunately, they get involved in an accident and end up in the hospital. The Brauns find Ally and bring her back to the villa, and to keep details of the incident a complete secret, they coerce the hospital staffs to keep quiet about it if questioned by the authorities. Meanwhile, a comatose Brooke remains admitted in the hospital while her place is ransacked by the security detail of the Brauns. While recovering, Ally receives a call from Dr. Morrissey from the hospital, who reveals that she never had lupus in the first place. Shocked, Ally confronts her parents about this, who do their best to convince her that Dr. Evans has misdiagnosed her, and after a while, Ally appears to have become convinced of the same. However, in the light of recent events, Ally is no longer certain about her parents’ intentions and decides to look into the situation on her own. Dr. Morrissey, who has also learned details about Ally’s extremely rare blood type and the Brauns’ secretive life extending research, gets murdered by an unknown assailant. Brooke eventually recovers and remains determined as ever to save Ally. 

Why Did the Brauns Keep Ally Captive?

Remaining under constant surveillance, Ally never questioned as to why parts of the villa were off-limits or why her parents insisted she remain indoors most of the time. However, suspecting their intentions, she begins to notice some very obvious red flags, secretly stops taking her meds, and starts lurking around the villa to locate which secretive lair Georgia sneaks off to late at night. One night, Ally is able to find a secret door and manages to gain access inside it to reach an underground silo. Ally finds her parents in a chamber getting a blood transfusion and dozens of vials preserved, which appear to be Ally’s blood. Ally tries to escape but ends up getting captured, and her parents confess their true intention of adopting her and keeping her captive. As it turns out, Ally has golden blood, aka the rarest Rh-null blood type, which lacks all 61 antigens and makes the one who possesses it a universal donor. Ally’s blood can be given to others with extremely rare blood types without risking health scares and can also be used to create antibodies against rare blood diseases. Keeping Ally on antibiotics induced lupus, the Brauns are using her as a blood bank of sorts and selling her blood in exchange for huge profit. A bit of a fictional element is shoehorned in the narrative as it is revealed that Ally’s blood is the secret behind the Brauns’ eternal youth, which also indicates that the hideous old lady was a customer who wanted Ally’s blood to restore her youth once again. Coming to the Brauns, their horrendous actions give the idea of using one’s children for selfish needs a whole new meaning. Having influence over the media and the authorities, they had no issues keeping their sinister operations a secret from the rest of the world and treated their adoptive daughter as a lab rat. 

Did Ally Escape From Her Parents’ Clutches?

As Georgia tries to use a sedative to keep Ally compliant, she manages to free herself and stab Georgia with the injection. Ally meets Brooke and Robbie, who have arrived at the villa to save her. Jeff leads a search party to find Ally, while she and Brooke destroy all the preserved blood vials to ensure her parents don’t get to continue their nefarious business ever again. From this point, the story starts getting off the rails, as too many ideas are jam-packed in the final ten minutes without any necessity of doing so. The friend duo get alarmed by the presence of a Russian scientist, Dr. Volker, whom Ally recognizes from her dreadful visions, and while trying to escape from him, they reach the silo’s extension leading to the underground lab of the artificial paradise island, Elysium, which Brauns had created to expand their strange biotech experimentations. They come across preserved clones of Ally, which convey the Brauns’ long-term plan to keep using Ally as their blood harvesting entity. Horrified at the prospect, they destroy the container preserving the clones, and Ally takes it upon herself to kill her clones. 

The Brauns manage to capture Ally, Brooke, and Robbie, but seeing Ally is threatening to kill herself, Jeff pleads with her to give him a chance to explain himself. Jeff knows Ally is more emotionally attached to him, and he tries using this to his advantage by trying to gaslight Ally once again. But this time around, Ally is not going to be convinced, as she has seen the true monstrous face of her parents. A struggle ensues between Jeff and Ally, who ends up accidentally stabbing her adoptive father to death. Georgia rushes to the spot, and another altercation ensues, ultimately resulting in Ally killing her adoptive mother by slicing her throat. Distraught and betrayed, Ally doesn’t feel any remorse for killing the Brauns, who have exploited her throughout her life, forced sickness upon her, and molded her psyche according to their whims. She takes control of the situation by assuming command over the security as the heir of the Brauns’ property and asks them to get rid of the corpses of her adoptive parents. 

A year later, Ali is now off the meds and finally living a seemingly normal life. She has recovered from her autoimmune condition and is living in the villa with Brooke and Robbie. They have managed to concoct a story about the Brauns meeting their end in a yacht drowning incident, a convincing lie in the socialite circle. The friends are trying to use the Brauns’ fortune and research to make a positive contribution to the healthcare system, the best example of which turns out to be Robbie getting back the ability to walk on his own feet once again. In the final scene of the movie, Robbie ventures deeper into the silo under Elysium and calls Ally to reveal his findings. As it turns out, hundreds of Ally clones are preserved inside the silo, waiting to get activated once again. While it appears quite obvious that Ally and her friends are going to destroy the clones to keep Braun’s evil business plan from expanding ever again, things might not be so simple this time around. Surely there is a larger ploy given Brauns could have been involved with investors, shareholders, and other benefactors of the clone research, who might turn out to be major adversaries if the movie gets a sequel in the near future. 

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