The Ending Of Irresistible (2006) Explained

2006's "Irresistible" shares a name with the 2020 political satire directed by Jon Stewart and starring Steve Carell, but that's where the similarities end. The 2006 film stars Susan Sarandon as Sophie Hartley, a wife, mother, and famed American illustrator who moved to Australia when she was 17. At the time the film takes place, Sophie is having a tough time following the death of her mother, difficulties that affect her relationship with Craig Singleton (Sam Neill), her loving husband. These two may have had their heyday in the 1980s and '90s, but they're still both viable stars. Add to the mix Emily Blunt, who came out with "The Devil Wears Prada" the same year as "Irresistible," and you've got quite a cast on your hands.

Of course, this movie, directed by Ann Turner, is a lot less well known than the cast members' many others, largely because it wasn't widely seen in Australia and went straight to DVD in the United States. But if you're looking for an amazing film, look no further: Blunt's performance as Mara, a woman who is willing to do whatever it takes to get what she wants, is a particular highlight. The trio of cast members are great in a film that packs a punch, especially in its final moments. This is the ending of "Irresistible" explained.

Sophie has started to notice things going awry in her home, including the iron she thought she left on being turned off and her husband's shoe sticking out of their closet. But she can't prove they aren't all coincidences, so she lets these incidents go. She goes to a party with her husband at his co-worker's house, but it turns out that Mara, the co-worker, and Sophie are wearing the same dress. It's odd, but nothing to be worried about, until, one day, Sophie notices that Mara is wearing the dress that she can't find in her closet.

In the aftermath, Sophie breaks into Mara's house, where she finds an owl collection shockingly like hers, and ends up getting caught by Mara's husband, who brings her to court for trespassing. Sophie is convicted and ordered to stay away from Mara and her family, but Sophie follows Mara anyway, finding nothing suspicious in Mara's behavior but still believing that Mara's up to no good.

Mara and Craig, meanwhile, grow closer at work, where Craig is an architect and Mara is an IT expert. Mara ends up trying to seduce Craig, but doesn't sleep with him because of an ill-timed phone call. As the third act of the film starts, Sophie is snooping in Mara's house once again. To prevent them from finding her, Sophie goes to the basement, where she finds she's locked in.

While Sophie is in the basement, she finds her younger daughter Elly's (Joanna Hunt-Prokhovnik) favorite stuffed animal and records about Mara. It turns out that Mara is an orphan, and she once attempted to see her birth mother — who turns out to be Sophie. Mara confronts her in the basement, where Sophie tries to repair the damage. But Mara strikes Sophie, throws a bottle of wine on the ground, and drops a lighter into it. While Mara's intent is to kill Sophie, Mara gets trapped by the fire instead and Sophie rescues her.

At the hospital, Craig is given the contents of Sophie's pockets and sees the letter from the adoption agency, immediately understanding the implications. Sophie tells him she doesn't want to know anything he did before, she just wants to start fresh. Later, Sophie visits Mara at the hospital and confesses she was a coward to deny her request to meet her. Sophie and Mara embrace and it appears they may be able to forge a true bond after all.

But then, as Mara's recovery continues at home, she looks at photos of her and Kate, her best friend who died in Kosovo. Kate is the spitting image of Sophie in adulthood and Ruby (Lauren Mikkor), Sophie's eldest daughter, in childhood. The implication is clear: Kate was Sophie's daughter, not Mara. Still, Mara cuts Ruby's face out of a photo and puts her face in instead, so she has a photo of herself with Sophie.

The question of whether someone is actually coming into Sophie's house or if Sophie is just imagining things looms large throughout the movie. The things that she notices are out of place or missing are easily explained away and she never actually sees anyone there. Plus, she's caught in compromising situations of her own. Not only does she stalk Mara, but she also accidentally gives Elly the same medicine twice within 10 minutes without realizing it. For a while, it looks like she could be the one who isn't seeing things clearly.

But then she finds her cat and her daughter's stuffed animal at Mara's house. Clearly, Mara was stealing things from Sophie when she wasn't looking and generally messing with Sophie's head. However, the issue is never addressed directly by Sophie or Mara again, because Mara's misdeeds are discovered at the same time that Sophie discovers Mara is supposedly her daughter. As a result, Sophie lets go of everything that Mara did and instead chooses to forgive her.

