'Vanishing Point' Movie Ending Explained And Summary: Who Kidnapped Nuo?

Cheng Wei-hao’s Chinese thriller film, Vanishing Point, brings together three mysterious stories that unfold in the same apartment building. It all began when Tang Nuo, a young boy, went missing out of the blue. His mother had got him ready for school, and his father was waiting in his car downstairs to drop him off, but surprisingly, Nuo didn’t show up. His father, Tang Yu, called his wife to find out if Nuo had left the apartment, and she confirmed that he had. The parents panicked, they made a thorough search but couldn’t find him. They contacted the cops, who went through the surveillance footage and arrived at the conclusion that the kid never left the building. But if that was the case then what happened to Nuo? Tang Yu and his wife suspected their downstairs neighbor; apartment 302 was locked, and Nuo’s parents were yet to check the place. When Yingying showed up, the cops finally checked the apartment but couldn’t find Nuo. Yingying was Nuo’s play-buddy, she adored him and she was quite disturbed to find that her little friend had gone missing. Although the cops didn’t find Nuo at the apartment, they discovered blood on the wall and collected it for testing. Did Yingying have a role to play in the kid’s disappearance? Is her father also involved? Let’s get into the details!

Spoiler Alert

Why did Mr. Xu help Yan Wu?

Yingying had left her apartment keys with Nuo, asking him to hide there if he wanted, and she promised to meet him after her exams. You can’t help but wonder if this young girl had something to do with Nuo’s disappearance, but ultimately it turns out that she has been innocent all along. She blamed herself for the incident, and she deeply regretted handing Nuo the key to her house. Tang Yu tried to help Yingying realize that she wasn’t the problem; since her father mostly stayed away, Yingying had grown close to Nuo’s family, and Tang Yu was quite supportive of her. Meanwhile, the cops confirmed that the blood they’d found in apartment 302 was Nuo’s. Even Nuo’s fingerprints were found there, which meant that after he left his apartment, he’d stopped by at Yingying’s, but where did he go from there? The cops had found another set of fingerprints of an unknown person there, and they believed that there must have been someone else as well in the apartment who found Nuo and probably kidnapped him. The cops naturally suspected Yingying’s father, Xu, but he had a solid alibi; he was at a construction site when Nuo went missing, and the workers there confirmed his statement. So, if it wasn’t Xu, then who was responsible for Nuo’s disappearance?

In Vanishing Point’s ending, we find out that there was a secret door that connected apartments 302 and 301. While working on the interior design of his apartment, Mr. Xu had discovered that there was only one wall separating his apartment from 301, and he decided to cut a tiny door so that he could sneak into his neighbor’s apartment whenever he wished. When he discovered that Nuo was missing, he guessed that the kid must have found the secret door and made it to 301. He used the door to find out whether his guess was true or not, and that was how he ended up at Yan Wu’s apartment. 

Yan Wu was a tenant, he’d rented the apartment and lived with his father. One night, when the father and son got into a heated argument, the father died suddenly. Yan Wu was a gambler, and he’d pretty much lost everything because of his addiction. When he asked his father for money, he figured that Yan Wu had lied about his job, and was spending every penny on gambling. This resulted in the argument, and ultimately, the old man’s death. Now, Yan Wu instantly called the ambulance, but after a while he figured that as long as his father was alive he would at least get the pension money, so he cancelled the ambulance and kept the dead body in the apartment. After Nuo found the secret door, he ended up entering apartment 301, and Yan Wu freaked out when he saw the little boy, because he had a dead body in his house. He knew that the cops were looking for Nuo, so he couldn’t risk returning him, since he had a secret he desperately wanted to protect. He ended up hitting Nuo with a hammer, and the kid immediately fell on the ground, though thankfully, he survived. 

