FLASHBACK (2021) Ending Explained

[Music] howdy folks and welcome to found flicks on this inning explained we're looking at the sci-fi mystery thriller flashback where a young man starts having horrific visions of a girl who vanished in high school he reconnects with old friends with whom he used to take a mysterious drug and soon realizes the only solution lies deep within his own memories i wasn't really sure what to expect with this one and actually the first time i put it on it was while i was doing other stuff i'd look up every now and then and be like what the hell is going on because this is quite convoluted right out of the gate and how it tells its story constantly juggling around in different times that becomes quite confusing especially at first a bit later things start coming more into focus of what is going on but it still requires the viewer to pay extremely close attention to catch everything to the story i could see this being a kind of turn off for someone watching it but for me it was worth getting through the initial confusion for the quite trippy and interesting story that develops it reminded me of a mashup of donnie darko and the butterfly effect also i am obligated to point out that our lead dylan o'brien is absolutely amazing in his performance here i feel like this guy is kind of underrated yeah i know he was in those maze runner movies but honestly i never saw any of those this along with last year's love and monsters proves that o'brien is a star on the rise and i look forward to seeing his career further develop so as i said there's a lot of aspects to explain when it comes to understanding the story as it unfolds it only gets more complicated as the runtime goes by but as you know that's why we're here to piece together the time-hopping madness and explain what it all means so let's take a trip with flashback breaking down the complicated story just how the time travel works exactly including the importance of the drug mercury as well as explaining the final big twist and the ending we open on a crawling pov of what must be a baby making their way around stacks of moving boxes as they enter into darkness a woman's voice echoes freddy we then jump many years later where freddie's mom is in declining health in the hospital his wife karen joins asking if they should go in but he says to just let her get some rest establishing a kind of distance between the mother and son's relationship meeting with the doctor it sounds like she has no chance of getting better choices need to be made going forward karen grabs his hand in support freddie asking just how much time she has left and the doc can't say for sure but we'll know more in a couple days karen questions if there's any chance of her memories returning and quite importantly the doctor notes that technically we all have every memory recorded in our minds which will become of paramount importance to our story suddenly we're back to freddy as a kid with his mom giving him a big hug jumping to him driving pensively then him interviewing for a job in data analytics the boss detailing that it's all just patterns to identify quantify and label visiting his mom again karen pushes freddie to tell her about his new job but she's the only one talking saying he's doing really well at it karen helps him get dressed offering that she's not gone but still here exchanging i love use before he's off to sitting in traffic eyeing a blank one-way street sign he decides to break away going the wrong way down the street his cell phone rings it's karen but the call keeps curiously failing freddie bringing his car to a stop in an alley a homeless guy with a big scar on his face stumbles out to him telling him these seemingly random words obey prison system language he opens his eyes appearing on the ground a girl cindy is there along with some unsavory looking characters things get distorted her yelling don't let me go he snapped back to his car the sirens of police blaring behind him we don't hear the officer's dialogue as things get distorted again and then he's in bed with karen flashes of cindy invade his dreams and he wakes up sitting blankly on the couch he does a drawing of some kind of monstrous looking creature and there's another flash of what looks like an open mouth he flips through his yearbook finding cindy's picture then to another page of his own including a crude dick drawing next to his face scoffing sebastian that in another yearbook this time her photo has been scratched out completely appearing as though he was actively trying to forget her we're then shot all the way back to his high school days bumping into sebastian in the hall and then he spots cindy nearby sitting by a window the two eye each other from a distance but both take their leave without a word karen brings him back to now asking what he's doing stammering he's organizing her suspicious uh in the middle of the night yeah it's clear that he's becoming kind of hung up on cindy and her memory not listening in a meeting and sketching her in an attempt to track her down he revisits his alma mater meeting a teacher that still works there she vaguely remembers sydney when freddie brings up that he can't find a trace of her after high school she says that that makes sense as she didn't turn up for graduation concurrently he scours social media for her finding several other cindy williams but none are the one that he's looking for teacher calls that was when that drug was going around school leading to more flashes sydney and a small pill which looks like a pupil freddie remembering that it's called mercury he's back in high school again watching cindy with sebastian a beat up sports car rumbles up and sebastian approaches doing an obvious drug handoff freddie catches a better glimpse of who's in the car when they turn back around a young kid seen in the back seat he then finds himself in the tub with karen her droning on about decor and he brings up going to meet his old teacher excusing that he was feeling nostalgic or something which she finds a bit weird she asked him to