We ultimately learn that Kate, not Mara, is Sophie's daughter. Sophie had her when she was young. On a beach day toward the end of the movie, she and her father (Bud Tingwell) talk about the details of this event. When Sophie was 17, she went to prom with her boyfriend, Michael. They all went to a hotel afterwards and Michael got mad at her and left. So she slept with a friend of a friend who had come with them. Sophie doesn't even remember his name.

Once Sophie knew that she was pregnant, her father made them move to Australia, where he was originally from. Sophie gave the child up for adoption there, and Sophie and her family stayed in Australia after that, despite the fact that she and her mother were miserable at first. Things apparently got better when Sophie married Craig and had two kids. However, she didn't want to see her first daughter even after she grew up. This was supposedly shown by the letter that Mara had that said her mother had refused to see her, but could have been a different letter addressed to Kate from around the same time.

Sophie is the only one convinced that Mara is coming into her house uninvited. Even her husband and children don't believe her. So Sophie starts stalking Mara to prove she's taking things from her house. The trouble is twofold. She's not very good at it –- the first time she tries to follow Mara she gets caught and is taken to court -– and Mara never actually goes into her house. In fact, through the end of the movie, we never see Mara go into Sophie's house uninvited. The only evidence of Mara's breaking and entering is Sophie finding the things that Mara stole when she's trapped in Mara's basement.

This creates a catch-22: The reason Sophie has the evidence to prove Mara did something wrong is that she herself committed the exact same crime she's accusing Mara of. Of course, Sophie never gets to see what would have happened if this scenario had fully played out, because Mara starts a fire in the basement and Sophie recognizes Mara as her daughter.

While Sophie is trapped in the basement, Mara goes to work with Craig. And while Sophie desperately looks for a way out, Mara tries to seduce her husband. She doesn't mention Sophie. Instead, she brings him good tidings: Craig has won a commission to build a complex of houses. Mara is doing exactly what Sophie won't, according to Craig: Talk about him. Despite his wife's opinion of Mara, Craig finds this, combined with Mara's body, irresistible, and Mara is ready and willing to pursue the affair. But despite a long wind-up, the pair never sleep together, interrupted by a phone call from Craig's daughters after he forgot to pick them up. Mara volunteers to get them, leaving Craig at the office.

Sophie accused Craig of sleeping with Mara earlier in the movie, but it seems doubtful that he was unfaithful then. In fact, if Mara hadn't made the first move to sleep with Craig during this incident, Craig may not have been unfaithful to Sophie at all. So the question is, why does Mara decide to try to sleep with Craig? This could be a way of taking power away from Sophie, and furthermore, trying to embed herself further into Craig and his daughters' lives.

When Sophie is in Mara's basement she comes across a profile of herself in a magazine, except it has all the photos of Sophie cut out. This lends further evidence to the possibility that Mara may want to cut Sophie out of Craig and his daughters' lives, especially since the scene of Sophie finding the magazine is intercut with Mara trying to seduce Craig. Although Mara has a husband and daughter of her own, she seems to want to take over Sophie's life.

This is ultimately confusing, because later in the film she seems to want a mother, and Sophie serves that purpose too. But initially, Mara could be operating off of the information that Sophie is Kate's mother who wronged her. Therefore, she wants to take revenge on her because of that. When Sophie mistakenly comes to the conclusion that she's Mara's mother, Mara seems to shift gears to embrace that instead.

Alternatively, she could have taken Sophie's face from the magazine for her scrapbook. After all, she doesn't have any photos of Sophie, so the pictures from the magazine would have to do. But from what we've seen of Mara so far, it would seem the first explanation is more likely.

When Mara finds Sophie in the basement, she isn't surprised to see her. She knew she'd locked her there in the morning, or at least strongly expected. What she seems less prepared for is Sophie confessing that she thought about her all the time. So when Sophie says she's sorry, Mara can't take it. She slaps Sophie and lights the basement on fire.

