“Sorry, Charlie” (2023) is a Tubi original with a fairly straightforward premise of a home invasion. A young girl, who had been raped by a masked killer, is plagued by the apprehensive feeling that the killer is coming back to claim his child. There is only one house as a setting, and the action takes place over the course of a day. As is fairly established by the conventions of this genre, there is indeed a final showdown between the two. However, the night that leads up to that early morning face-off is equally tense and manages to build up the perfect tension that works as a foundation for The Gentleman’s arrival.
Sorry, Charlie (2023) Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:
Charlie is a remote helpline volunteer working from home. Due to her work, she gets the opportunity to establish a chord, even if momentary, with various people. For instance, once she gets a distraught call from a suicidal teen, Lily, who suspects that she is pregnant. However, due to her religious mother, abortion is not an option for the teen. Charlie tries to placate the teen and talk her out of any drastic step, but Lily disconnects the call.
Right after, Charlie gets a call from her therapist. It becomes clear that Charlie chooses to take up remote volunteering to help herself get over a trauma. Her therapist asks if she has been steering clear of the news, as was decided. But Charlie admits to not abiding by that. The therapist assures her that the right man has been arrested. However, Charlie is certain that the voice of the arrested man does not match the voice of her perpetrator. This brings us back to where it all begins.
At the beginning of “Sorry, Charlie,” we see Charlie renovating the house that she inherited from her grandmother. She hears the crying voice of a baby coming from outside the house. She proceeds to take a look, and it turns out that she has fallen prey to the game of the Crying Baby Killer. The Crying Baby Killer, or the Gentleman, lures women out of their houses using the recorded sound of a crying baby and then rapes them. He makes the woman conceive his child to leave behind his legacy. And now, nine months after this incident, Charlie is waiting to go into labor with the killer’s child.
We watch as Charlie continues her daily work of cooking, gardening, and cleaning around the house while attentively listening to all her callers. However, Charlie is haunted by the prospect of the return of The Gentleman. Her brain tricks her into hallucinating his image lurking around the house. With the threat of the killer returning, Charlie spends her life in isolation and does not see her parents for months.
Who is sending Charlie the gifts?
A podcaster calls Charlie and tries to take her opinion on the arrest of Edward Reed, who the police have arrested on account of being the Crying Baby Killer, but Charlie does not entertain her. Later, Charlie tunes into her podcast ‘True Crime Truths’ and finds out a foreboding detail regarding the killer– he sends his victims gifts leading up to the birth.
Charlie is startled because she has been receiving unlabeled gifts from an undisclosed sender lately. She realizes that she only received an unnamed packet this morning. As she opens the envelope, she finds a vinyl record of a lullaby. As the song on the record stops, she hears the cries of a baby again. She goes outside but finds nothing. Her therapist tells her that it was probably the mewing of a cat that startled her.
Who listens to Charlie as she opens up about that night?
An unidentified man calls Charlie. Instead of keeping it courteous, he suggests leering her through the phone sexually, which disturbs her. Later at night, that man calls again and apologizes for abusing her service. He asks Charlie if it is a good idea to drink while in her final trimester. This confuses Charlie. When she is about to disconnect, she hears the cries of a baby. Charlie tries to take this up with the volunteering agency, asking them to track down this unidentified caller. The person on the line agrees to take up the report. However, warns that the police do not care much about harassing calls, so Charlie does not bother her.
Just as she is about to sign out, Charlie finds Lily has called her back. Overjoyed to hear back from Lily, Charlie opens up about her past. She reveals that The Gentleman told her that he would come back if she got pregnant. Not keeping the baby would lead to The Gentleman killing her. Charlie says that since she does not know the real identity of her perpetrator, she is totally powerless. She signs out for the day and falls asleep.
At 3 in the morning, she wakes up to an eerie feeling of someone watching her from outside her window. There is a handgun at her disposal attached below the tabletop.
Sorry, Charlie (2023) Movie Ending Explained:
A Trapped Target: Who is the Mystery Caller?
Someone has clearly entered the house, and Charlie finds her gun missing from the kitchen. All the knives are also gone. She looks for an internet connection on her computer, and she finds that all wires have been snapped off. On the caller sheet, instead of details of the callers, Charlie finds the repeated occurrence of the words ‘SORRY CHARLIE.’ Charlie retrieves another gun, which she has been hiding in her flush tank.
The Gentleman talks to Charlie through the baby monitor. Charlie learns that he is the unidentified caller who has been harassing her. Having noticed Charlie input it multiple times, The Gentleman changes the security code at Charlie’s door. He advises her not to run as he can see her from all sides of the house. Despite his warning, Charlie tries to cross the fence and run away. But being unable to bear her contraction pain, she returns. The killer is a witness from outside the kitchen window as Charlie’s water breaks. Despite Charlie’s best efforts to ward off the evil, the evil shows up through the main door. She tries to gun him down, but the killer has already unloaded the barrel.
A Shocking Revelation
As the night breaks into the dawn, The Gentleman’s countenance becomes clearer. In place of an identifiable face, he has a stiff wooden skeleton mask. He is dressed in all black with a top hat. He ties up Charlie and asks her why she has not run away. However, Charlie manages to free herself and returns from the baby nursery with a pair of scissors. She begins to stab him repeatedly as she narrates how these nine months made her devastatingly helpless and question her sanity.
Shockingly, Charlie turns the scissors to herself and stabs herself in her belly. For a moment, we are duped into believing that Charlie has killed the baby in her womb by harming herself. However, her smile gives her away. We watch in surprise as she opens her faux-foamed belly and retrieves a third gun, which she has been carrying all this while. Charlie confesses that she wanted to be certain that the killer was still out there. Hence, she set up this elaborate plan of being pregnant for a tenure of as long as nine months to make it all look convincing to the killer.
Every little detail– from the toys to the water breaking— was directed towards inviting the attention of The Gentleman. Now that he is finally here, Charlie is convinced that the police have gotten the wrong man and that her hunches have been right all along. She does not waste her time in shooting him. The Gentleman dies. Charlie retrieves her phone from his pocket and calls the police. It is now morning. With the police sirens wailing in the distance, Charlie, all splattered with blood, signs in and begins her day with the first call from Lily.