pick from the color palace picking up a purple one that reminds him of a tattoo from sydney's back and he's back in class staring at her shoulder in the middle of doing another sketch the teacher snatches it up showing it off to giggling students trying to get him to understand the importance of the test that they're about to take sydney interrupts with a loving gesture caressing his face he pulls away confused and looks back to see her just sitting there appearing to have all been in his head in the bathroom stall the time skipping gets more intense seeing many different days and times scratched out on the wall and his clock in the present reading 308 am which he uses as an answer on his math test the last date left unmarked is 2 45 wednesday and when he checks his watch sees that it's nearly that time right now sebastian enters the bathroom puffing on a sick out the window and he's joined by someone else for another drug deal man he's busy a boy passes by seeing him in the crack saying lobby skipping quickly again he's back at the deal the kid's saying you're then in the hallways and he's able to piece together i'm in your lobby from the fragmented words across time in the present he checks the security cameras around the building seeing nothing out of the ordinary and takes an elevator down into the lobby armed with a bat and the scar dude appears blinking to the kid from the car making it clear that they are one in the same bringing him back on the floor with sydney and the punk eyes stay with me fred she pleads do you hear me and freddie comes back startled to some other guys there assuring him that he's just fine yeah i don't know about that freddie visiting his mom again she stays silent when asking how she's doing but when seeing a stack of photos and drawings he finds one that he did as a child of a little yellow house trying to remind her that it was all about him wanting to live in a little yellow house when he grew up yet still gets no answer he remembers drawing it at christmas time his mom tells him to put the crayons away trying to convince him that santa knows which little boys listen to their mom and which ones don't you want presents or what pal boy freddy wakes up seeing his mom is the one stuffing the stocking and eating the cookies for santa you tricked me there's no santa out of resentment he takes the statue of his mom's and smashes it on the ground she later finds him appearing upset asking what he's done another photo of him in sebastian sends him back to the bathroom that day sebastian busts in hardly asking him to take his stash and hide it as they won't suspect him and quickly leaves freddy's stuffing it in his pocket about to walk away karen stops him trying to confront him that it must be hard to see her that way but he coldly interrupts she doesn't even know who i am she's already gone and stops off disaffected he continues his search into cindy's whereabouts meeting up with his old buddy sebastian at his strip club classy when he inquires about keeping in touch with sydney he admits that he forgot about her as soon as he could while he on the other hand never forgets he says he does remember one night when they were all on mercury freddie asks him what it was and he says that he has no idea but that it was some strong and he couldn't even remember the day after let alone 13 years later what he does remember is the very first time that freddy did mercury and throws a ball of paper transporting him back to class he unfolds it instructing him to go to the door and he meets up with sebastian to get his stash back he leads him down into a basement druggie hangout where he meets sydney for the first time along with andre he hands over freddie's reward of a pill but convinces him it's no big deal because it's not the real stuff and he will be getting some pure uncut mercury soon he asked what it does only getting silence in response and city chimes in to not let anyone influence you make the choice yourself and he elects to take it her smiling and the other is starting to chuckle knowing that he's gonna get up once the drugs kick in it becomes apparent that mercury is what is at least somewhat responsible for freddy's jumping around wildly in time initially he hears muffled chattering and looks back seeing that the others are all gone he then gets to his feet still seeing no one then hearing laughter he's suddenly back in the basement sydney starts walking in a kind of triple vision followed by sebastian and then andre now alone once more he follows after also trailing back into the hall he comes to the boys leaning on it sydney encouraging him that he did good she cryptically tells him that there is so much to explore if you don't succumb to pleasure or fear he kind of instinctively follows after her and she scoffs that she's not his tour guide and only takes the drug herself to explore when asked where she says anywhere but here he starts losing her and asks her to wait collapsing as he's overtaken by a yellow light and a childhood diorama then there's an out-of-focus face of someone standing over him things getting straight up epileptic he's brought back to the present in the middle of having sex with karen apologizing that his mind is wandering annoyed she hops off and freddie weakly apologizes obviously she's upset digging through a door she comes across some of his drawings him excusing that it's just a couple of drawings no big deal she gets back into bed things now awkward between them we're starting a little too obsessed with sydney there bud and you're starting to lose your touch with reality freddy he pays a visit to sebastian's mom's house where he still lives and has another blast from the past surprise there waiting for him andre who now is married with two kids and another on the way everyone toasting to the old times for andre he hasn't even thought of sydney in 13 years and sebastian cuts in dismissively wherever she is she's fine wondering why it is that freddy is still so hung up on her he explains that he's been remembering things from then recently including