Although Mara is prepared with the wine to set the basement ablaze, perhaps Sophie's conciliatory tone throws her off, because the plan isn't that well thought-out. Sophie's too close to the stairwell and Mara has to fight with her on the stairs to keep her in the basement. This doesn't work, though, and instead of Sophie going into the basement from the stairs, Mara goes over the railing and right into the fire. But Sophie, who's on her way out of the basement, turns back at Mara's cries and saves her from the fire. Despite the fact that Mara started the fire to kill Sophie, Sophie can't see the person who she thinks is her child die. So she saves her and hopes they can make up later.

Sophie has come to the conclusion that Mara is her daughter either on her own after seeing Kate's birth certificate and Mara's request to see her birth mother stored together, or by design because Mara anticipated that Sophie would come to this conclusion when she saw the documents. Either way, though, it's clear that Sophie is unlikely to find out that Kate was really her daughter and Mara was Kate's friend.

Early in the movie, Mara tells Sophie about Kate, who was killed by a Molotov cocktail in Kosovo where she had gone to help deliver humanitarian aid. But despite the fact that Mara has lots of photos of Kate, Sophie has never seen them, and perhaps never will. As long as she doesn't see those photos, Sophie will continue to believe that Mara is her child. Mara is the one who has all the photos of Kate, and she will likely ensure that Sophie never lays eyes on them. Of course, there are other ways that Sophie could find out. For example, if she doesn't celebrate her birthday on the day Sophie gave birth. However, Mara is good at keeping up a ruse, and if anyone can pull it off, it's Mara.

There are few cast or crew comments about the ending of the movie, but there are several critics' comments — and, for the most part, they aren't good. Australian publications, unsurprisingly, make up the lion's share of the commentary here. That includes The Age, which says, "the story essentially stalls for 90 minutes in its first act — dooming Sarandon to spend much of her screen time jumping at shadows, before a couple of arbitrary last-minute twists rob her predicament of any emotional weight," and The Sydney Morning Herald, which states, "Towards the end, things become so shaky that even Sarandon falters ... the line is blurred and Sophie takes off into the furthest reaches of airheadedness."

Variety agrees with these assessments calling the ending, "a 'Psycho'-flavored finale that feels imposed." Only a couple of publications seem to genuinely like the ending, including ReelTalk Movie Reviews, which confessed, "Although the twist ending... surprised me completely, it makes perfect sense." That outlet seems to be one of the few that isn't questioning the ending — or the whole movie, for that matter. Still, amongst the user reviews, there are people who absolutely love this movie. For example, one viewer on IMDb.com gives it a 10 out of 10 and says, "The ending is a wonderful double twist which is simply brilliant, original — and chilling."

While the title "Irresistible" could mean many things, it doesn't appear to have much meaning for the movie as a whole. It could mean that Mara is irresistible to Craig, which is true for a small part of the film, but the spell is broken by a phone call, so the magic clearly isn't too strong. Mara could be irresistible to Sophie or Sophie could be irresistible to Mara, but ultimately that doesn't seem like a satisfying answer considering what actually happens in the film. So ultimately, "Irresistible" doesn't mean much at all to the story as a whole. 

It feels as though the title was chosen by metaphorically flipping through a book of generic movie titles. But this is a shame, because the title could have been so much more evocative. Several reviews compared the plot of "Irresistible" to that of "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle," and no matter what you think about that comparison, you can't deny that "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle" is a much better title. It's evocative and suspenseful, while the title "Irresistible" is not.

"Irresistible" went straight to DVD in America and suffered from poor box office in Australia, so there was never any talk of a sequel. But it seems the movie could have been set up for a sequel if the box office was better. Mara's final act — cutting out Ruby's face and replacing her own — is ripe for further exploration. A sequel could have picked up a year or two later and centered on Mara, now with free access to Sophie's house, terrorizing her young kids, Ruby and Elly.

After all, Sarandon's Sophie changes from hate to love for Mara all at once. Even though Mara tries to kill her in the fire, Sophie ends up saving her. In the sequel, Sophie could be forced to choose between Mara and her younger daughters. Or better yet, what if she finds out that Mara has been lying and isn't really Sophie's daughter, but is the best source of information on Kate, who died before Sophie could meet her? There are some intriguing possibilities for a sequel, but ultimately the movie wasn't successful enough for it to happen. Even if there's a surge in popularity for the movie now, it feels as though too much time has passed for a second movie to make sense — to say nothing of the fact that Emily Blunt's career has skyrocketed well beyond what the budget of a film like this could realistically offer.