Yan Wu bandaged and strapped Nuo to a chair. He didn’t know what to do anymore. He’d somehow managed to put his father’s body in the fish tank and added formalin powder to the water to preserve the body. His plan was to hide the body in the wall separating the living room from the bathroom, but by then he’d already started to lose hope, and he was simply tired of covering his tracks. After Xu ended up at Yan Wu’s apartment using the secret door, he figured that his neighbor was in a lot of trouble, and he wanted to help. Why? Because he’s just an evil man who enjoys the idea of committing crimes. He figured that Yan Wu needed his help, so he started to take complete control of the situation, and he simply wanted Yan Wu to comply. He came up with the idea of killing Nuo, but Yan Wu wasn’t on board. He couldn’t imagine murdering the little boy to protect his secret, and Xu was deeply upset by his response. He wanted to believe that Yan Wu was just as inhumane as him, but clearly they weren’t cut from the same cloth. Xu had to pause his murder plan because the owner of the apartment, Lin Yutong, and her friend, A-Jun, showed up unannounced. 

Did Lin Yutong find the rapist?

Lin Yutong decided to rent out the apartment after she was raped there one night. She had no idea who the perpetrator was, but her brother, a doctor, decided to collect a DNA sample in case they could find a match in the future. Her brother had advised her not to report the case to the cops. He was worried that it would ruin his sister’s reputation, and she would always struggle to find a romantic match. But Yutong refused to move on, as the incident continued to bother her deeply and she desperately wanted to find an answer. Her brother suspected A-Jun, her colleague who’d dropped her home that night. He figured that maybe A-Jun climbed up the pipe right outside her bedroom and sneaked in through the window. He asked her to collect his DNA, and she somehow managed to collect his leftover cigarette stub to find out it was a match. Yutong was relieved when her brother told her that it wasn’t a match; she liked A-Jun and now she could finally trust him. After they went on a date, A-Jun revealed that he’d been noticing her every movement lately (even the time she collected his cigarette stub), and he’d come to the conclusion that she must have been through a traumatic incident and was searching for answers. At first, Yutong was hurt, she thought A-Jun’s attitude towards her would change, but then he explained that he simply wanted to help her find the perpetrator. So, Yutong and A-Jun started to work together on solving the case. 

A-Jun didn’t believe the whole ‘climbing up a pipe and entering through the window’ theory, the pipe was way too shaky for someone to make it to the apartment, and he believed that the noise of opening the window should have woken up Yutong. The only other explanation was that she was unconscious when the man had entered her room. Since her brother was in the apartment with her and had offered her milk before she fell asleep she wondered if her brother was somehow involved. She eventually learned that her brother was innocent; she’d spoken to a doctor from the pathology department, and he’d confirmed that he’d received the DNA sample, which meant her brother hadn’t lied to her. So, if it wasn’t her brother, then who had access to the apartment? 

This question kept Lin Yutong and A-Jun awake, and when they heard of the missing boy in apartment 302, they wondered if there was a connection between the two cases. A man appeared from nowhere in apartment 301, and a boy was lost in apartment 302; they were convinced that they were missing something, and they figured that the only way to find out the truth was by entering apartment 301. They rang the doorbell, but no one responded, so Lin Yutong decided to use the apartment key to enter. Soon after they entered, someone grabbed hold of A-Jun, and Yan Wu tried to convince Lin Yutong to leave the apartment. Suddenly, Lin Yutong noticed Xu; he was trying to rub the chloroform-soaked cloth on her mouth. Yan Wu tried to stop him, and he and Xu got into a scuffle. Xu was almost about to stab Yan Wu when Yutong came to his rescue and knocked out Xu by breaking a glass bottle on his head. Yutong finally connected the dots, realizing that Xu was the perpetrator she’d been searching for. 

She was impressed with how Xu had designed his apartment, and she’d hired him to do the interiors of her house, that’s when Xu connected the two apartments through a secret door. The night Yutong was raped, Xu had probably added ether to her humidifier, or perhaps he’d adulterated the milk that was lying on the table. Either way, he made sure that Yutong was completely unconscious when he entered the apartment through the secret door at night. Since Yutong’s brother had a DNA sample from the night, the cops had solid evidence against him to keep him in prison.

Did Nuo survive?

