A reptile’s cold blood has come to signify callous cruelty, but in reality it’s a simple quirk of evolution, a way for our scaly neighbors to adapt to their environment. In Reptile, Benicio Del Toro’s Detective Tom Nichols is on the trail of a killer who fits both definitions: a vicious murderer just looking to shed their skin and blend back in. As Nichols dives further and further into the depths of the crime, he unearths a vast criminal conspiracy that threatens to engulf everything he cares about. And all this while he’s trying to remodel his kitchen. 

As Nichols continues to track down tantalizing clues, everything leads to an explosive confrontation that turns his life upside down. The case is cracked and the culprits brought in. But don’t expect too many definitive answers: Reptile’s mystery will be solved, but you won’t be spoon-fed the finer details. “One of the things I love about movies is that they can be enigmatic, you can leave viewers with questions,” director Grant Singer tells Tudum. “There’s a reason why I’m leaving these questions unanswered.”

Still, Singer won’t leave you entirely in the dark. Below, he breaks down a few crucial clues that hold the key to the film’s ending.  

Reptile is streaming on Netflix now.

Who killed Summer?

Reptile begins with Will Grady (Justin Timberlake) discovering the body of his real estate broker girlfriend, Summer (Matilda Lutz). That’s where Nichols comes in, as he and his partner, Cleary (Ato Essandoh), are called to the scene. As their investigation proceeds, plenty of people come under suspicion, including Will himself. Also on the suspect list: the Grady family’s aggrieved stalker, Eli (Michael Carmen Pitt), and Summer’s soon-to-be ex-husband, Sam (Karl Glusman). But, as Nichols and his wife Judy (Alicia Silverstone) soon learn, the answer to this particular mystery is more complicated than just one perp. 

In its third act, Reptile reveals that Summer was killed to prevent her from speaking to the FBI about a scam that implicates every level of Nichols’ own police department. “[Nichols] is faced with this moral decision to do the right thing and sacrifice his stability, his livelihood, his career, or keep his mouth shut,” Singer says. “And he makes a decision to do the right thing.” That means bringing what he knows to the people he trusts — including his wife’s uncle, Robert Allen (Eric Bogosian), and his chief, Marty Graeber (Mike Pniewski). Unfortunately for Nichols, they’re both in on it.

“It's more like Rosemary’s Baby, where you realize, ‘Oh my God, they’re all involved,’ right?” Singer notes. “What Benicio’s character is facing is that he realizes it’s much more of a conspiracy, and that there’s much more culpability from all these different people that he trusted.” Things don’t end well for the conspirators: Allen is shot in the head by Wally (Domenick Lombardozzi), and Wally and the chief are shot in turn by Nichols. All’s well that ends well? Not quite.

Why was Summer killed?

As it turns out, the cops’ first suspect, Will Grady, did play a significant role in the conspiracy that got his girlfriend Summer killed. Though his full involvement in her death remains murky, both Grady and his mother (Frances Fisher) are revealed to have been collaborating with crooked cops. Using a loophole that allows the seizure of property that’s been raided for drugs, the Gradys are making a boatload on the real estate market. “Wally plants the dope, and the houses get seized,” Nichols tells Judy. 

Nichols discovers the scam when he recognizes a duct-taped brick of heroin seized on Summer’s ex-husband’s property as the same one that appeared in a separate drug bust. Soon he deduces that Summer was the Gradys’ broker, and a phone call she placed to the FBI was an attempt to inform on her boyfriend and his mother, without involving the complicit police department. Summer was killed to keep things quiet: a victim of the corrupt silence that Nichols has spent his career fighting. In the film’s final moments, Grady’s golf session is interrupted by the feds, who bring him in once and for all.

What’s up with the faucet?

Throughout Reptile, Nichols keeps coming back to an unlikely piece of evidence: a touch-free faucet. “I love this kitchen,” he mouths to his partner as they investigate a crime scene. It’s not a detail that has any relevance to the case, but it’s crucial to Nichols’ character. “There’s a rich history in these sort of crime thrillers where you experience the case through the detective or the lead investigator, and they live, breathe, sleep the case,” Singer says. “We felt it would be a nice counterpoint to that to show that this is actually a detective who, yeah, he’s invested in the case, but he also has a three-dimensional life, where he’s remodeling his kitchen and he’s into the nice things.” 

In other words, the faucet is just another facet of Nichols’ many-sided personality. “We do that a lot throughout the movie,” Singer adds. “When he checks out the truck, and the fact that he’s got this ringtone with this song [“The Oogum Boogum Song,” by Brenton Wood]. Trying to paint the portrait of a person who’s much more lived in.” In the end, Nichols gets exactly what he wants: In the final shot of the film, he happily turns on the faucet in his fully remodeled kitchen. 

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Why is the movie called Reptile?

“In the movie, characters are introduced as one thing and revealed to be something else,” Singer continues. “There’s a shedding of skin that occurs, and it felt like an appropriate metaphor for the film. Some of the most unethical people in the film can be very likable in moments.” Like anything with cold blood, these reptiles can be perfectly warm under the right circumstances.

In a film full of mystery, even the title is a bit ambiguous. Singer came up with Reptile at the very beginning of the production process. “I love one-word titles,” Singer says. “Titles like Heat, Casino, just things that feel bold. When that title came to me, it didn’t remind me of any other movie.” After all, you’re asking why it’s called Reptile, aren’t you?

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