SPOILER ALERT: the following article contains massive spoilers, including the ending. If you have not yet seen the movie, proceed at your own risk, or better, come back to this article later!
After months of trying and failing to get pregnant, Lucy (Ilana Glazer) and Adrian (Justin Theroux) finally find their dream fertility doctor in the illustrious Dr. Hindle (Pierce Brosnan). But after becoming pregnant with a healthy baby girl, Lucy begins to notice something sinister through Hindle’s gleaming charm, and she sets out to uncover the unsettling truth about him, and her own “birth story”.
SPOILERS AHEAD
False Positive Video Summary
False Positive Plot Summary and Synopsis
The movie opens with a woman, covered in blood who walks in the middle of the road at night. She holds some papers in her right hand.
The frame cuts to NYC police investigating an unknown crime scene.
A couple is sleeping. In the middle of the night, a woman gets up to go to the bathroom. She leaves a pregnancy test on the stand.
The next morning it is revealed that the test is negative. The same woman, Lucia “Lucy” Martin (Ilana Glazer), is upset about it, while her husband Adrian Martin (Justin Theroux) tries to be positive.
Lucy explains that she wants the pregnancy to be natural, and Adrian insists that they should allow Dr. John Hindle (Pierce Brosnan) to help them to conceive. Dr. Hindle is one of the top 5 fertility specialists in the world. Lucy argues that it is the one thing she is supposed to do as a woman, but she can’t. Adrian tells her that they should try to get pregnant and jokes, that they can spend the college fund on some of the best vacations in their lives. Lucy agrees to schedule an appointment.
The couple goes to Hindle Women’s Center to meet Hindle. Dawn, Hindle’s head nurse meets them kind and pleasant. Another nurse, Rita, serves Lucy a drink of unknown nature instead of espresso she asked.
Lucy undergoes a full physical examination.
Hindle greets Adrian warmly, it is obvious they know each other for a long time and are good friends. He is a very charming person and assures Lucy that he’ll give her the best possible chance of getting pregnant. Hindle personally conducts a pelvic examination of Lucy.
During the examination, Hindle tells the story that Adrian is the best surgeon Hidle has ever taught. Adrian conducted a post-mastectomy augmentation for the woman without a hospital resolution, which resulted in him being fired. Hindle quit the hospital too, claiming that he was tired of teaching in the hospital anyway.
Hindle announces that Lucy has a perfect physical condition and her only problem is low hCG levels. He is going to give Lucy a little boost post- and pre-insemination and monitor the results.
Hindle claims he invented a method combining both IVF and IUI methods and called it ‘in utero Hindle fertilization’. He jokes that hopes Lucy will help him to update the name as she is a marketing genius.
Lucy browses Instagram and likes all the baby posts and videos in the workplace.
Lucy’s superior Greg informs her that Dirk is considering making her lead on the Wyth account allegedly because all the other managers are extremely busy with their current accounts. He claims he proposed her candidacy. He asks her to order the lunch in Dig Inn.
She is very happy about her promotion and grateful to Greg.
Adrian watches hard rape porn to collect sperm for insemination. Hindle inseminates Lucy. Everyone in the room including the nurses is extremely friendly.
Lucy vomits in the working bathroom. Hindle announces that she is pregnant. Lucy is happy and thanks Hindle.
Adrian and Lucy decide on the baby’s name. She suggests Wendy for a girl, and Adrian suggests the make little Wendy a Peter Pan costume in honor of Lucy’s mother. Lucy agrees. Adrian suggests Adrian for a boy.
Lucy tells Greg she is pregnant. He is extremely happy, and he asks her to tell other all-male team members too. They are extremely happy too.
Hindle performs an ultrasound examination. There are twin boys and a singlet girl. Lucy is a bit astonished, Rita brings her bottled water.
Hindle informs that Lucy may have a miscarriage with three children and selective reduction is required. In other words, she needs to choose whether to keep boys or a girl. Hindle suggests aborting the girl, as she is a bit small. He asks Adrian for a word. Lucy sees a moving skull on the still picture of a girl baby.
Adrian is happy and doesn’t seem to be quite upset about killing one of his unborn children he strived so much to conceive. He tells Lucy that he agrees with Hindle and wants Lucy to abort the girl. He explains it with Lucy’s wish to have a sibling and that all her quirks come from being the only child.
Adrian suggests he can take on more clients so that Lucy quits her job. She doesn’t want to quit, and she wants to keep the girl. Adrian does not agree.
Adrian chats with someone on his laptop in the middle of the night.
The next morning, he apologies and tells Lucy to keep Wendy as it is what she wants. He also informs Lucy that Hindle wants Adrian to present him [Hindle] with some big awards. Adrian says he doesn’t want to, but Lucy says that he must, and she will write a speech for him.
Lucy reads selective reduction articles on her laptop in the workplace. Adrian suggests she joins a mommy group.