one night when they were all on merck and he can't help but shake the feeling that something bad happened to sydney and that they all forgot for andre back then was all a blur in the past then encroaches on the present him strangely asking freddie if he studied for final exams him taken aback wondering what the hell he's talking about he's startled by loud footsteps bounding down the stairs and sydney comes busting in still trailing and he's shot back to the pass in the same basement being here triggering another memory the gang back on merc sebastian invites him to meet his dealer at a nightclub everyone trailing again freddy is denied entry and sydney drags him to a nice rooftop overlook of the city he's curious what it is that she's trying to explore and she gives a grand speech i'm not wanting to be like everyone else locked in the prison of what is essentially society everyone is running around thinking they know what they're doing but to her they have no clue and nothing actually matters everyone is just giving things labels your house your name your job our entire world is made from labels to her that is prison she says she embraces the power of choice every single second is another choice to go into a different direction snapping to illustrate how quickly each moment passes us by they then go to rejoin the others the boy there saying you choose which life form and shape and sebastian has a lead on a massive score of pure uncut merck i'm not sure if that's going to be a good thing considering how even the diluted stuff pretty messes up hearing this freddy starts remembering again this is how it happens he says a payphone rings and he jumps back to work his boss approaches asking if he's ready for the big q2 presentation tomorrow and it's clear he has absolutely no idea what she's on about as he fumbles with some drawings he promises he's on top of it but she is not so sure sitting him down for a serious one-on-one she raises concerns over his recent lack of focus and tardiness warning if it happens again there will be consequences him stammering that he understands and will be better sebastian is starting to remember things too they met up with a guy in his car right before final exams the weirdos saying that they could get him the uncut merc as for sydney no one remembers seeing her after that fateful night they decide to retrace their steps from back then and freddy closes his eyes focusing and concentrating causing the flashing to return then seeing an image of a broken down building when describing it to his pals surprisingly andre remembers its address just about to head off fred checks his phone seeing pressure from both his wife and his boss not to things up respectively in his life but he brushes them all off committed on his journey we could currently see them as kids first going to the drug house and then now revisiting there 13 years later they come to a door mark 308 the same number from his clock earlier and the door itself doesn't look like one you would see in a house normally fred knows this must be where it happened and andre is too scared to keep going so he elects to go forward on his own the joint looks much more lively back in the day seedy looking characters hanging out all over the place yeah looks like a real fun crowd fred thinks that there's something sydney isn't telling him her cryptically replying all that i know is we're supposed to be here sebastian shows off the pure merck pills opposite an appearance of the others he doles out one apiece sydney gulping hers down with no hesitation the other is dutifully following suit except for fred who hides his instead fred then leaves to the restroom staring intently at his reflection he psyches himself up and takes the pill after all the music immediately slowing down and turning dreamy but he might end up regretting taking it as a flustered andre barges in warning him not to take it it's not what they said it was they're everywhere they're all over the place he wildly exclaims who reiterates whatever you do don't take it but it is too late for that pal he asked what is going to happen and andre is long gone accusing him that it's already happening to you and he gets a bloody nose fleeing in terror when he steps out things are not looking so good the other's all writhing around on the floor and passes by a room literally piled with people all over the place in the present he's in the same area the room now long abandoned while in the past the punk gang and the kid are all there the boy speaks slowly one word at a time as fred learns he's on a lot of merc according to the lady but she defends he's no more a kid than you are an old man okay the guys surprisingly turn up now even more shockingly cindy is with him she whispers into his ears and he's back on the floor her begging for help he took too much she tries to calm him down and according to her she's figured out exactly what the drug is doing while he's confused with the time stammering that he was here but much older again kind of jumping around in time there she informs him quite importantly that it's not a matter of one point being real and one not but that all places in time exist simultaneously which really explains the kind of time tripping that he's been doing up to this point he's actually occupying himself in each of these moments of time via his memories all actually occurring at once it seems things in the present trigger these memories and thanks in no small part to the merc he is actually able to travel there but he's not really in control however it is possible to actually choose where to go the lady instructing him to concentrate on his feelings in this place his memories and he's back in the bathroom with andre after first taking the uncut pill and snaps once more back to the present he can't believe what's happening demanding to know what they want and sydney fills him in that this is just one of her lives one set of choices and she actually exists in all of them simultaneously kind of an infinite multiverse kind of thing going on here thanks to her controlling