‘Encounter’ Ending Explained: Riz Ahmed’s Sci-Fi Drama Is Not What You Think

Warning: This article contains major Encounter spoilers. 

Only Riz Ahmed could pull off being simultaneously the best dad in the world and the worst dad in the world. That’s exactly what he does in Encounter, a new sci-fi drama that began streaming on Amazon Prime today.

Directed by Michael Pearce, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Joe Barton, Encounter is one of those movies that may fake you out, if you’re not paying attention. You’re deliberately led to believe the movie is one thing, and when you get to the big Encounter plot twist, about halfway through the movie, you’ll see exactly why they did it.

That said, if you get confused along the way—or if you’re just curious to hear about the Encounter plot before you watch the film—you’ve come to the right place. Read on for a full breakdown of the Encounter plot summary as well as the Encounter ending, explained.

WHAT IS ENCOUNTER ABOUT? ENCOUNTER PLOT SUMMARY:

The movie opens with an eerie sequence of a comet coming to earth, followed by a mosquito biting human skin and injecting a body with a creepy parasite. Gross! With that little set-up in our heads, we meet Malik Khan (Riz Ahmed), who is a U.S. Marine.

According to his letters to his two young boys, Jay (Lucian-River Chauhan) and Bobby (Aditya Geddada), Malik has been away on a secret mission for the last two years. Presumably—based on the way he checks his eyes in the mirror, and then covers himself in bug spray—it has something to do with those space mosquitoes we saw in the opening segment. At home, Jay and Bobby are living with their mother Piya (Janina Gavankar) and their mother’s new partner, Dylan (Misha Collins). Piya has been feeling sick recently, and Dylan ominously tells them it’s “a bug.”

One night, Malik appears at their house in the dead of night, wakes up his two sons, and urgently tells them that they are going on a road trip right now. His older son, Jay, notices signs of struggle in their kitchen. While on the road with his boys, Malik passes a police car and tells his boys to get down. Hours later, Malik is pulled over by a different cop. Though Malik is polite, the cop is hostile and aggressive, and Malik sees something shifting behind his eyes. Malik determines the cop has been infected. Using impressive hand-to-hand combat skills, Malik wrestles the gun away from the cop, knocks him out, and leaves him in the street.

Back on the road, Malik confesses to his boys that this is not a road trip—this is a rescue mission. He says that an alien parasite has taken over the planet and that their mom has been infected. As much as half the population may be infected by this alien parasite, which is using human bodies to reproduce. Malik needs to get his boys to safety by taking them to “base.” In the meantime, they can protect themselves from the parasites with bug spray, which works as a “force field.” Jay and Bobby believe him.

You start to suspect something may be off when Jay loses track of his brother in a grocery store, and Malik is hyperaware of the other customers’ eyes on him. But you get confirmation that Malik is not telling the truth when he realizes his boys’ mother is pregnant. After his sons say Mom has been getting sick in the morning and having weird food cravings, Malik makes a phone call to “base.” In reality, he calls his parole officer Hattie (Octavia Spencer). We learn that Malik has been missing and, crucially, missed his psych eval. Malik refuses to tell Hattie where he is, but asks Hattie to check on his ex-wife, who he says is in the garage.

This big “twist” comes about halfway through the movie: The aliens aren’t real, and Malik has kidnapped his children. We shift perspective to Hattie’s point of view, as she works with federal law enforcement in an attempt to retrieve the kids. The mom Priya and step-dad Dylan are found tied up in their garage. The feds believe Malik is a “family annihilator,” meaning they believe he is going to kill his children and then himself. Hattie the parole officer doesn’t believe that. She tries to find more information about Malik by speaking to his former Marine buddy.

The buddy describes the assault incident that caused Malik to get dishonorably discharged from the Marine Corps. While describing how terrible the conditions were, he mentions that they were “getting eaten alive by bugs” and then found bodies of children in the wreckage. This incident caused Malik to snap. From this—along with a phone call she receives from Jay in which he asks her if she is an alien—Hattie deduces that Malik is suffering from a mental disorder that’s giving him delusions. She urges the federal officers to take this into account as they hunt him down.

WHAT IS THE ENCOUNTER ENDING EXPLAINED?

Jay begins to suspect the aliens aren’t real when his father sees hundreds of meteors in the sky that Jay doesn’t see. After they get a flat tire, Malik tries to steal a car but gets in an altercation with a white supremacist. Malik gets away but is injured, and leaves the racist man bleeding on the floor.

Malik teaches Jay how to drive in order to get them to safety. While Malik sleeps off his injury in an abandoned house, Jay drives to get his father medicine and food. Jay overhears on the radio that his father is a wanted man for kidnapping his two children. Back at the abandoned house, Jay confronts his father. Malik admits that he lied, that he was in prison for two years, and that his brain has been playing tricks on him.

The sons of the man Malik attacked track him down. The men kidnap Bobby, and attempt to perform a citizen’s arrest. Almost immediately, they open fire on Malik and Jay. Malik, in an insanely impressive attack, manages to apprehend both men without killing them and escapes with his boys.

Aware that the walls are closing in, Malik calls his ex-wife and gives her an address of a diner where he will leave the boys. He tells her he’s not going back to prison, and we understand his plan is to escape authorities or die trying. But as the police and helicopters start chasing his car, Malik realizes Jay has hidden in the back seat of the car. Jay refuses to leave his dad behind, even after an hours-long standoff with the police. Hattie the parole officer insists to Malik that the authorities will take his mental health into consideration when deciding his fate, but Malik doesn’t believe her.

Amazingly, both Jay and his father are able to get out of the stand-off alive: First Jay runs out, pointing a gun a the police. Malik tries to distract the police, to save his son, and then convinces him to put the gun down and run to him, to save both of them. They hug, the police lower their weapons, and the movie ends.

Encounter does not say what happens to Malik now, but we can only assume he will have to go back to prison. However, perhaps he will receive a reduced sentence or go to a psychiatric prison, due to his illness. One can hope that, at the very least, he receives proper medication.

Watch Encounter on Amazon Prime