The nearly-two-hour flick is riddled with bizarro details and out-of-nowhere plot twists from start to finish, but it’s the truly indecipherable ending that has folks talking the most. Whether you’re Illusions-curious after hearing all the hype online, or you’ve just binged the film and you still aren’t completely sure what you just watched, here’s our deep-as-we-can-get dive into the movie and what (we think) actually happens in it.
What is DeadlyIllusions about?
Mary (Sex and the City star Kristin Davis) is a former mystery novelist who’s put her writing career behind her to raise the twins she shares with her dashing husband, Tom (Dermot Mulroney). Their well-to-do lifestyle is threatened when Tom makes a bad business deal, prompting Mary to come out of retirement and agree to write a new novel (for the eye-popping sum of $2 million). In need of child care so she has time to write, Mary turns to a tony nanny service and ends up hiring Grace (Greer Grammer, daughter of Frasier star KelseyGrammer), who appears (at first) to be a super-sweet soul who loves to read and wouldn’t hurt a fly. But soon, strange things start to happen: Grace seems to be slowly coming on to Mary—who doesn’t shy away from being seduced, but subsequently starts to question what is reality and what’s her imagination.
What happens in the end of DeadlyIllusions?
Major spoilers ahead! After Mary witnesses Grace having her way with Tom in the kitchen (or was that a dream?), she starts to dig up some dirt on her not-so-perfect nanny, then goes to see her BFF, Elaine (Shanola Hampton)—who’s been fatally stabbed in the neck with a pair of scissors! Even more shocking, Mary quickly becomes the cop’s main suspect; among other possible evidence, they have footage of someone in Mary’s clothing entering and exiting Elaine’s building the night before (although her identity is concealed under her trench coat, headscarf and sunglasses). But before the cops can collect enough evidence to arrest Mary, Grace strikes again, brutally attacking Tom with a knife in the shower while slowly revealing that she may suffer from something along the lines of dissociative identity disorder. (In a possibly problematic depiction of trauma and mental illness, she has an argument with herself about murdering the family and she addresses herself as both “Grace” and “Margaret" as we see her personality switch from cheery to murderous with the flip of a switch. Before that, we learned Grace suffered from severe trauma as a child, which Margaret claims she helped her survive.) The movie ends with a yearlong jump forward in time: Tom has survived and Grace has been institutionalized. We see Mary visiting her at a facility…then we see someone exit the facility in Mary’s trench coat, headscarf and sunglasses, just like whoever presumably killed Elaine.
Does Grace kill Mary at the end of DeadlyIllusions?
That seems to be what the movie suggests, given that whoever killed Elaine wore the exact same get-up. And even if Grace didn’t kill Elaine, she clearly tried to kill Tom, so she’s proven murderous tendencies. Plus, Grace inexplicably wears a trench coat (with nothing but lingerie underneath) when she walks in on Tom in the shower with that butcher knife in hand. And, the biggest clue: Mary walked into the facility to see Grace wearing what looked like the exact same trenchcoat and scarf that the person walked out in (although, that time, the scarf was covering the person’s head.) Meanwhile, the cast and crew is hinting that this theory about the ending is the correct one. Actress Melissa Chambers—who plays Grace’s Aunt Lotty, the woman Mary tracks down to learn about Grace’s tragic and tortured childhood—tweeted in response to a fan question, “My take is Grace/Margaret killed Mary and escaped to kill again.” That tweet was subsequently liked by Deadly Illusions’ director, Anna Elizabeth James.
Does Mary kill Grace at the end of DeadlyIllusions?
On the other hand, there are some potential clues that it’s Mary who kills Grace at the end of the film. For starters, Mary’s got a motive, seeing as Grace tried to kill her husband and (it seems) offed her bestie, Elaine. Then there’s the meeting Mary has about halfway through the movie with her editors, who suggest that she add a twist to the end of her book with “the mother being the killer in the end” because it’s “a real opportunity here…to explore her darker side.”
But wait, who exactly killed Elaine?
Again, Grace is the one with a murderous alter ego and a motive. (Before Elaine is killed, she spies on Tom and Grace because she’s suspicious about an affair.) However, there’s a moment in the movie where we see Mary foreshadow Elaine’s death when she writes in her novel, “She grabs the scissors and plunges them into her neck!”—a detail the cops pick up on as well. (But maybe Grace read that passage and decided to use it as inspo?) The movie also shows Mary waking up and getting out of bed just after 1 a.m. on the night before she finds Elaine dead. The surveillance footage of the trench-coat woman entering and exiting Elaine’s building is from around the same time, but what Mary does and how long she stays awake is left intentionally vague—although she does wake up the next morning looking refreshed and happy.
Is Grace just a figment of Mary’s imagination?
One more theory (because sure, why not?): It could be that Grace never really existed and that Mary just imagined her all along (think BradPitt’s character in FightClub or Tully in Tully) or maybe Mary was actually the one with the multiple personalities all along and Grace is just one of them. After all, Mary does warn everyone that when she’s in writing mode, things get weird! Next, find out where Lori Loughlin is now after the College Admissions Scandal.