every choice she can thusly access anything you could imagine boasting of her having seen the skylines of a thousand cities and staring into the eyes of hundreds of grandkids and tellingly the ones that she loved the most looked a bit like freddy implying that they get together and have kids in at least one possible timeline how he cries and she tells him to go with the kid he'll show you the way and things get real trippy all of a sudden he flips through several points of his life quickly including the guy with the scar on his face and he kind of hypnotizes him with the idea that the system that you are using to interpret reality is not one of your own choosing but actually a misrepresentation the drug he says actually stops the so-called invasive life form that is trying to force you to perceive information in a linear fashion linear of course meaning that time moves from one way to another and there is no deviation possible that is how we perceive our own reality yet thanks to the drug it seems we're able to achieve a kind of higher level of consciousness as far as time and memory are concerned bright staticky flashes of him are now seen afraid in various stages of his own life ending with him screaming illustrating him taking in and understanding this insane concept with all of its wacky ramifications there's a huge explosion in the sky that turns into a kind of trippy wormhole and then we see another flash of that childhood diorama the glowing yellow light gets brighter drawing them in seeing a mouth yelling in various positions he shot back to sydney over him on the floor all motioned now stuttering erratically he crawls across the floor to a lamp and randomly hits someone with it who it turns out is the kid giving him a big gash on his face which explains how he ended up with that big old scar on his face when fred encountered him in present day in his car in the present sebastian appears and pulls him away the gang all standing there obscured ominously in shadow then he's back at home with karen losing his as well as seeing him back home after taking the uncut merc his mom banging at the door to get in he's overwhelmed with the yellow light and more open mouths he eventually comes to the next morning and thanks to his time travel galvanthing around he's really blown it seeing 15 messages from his boss ah shoot the big presentation scrambling to get ready he stopped by a key sitting out on the countertop and out on the floor or laid out his many many drawings of sydney so yep this has certainly developed into an obsession thing and i could see why karen would want to leave him he simultaneously is facing another big moment back as a team the big day of finals and what he's been trying to remember this entire time his mom stops some minute again he is looking pretty rough she stresses how important the finals are it's his whole life and she expresses disappointment saying that she doesn't even know who he is anymore too much murk boy stop taking all the drugs he arrives at the office huffing it into an elevator as meanwhile he stands outside the class and the tardy bell rings he forces himself into the room while at the office he furiously shuffles random papers together to save his ass he looks at sydney's desk seeing that it's empty and glances over to andre who is looking still quite shaken up after last night the teacher calls out to the class they have 60 minutes and starts his watch fred hopelessly tries to sneak into the meeting undetected but is immediately called on by his boss time for that sweet sweet q2 report but no escaping this one he bungles his way through the information barely getting a few words out and both times things start to violently shake causing fred to get more and more freaked out the kid repeats about time being in a linear fashion as in both times his boss and teacher approach him angrily he puts it all together shouting out i can see it you've always been here haven't you looking like a real nut bag to everyone else i'm in your prison now huh i can feel it he rants and it's reminded of what sydney said back on the rooftop about each moment you can make a different choice her snapping and all that stuff he flips out breaking the tv and throwing stuff everywhere reiterating the break from our perception of time nothing matters none of you matter i'm not even here right now he screams as he's dragged out of the room his point is proven as he blinks back to his desk and now makes different choices at those pivotal moments bailing from class before his test also ducking out on his meeting and then with his mom he decides to take a joyride in her car in the present he returns to the blank signed street seeing flashes again of the mouth officers hot on his tail he blinks mercilessly back and forth focusing in on sydney there waiting for him and we cut to black he returns to that night on the rooftop realizing now he thought he was trying to save her but it was her that it was saving him as in how to do the whole time travel exploring thing which is pretty out there and he is living in the moment now going in for a big kiss also unlike the last time in class she caresses his face and he caresses hers right back at the moment in the hall earlier when he saw her rather than moving along he decides to go and talk to her he asks where she wants to go and she takes his hand smiling everywhere as the yellow blinking light takes over they are as she promised able to imagine and live any kind of scenario that they can think of we pick up in one potential future with a goateed freddy hard at work on his easel sydney is down by the sea catching some rays and he shows off his latest piece it's a drawing of an open road and they teleport there seeing him in full beard and sydney is still with him in another timeline the two walk side by side down the barren desert road an old car putters up beside them and they catch a ride the driver asks what the heck they're doing out here exploring she replies in his native tongue fred gets out a sketchbook filled with drawings of the many places