Yan Wu wasn’t a cold-blooded criminal like Xu; his circumstances had turned him into a monster, although he’d almost lost his sanity in the process. He was so afraid of ending up destitute that he chose to keep his father’s body in the apartment, even after the body started to rot. He thought he’d made the smart decision, but eventually, as he started to lose his mind, he regretted his actions. He knew his father didn’t deserve this. He’d always been a disappointing son, and the least he could’ve done was to let his father rest in peace, but he even failed to do that. Even after his death, his father continued to pay the price of his mistakes. When Yan Wu found Nuo, he didn’t intend to kill him, he had no idea what to do with the little boy, and he feared that if he decided to let him go, then the cops would drop by to check his apartment, and they might assume that he’d killed his father. Even if the truth came to light, he would still end up in prison for keeping his father’s dead body just to get access to his pension money. When Xu showed up, he at first followed his instructions, because he seemed like a person who knew what to do. But the moment he instructed Yan Wu to kill Nuo, he started to hesitate. He wasn’t a murderer, and he refused to harm the child. At the end of the day, he protected Yutong and stood up to Xu. 

Eventually, the cops also figured out the truth after carefully observing the building blueprints and noticing that the two apartments were separated by just a wall. Yan Wu was carrying Nuo when the cops found him. The child was rescued, and although the incident is going to leave him quite traumatized, he is finally safe and surrounded by his loved ones. After reuniting with her son, Ah Yu is no longer embarrassed about admitting that her son has ADHD. She doesn’t want Nuo to think that there’s something wrong with him, and she figures it’s high time that the people around them became more sensitive. She knows that her neighbors had spread the rumor that she used to beat her son because he always had bruises on his body. She later tells them that it’s because of his condition that he often runs into things and ends up hurting himself. She is tired of caring about what society thinks of her and her family; she is glad to have Nuo, and he’s all that matters to her. 

What happened to Xu and Yan Wu?

Both Xu and Yan Wu are arrested by the cops. Xu is presumably going to serve a longer sentence than Yan Wu. Not only does he have an attempted murder charge against him, but there’s also a rape case with solid evidence. So, Xu won’t be released any time soon, he is probably going to spend the rest of his life behind bars, as he should. Yan Wu will most likely spend a few years in prison for trying to defraud the pension system, and for abduction. Yutong meets Yan Wu in prison, she tells him that his father had taken out a life insurance plan when he was alive, he used his pension money to pay for the insurance. He always feared that his son would end up in financial trouble and he wanted to leave something behind for him to make his life easier. Yan Wu now has access to his father’s insurance proceeds, and he struggles to hold back his tears. He had put his father through immense pain for money yet he had no idea that his father had already thought about him and kept some money that he could use in the future. When Yutong mentions that his father had told her that his son wasn’t a bad person, he breaks down. Yutong adds that she believes he is a man with a good heart, and that’s the only reason why things didn’t escalate even though they could’ve. Since the gambling parlor Yan Wu owed money to has been shut down, and the owners are behind bars, he won’t have to pay them back, and he can actually use the money his father has left for him to build his future once he’s released from prison. 

Yingying visits her father in prison; we discover that she’s the one who’d hid Nuo’s name tag in her father’s clothes so that the cops would start suspecting him. She didn’t know if her father had kidnapped Nuo or not, but she knew that he was a bad man. She’d seen him use the secret door to access apartment 301 when Yutong used to live there. She suspected that he’d harmed Yutong, and she was terrified of him. That was why she always locked her room when she went to sleep. Xu, the cold-hearted criminal, despises his daughter. He tells her that without any parental figure, her life will be difficult as well, and that she has made very wrong choices. He warns her that people will always make fun of her and remind her that she’s the daughter of a criminal and accuse her of being just like her father. Yingying wonders if all that her father has said will come true; the neighbors now keep a distance from her and they don’t let their kids around her. She breaks down after noticing this shift in their behaviour, but thankfully, that’s when Ah Yu and Tang Yu come to her rescue. They treat her like their own daughter, and there’s a high probability that they’ll eventually adopt her. Ah Yu fights with the neighbors to establish that Yingying wasn’t anything like her father, and that they must stop judging people. Yingying’s dream of choosing her own family has come true, not the way she perhaps would’ve wanted, but nonetheless she now has people in her life who genuinely love and care about her. 

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