A Letterboxd review (by a user bearing the name logan) of The Tutor (2023) reads: “The Tutor is to Noah Schnapp as Green Lantern is to Ryan Reynolds.” The film’s traffic, even if negligible, seemingly has more to do with Noah’s presence in it. Noah Schnapp, who became a worldwide rage following the exceptionally popular Stranger Things, plays the sinful tutee to the clueless tutor played by Garrett Hedlund. However, the dichotomy between nefariousness and cluelessness is not that plain. Read on to find out more.
The Tutor (2023) Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:
Ethan Campbell works as a home tutor for an agency and provides tutoring lessons to the kid of the wealthiest families. He lives with his girlfriend, Annie. Ethan and Annie are expecting a child, but Ethan has hidden it from his father, who is racist and, quite tellingly, would not take to it very well. The next day, Ethan gets a call from his manager, Chris. Chris tells Ethan that an employer has specifically sought Ethan as a tutor and offered to pay him $2,500 daily. On the other hand, Ethan must stay on the premise of a bungalow. Ethan has no qualms about taking up a lucrative offer such as this.
On the day of his reporting, he is picked up by a car and taken to a quaint, stately mansion. The butler of the mansion escorts him into the house. There he meets his tutee, Jackson. Jackson’s demeanor is stony. When Ethan asks how he fared on his SAT test, he seems to be thrown into cluelessness. Ethan then asks him to take a practice test. Meanwhile, Ethan familiarizes himself with the bungalow. He finds as many as fifty vintage motorcycles parked in the garage. While exploring the house, Ethan meets Gavin and his girlfriend, who are antithetical figures to Jackson.
Ethan returns to check on Jackson. To Ethan’s bewilderment, Jackson has gotten all the questions correct. The next day, while conversing with Jackson, Ethan finds himself in the midst of an extremely uncomfortable and menacing situation. The conversation starts with the profession of Jackson’s father, which Jackson refuses to disclose, and then quickly shifts to his mother, who has been thrown away from the house, and then ends with Jackson’s creepy mention of Ethan’s unborn baby. Ethan is taken aback as he has never broached this topic with Jackson, and the latter is not supposed to know this beforehand.
Things turn further threatening for Ethan. One day, he gets a lift from Gavin and his girlfriends. In the car, one of the girls makes sexual advances toward him, and Gavin directly asks him to take a chance. Jackson asks Ethan to take his photo in one of the study sessions. He and Gavin also dismiss the remaining session for the day by coaxing Ethan to accept $5000 as a bribe.
That day, at night, Jackson comes into Ethan’s room unannounced to confess that he had lied about his mother. He reveals that his mother actually left them. Then, putting Ethan in an even more uncomfortable situation, Jackson puts his head on his lap and starts letting his guard down by narrating his discordant familial relations. Ethan shares details of his personal life too. But then, just like that, Jackson sits up, smirks, and leaves by taking a jab at him, leaving Ethan feeling more perplexed and enraged.
Does Ethan leave the mansion?
When the day of the final session arrives, Jackson pleads with Ethan to stay back for dinner with his father. Jackson is clearly showing signs of an unhealthy obsession with Ethan. Ethan, who is now well aware of this, refuses to join and tries to set the record straight regarding their professional relationship and the accompanying boundaries which Jackson is trying to evade. That night, Ethan finds his personal photos with Annie on Jackson’s laptop.
On the last day, Jackson’s prickly demeanor gets worse. When Ethan broaches the topic of the pictures on his computer, Jackson starts screaming and hurting himself. Ethan also meets Jackson’s father, whose martial approach to parenting is problematic, to say the least. On his way out, Chris calls Ethan and tells him that Jackson’s father has extended his contract period and requested to have Ethan tutor Jackson for the entire summer at an offer of triple the rate than usual.
Why is Ethan fired from the job?
Ethan goes back to Annie, and the two go on a double date with their friends. Ethan starts disclosing and badmouthing Jackson to the others, but right then, Jackson appears. Jackson seems hurt, and Annie sympathizes with him. Ethan gets a phone call from Jackson, who instructs him to go over to the house by himself and wait for him since he will be late. Ethan makes his way in and eats some strawberries. However, Ethan gets drugged by the strawberries that Jackson has left for him. Ethan wakes up in the middle of a lake at night. Ethan goes back to his apartment and recounts the horrors, but Annie refuses to pin the blame on Jackson. She is also agitated, for a woman had been calling several times for Ethan in his absence.
Things have clearly never been all good between Ethan and Annie, and this chain of events causes further fissures in their relationship. Ethan develops the photos of his camera and finds inappropriate photographs of him with one of the girls who were seen with Gavin. Soon, however, Ethan is fired from the firm by Chris, who has received complaints about Ethan from Jackson’s family on charges of several misconducts. He seems aware of the presence of the photographs of Ethan with the girl. Ethan confronts Jackson and Gavin and threatens to hurt Jackson for ruining him.
Who is Jackson’s mother?
Ethan, however, gets summoned by the police on charges of physically assaulting Jackson on the streets right after his threat. After returning home, Annie demands Ethan to be upfront about one Rachel Platt with whom Ethan has shared a relationship in the past. She tells him that Jackson is worried about her, given what Ethan did to his mother, Rachel. Rachel died by drowning in a lake, and Jackson suspects that it was Ethan who killed her. Ethan, however, reveals that Rachel had died by suicide and attributes Jackson’s obsessive behavior to the inheritance of insanity from his mother.
The Tutor (2023) Movie Ending Explained:
Whom to trust- Jackson or Ethan?
Ethan goes back to the villa and finds the family who owns it. He creates a fiasco. The owner of the house threatens to call in the police. Ethan finds out that the house is owned by the father of the girl with whom he was captured in his drugged state. Ethan sneaks into the house in search of the drugged strawberries as pieces of evidence, but the police arrive. The police tell him that he was, in fact, sneaking into the villa of Jefferson Platt, the husband of Rachel.
Jackson asks Ethan to meet him where his mother died. And Ethan goes to the exact spot by the lake, thus convincing Jackson of his culpability. As revealed by Jackson, the killer slammed Rachel’s head against the deck and threw her into the water. So, the theory of Rachel dying by drowning is not entirely true. Jackson and Gavin beat Ethan up. Ethan keeps reiterating the same narrative ad nauseam of Rachel’s suicide. That is when Jackson brings in the damning evidence– Rachel’s diary. In the diary, Rachel had noted Ethan’s insidious nature, of which Rachel was growing increasingly fearful. While Jackson keeps reading, Ethan has a meltdown and unleashes the horror he has been hiding all this while. He kills Gavin and tries to hunt down Jackson.
Ethan follows Jackson to the manor’s boatyard, where he starts spilling the secrets. Annie, however, overhears all this. While Ethan is distracted by Annie, Jackson gets hold of a gun and shoots him. Ethan drowns. The police, however, fail to recover Ethan’s dead body. The lives of both Jackson and Annie have been rocked forever by the malevolent intentions of Ethan. It is not too long before we find out that Ethan has evaded the cusp of death and has found his way back to society by endorsing himself as a tutor yet again in loaded American households. The film ends without answering or providing any relief to the restlessness caused by the probing question of who the next victim of Ethan might be– will he be back to take down Annie?
