Power. Money. And secrets. These three create the most delectable combinations for a film if done right. Sprinkle a scoop of horror, and you have a great thriller. Inheritance is a heady combo of all these as well.
As the title says, it is indeed about an inheritance left from a father to his daughter. But it’s the kind of heinous family heirloom nobody wants to deal with. Inheritance is a 2020 film starring stars Simon Pegg, Lily Collins, Connie Nielsen, Chace Crawford, and more in important roles.
A deceased father leaves his daughter with a paltry inheritance while giving a chunk of it to his son and wife. He instead gives her a secret- a video confessing that he has a secret bunker. Lauren finds a man chained up here for 30 years when she goes there. Why is he imprisoned there? What’s the truth about her father?
At the end of Inheritance, it’s revealed that the man Archer Monroe, chained up in his secret bunker, wasn’t an innocent man called Morgan. He was a rapist named Carson. He drugged and sexually assaulted Archer’s wife, Catherine, and even later helped Archer bury the dead body of the real Morgan, who had been run over. Carson drops a bombshell at the end that he is Lauren’s father. But it isn’t ever confirmed.
Who Is the Villain in Inheritance?
The films where the villain isn’t easily determined are always the best. Inheritance falls in that category too. By the film’s end, Simon Pegg’s Carson is the story’s villain. After all, he was the one who sexually assaulted Lauren’s mother, Catherine, which prompted her husband, Archer, to imprison him for three decades.
Moreover, throughout the story, he is the one who also manipulates the morally upright Lauren from the beginning and feeds her half-lies to distort the version of her father in her eyes and to endear himself to her. However, he isn’t the only one who is guilty.
Archer, Lauren’s father, murdered an innocent pedestrian, Morgan, buried him, and then chained up Carson in an underground shed for 30 years. He also cheated on his wife and had a second family with a son. Archer also pulled strings to ensure his children, Lauren and her brother William, get high-paying reputable jobs.
That’s not all. He only left a paltry sum of $1 million to Lauren, while he left his son $20 million. While it’s never explained why he did this, a popular theory states that he doesn’t believe she is his child and is, instead, Carson’s daughter.
It’s also possible that he didn’t leave much in wealth because, as the DA, Lauren had legally created problems for her family instead of sticking with them. But that isn’t all. While Lauren isn’t the traditional villain in the story, by the end, she too abandoned the morals she stood on and instead strived to protect the family legacy.
Thus, signaling not a positive character growth but a negative one. It shows that power and wealth corrupt all, no matter how hard one descendant tries to break the chains.
Who Is the Guy Chained Up in Inheritance?
Simon Pegg’s character, Carson, has been chained up in Inheritance by Archer Monroe, the family patriarch, and Lily and William’s father. Ultimately, it’s revealed that Archer imprisoned him in an underground bunker/shed because he had raped his wife, Catherine. He initially planned to kill him, so he took Carson to a forest.
But on the way, Archer ran over a pedestrian named Morgan. Carson helped Morgan hide the body by slitting his neck and burying him in the forest. He probably thought that Archer would have let him go. But that didn’t happen. Instead of killing him as initially planned, he kept him chained up for three decades.
Is Carson Her Father in Inheritance?
At the end of the film, Carson reveals to Lauren that she is his daughter because there’s a possibility she had been conceived the night he had raped her mother, Catherine. But when Lauren asks her mother, she replies that she’s a Monroe through and through, implying that Archer is her father.
However, it doesn’t seem like Archer was convinced he was her father. Not only did he leave a paltry sum for her as an inheritance ($1 million), but he also only told her the secret of the bunker, probably to give her a chance to know her actual paternity. The film doesn’t provide a definitive answer to this question.
But the fact that Lauren goes against her morals to cover up her father’s crimes- chaining up Carson for years and not taking the path of due legal process and justice, and sticking with her family could mean that she’s a faithful Monroe.
What’s in the Bunker in Inheritance?
After his death, Archer leaves his daughter Lauren a video telling her about a secret underground bunker/ shed. She finds a man chained up inside it for about 30 years when she goes there. Initially, the man claims to be Morgan. He says her father had run over a person years ago and wanted to bury his body in the woods.
But Morgan was adamant that they report it to the police. So Archer trapped him in an isolated bunker for years to prevent him from doing that. However, he revealed the truth in the end. His name wasn’t Morgan but Carson. He was a psychopath who had raped her mother, Catherine, and in retaliation, her father had brought him to the woods in a car to kill him.
However, on the way, Archer hit a man named Morgan. Carson helped Archer ensure that Morgan was dead and convinced him to hide his body in the forest. But helping him didn’t make Archer sympathetic to Carson. Instead, he trapped him in the underground shed, tortured him for years, and used him as his confessional tool.
What Happened at the End of Inheritance?
At the end of Inheritance, Carson is driven mad after 30 years of being chained up in an underground bunker. So he manipulates Lauren and gets a sweet offer- $1 million and a free plane ride to a tropical island where he can live the rest of his life in peace. But Carson wanted revenge. He wanted Lauren and Catherine to suffer the same way he did.
After that, he planned to kill Lauren’s brother William. However, he will spare her husband and daughter, leaving them to wonder what happened to her forever. But none of Carson’s plans come to fruition because Catherine shoots him right after he confesses that he is Lauren’s actual father and that she was conceived the night he drugged and sexually assaulted her mother.
Catherine assures Lauren that she is a Monroe and that her father was Archer. Together mother and daughter burn down the bunker with Carson in it. Lauren’s parentage is never explicitly confirmed, but it’s interesting that after this incident, Lauren abandons her moral backbone and saves her family by further keeping her father’s secret.
It’s possible that she did this because she didn’t want to expose her father’s actions, publicly shame her mother, or get branded as the daughter of a rapist. Overall, in the end, Lauren truly becomes someone who abides by the blood is thicker than water motto.
So what did you think of the ending of Inheritance?
Do you think Carson is Lauren’s father, or was he bluffing? Did Archer know that Carson was the father, and that’s why he was distant from Lauren? Who was the worse- Carson or Archer?
Let us know in the comments below.
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