they must have visited honing back in on the old building he comes to back there and the horn head guy has bad news they're almost out of drugs bummer dude we see here too that he has drawn some memory inspiring landmarks on the wall we catch up with another of him for him now appearing homeless he digs through the trash and finds a necklace that bears the same symbol from sydney's back she's still there with him even now both living in squalor in the same building but hey at least they got drugs and each other he hands over the necklace saying it reminded him of her and she says now it will make her think of him yet another little memory they can use to trigger their time tripping they get their smooch on causing him to drop the necklace but she's not worried drugging that she'll just find it again but this triggers fred back to him destroying his mom's statue after learning santa ain't real perhaps realizing that he's been of a bit of a dick he visits her at the hospital and unlike the previous times where he was kind of blase and uninterested when there he really pours his heart out this time he cries i know you don't remember me but i'm your son and she opens her mouth tonguing her teeth and he has a sudden dawning realization that comes over him understanding the face that he kept seeing was hers kissing him as a baby it's you he says in shock backing away there's more light flashes and we're back with baby fred in the very beginning of the movie he crawls into the dark about to jump and hurt himself and his mom picks him up just in time chatting him for what he did sending the baby into a hissy fit fred wipes away a tear in his eye and this time she does respond saying his name hallelujah he rushes to her side taking her hand and kissing it starting to bawl his mom smiles and cries too things getting quite emotional and then we scan through various stages of her life well let's hold her horses there because that was a lot right so the whole time fred was searching for whoever's face that was that he kept seeing which he believed to be sydney through his whole journey along with the whole random mouth things we kept seeing kind of fragments of memories it seems like just like everything else up to this point seeing her doing that little motion triggered another memory who it is that he had really been searching for this whole time his mom not sydney additionally that overbearing yellow light seems to tie to that yellow house that he drew as a kid as you remember when he said when he grew up he wanted to live in a big yellow house kind of a representation of home for him the light seems to have the same kind of meaning thusly why he was so drawn to it he was in a sense searching for home he then breaks the bad news to sydney remembering their tender times together and makes new different choices at several key moments in the hall he does keep moving and this time doesn't blow his test and scratches out sydney's face in the yearbook remember when he found it and it was like that yeah that timeline must have been what led to the future that we saw earlier but not quite the same this time as he soon meets karen at school and goes on to actually do a good job on the q2 report seen shaking hands with some happy suits he returns home to things decorated for christmas and karen is pregnant so that is different too because she left him in the previous version doing it right this time no longer obsessed with that one chick from high school smart move regardless he can't escape time slow march and his mom does inevitably pass away but at least he had a relationship with her this time and it's clarified that it was his mom rather than sydney that first led him on this path of timeline remembering shenanigans back with the boxes and baby fred he's about to do the same exact thing that we saw but she calls out we don't go there alright remember what happened last time the baby turns back smiling and indeed even now in his little tiny baby brain he remembers the previous instance where he got scolded and crawls back into his happy mommy's arms you remember she excitedly exclaims bizarrely enough it's readily apparent that his mom has been aware of this kind of time tripping ability from the very beginning and even was teaching freddie about it when he was just a baby it seems to tie back into that concept of us carrying all of our memories in life at all times how she knows about it i am not so sure but it almost feels like freddy has a kind of innate ability to see these various choices and timelines even without the use of merck though that certainly brought it to another level the real point is that it's his mother that first sent him on this journey rather than starting in high school as freddie initially thought and it was thanks to her influence that he finally came to understand her role in his memory hopping education well that wraps it up for this inning explained for flashback well not necessarily the most original out there story wise i was impressed with how i was able to really carve out its own style and trippy tone in some well-worn territory and i am officially a dylan o'brien fan after this one maybe i will end up watching those maze runner movies no probably not and don't forget before we go you can send me requests for any movies or tv shows you'd like to see me explain by sending them my way on any of my social media accounts at foundflix what did you guys think of flashback and its ending do you have a different interpretation of what went down let me know your thoughts in the comments below make sure to like subscribe and follow thanks for watching foundflex see you next time or the last time or the future past flashback

Channel: FoundFlix

Views: 660,837

Keywords: flashback, flashback ending explained, ending explained, ending, explained, flashback 2021, meaning, trailer, clip, final scene, end scene, dylan obrien, maika monroe, time travel, mercury, foundflix ending explained, foundflix

Id: FWY1xr6bWag

Length: 26min 19sec (1579 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 30 2021