In a group, Lucy meets Corgan, who also wanted to do IVF with Hindle, but gave up after a year and a half of waiting. She is surprised Lucy didn’t have to wait to get an appointment with Hindle. It is revealed that Adrian was Hinldle’s student in a medical school and works as a reconstructive surgeon at Sloan Kettering.
Hindle starts the abortion procedure. Lucy hears Hindle and Adrian speak to each other while they think she is out cold. Hindle says that he perfected the technique and Lucy will get her fairy tale ending.
Lucy dreams about having about 8 years old Wendy who’s face turns into black smoke when Lucy talks to her.
Lucy wakes up. Hindle tells her that twins won’t affect Wendy. Dawn brings her bottled water.
On their way home, Lucy tells Adrian she heard him talking to Hindle during the abortion. He says she must have been dreaming. Later Lucy starts bleeding from her uterus in the bedroom.
They got to Hindle, he asks her not to be paranoid as her condition is OHSS – ovarian hyperstimulation. He strongly asks her not to google her condition while looking at Adrian. Lucy hears a baby crying in the lab when they are leaving Hindle’s clinic.
Lucy discovers Grace Middleton (Zainab Jah), a culturally rich, spiritual midwife with a natural approach, and develops a fascination with her.
Lucy gets the big client she wanted by nailing the pitch.
Corgan tells Lucy about a horrible thing a baby can be born with such as deformities. She also says that she quits her job to that make sure her baby is born without complications.
Adrian and Lucy get ready for the award ceremony when they hear a noise on the other side of the apartment. Adrian goes into the dark to check it out, then says there is nothing there, which looks a bit suspicious.
A flashback shows that Adrian takes a mysterious box out for the home safe. The box was stored with some papers with Hindle’s clinic logo on it. Adrian presents Lucy with a box with a gold bracelet inside it. He locks it on her hand so that she won’t be able to take it off herself.
Adrian presents Hindle with an award and during his speech, Lucy grows suspicious of Hindle.
Back home the couple has hard sex.
Source: © Cooncel.com.
That night, Lucy finds a safe in Adrian’s office and later shares with Corgan that she has growing suspicions that Dr. Hindle did something to her unborn daughter and that Adrian is aware. Corgan assures her that it’s just ‘mommy’s brain’, but Lucy decides to use Grace Middleton as her midwife.
While watching a video on Grace’s website where she talks about her approach to pregnancy and birth, Lucy hallucinates a meeting with her.
A while later at work, Lucy gets dropped from her big project, even though they are keeping her pitch. After Lucy has further complications, like abdominal pain and bringing Adrian lunch to work after she already has done so, Dr. Hindle blames this on antenatal depression and prescribes her medication.
Lucy finally meets with Grace in her highly decorated office, where she shares that she lost her mother only two years ago. After having a dream where she sees Dr. Hindle and Adrian having a sexually intimate relationship, Lucy manages to open Adrian’s safe and finds a file on her, including evidence that she is being monitored without her knowledge.
She shares this with Corgan, who takes the file to show her lawyer husband and suggests that Lucy behave normally until she knows more. Despite this, Lucy confronts Adrian, admitting that she doesn’t feel safe with Hindle, that she wants to permanently switch to Grace, and that she will quit her job.
During her baby shower, Lucy realizes that Corgan knows her real name, despite never having shared it. When she finds medication described by Dr. Hindle in her bathroom, Lucy confronts her, and Corgan shares that she is now with Dr. Hindle too and that she gave the file to Adrian because she was worried about her mental state.
Lucy experiences contractions and goes to Grace to give birth. When she does, she is shocked to discover that she is giving birth to the twins instead of the female baby. Before Lucy can birth the second twin, Grace urges them to a hospital after strong bleeding, but Adrian brings her to Dr. Hindle instead, who delivers the second baby.
Disillusioned and depressed, Lucy talks to Grace but realizes that she imagined all the mystical entourage; Grace and her office are revealed to look regular.
Lucy goes to Dr. Hindle’s clinic to confront him, where she learns from Dawn (Gretchen Mol), his head nurse, that Adrian and Dr. Hindle will merge and operate together.
Lucy manages to sneak into the lab, a secret room in the clinic, where she finds her placenta and reduced embryo. Dr. Hindle confronts her and reveals that it was his sperm used for inseminating Lucy, as he does with all his patients, believing his genes to be superior because of his critical worldview.
When Lucy calls this rape, he attempts to drug her, but she manages to restrain him to a medical chair, after which she is attacked by Dawn. Following a fight, she drugs Dawn and beats Dr. Hindle bloody, destroying his sperm and leaving the office with the embryo, telling the waiting patients to find a new doctor.
Arriving at home, she imagines herself throwing the twins out of the window. When Adrian comes home, Lucy tells him that she knows that he knew about the reduction, gives him the twins, and makes him leave.
False Positive Ending
Breaking down, she picks up the embryo, attempts to breastfeed it, and hallucinates it moving.
Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 3.0).
The Ending Explained
The protagonist got completely insane and it just a matter of luck she didn’t actually kill anyone. She will end up in a mental hospital with little to no chance of ever recovering from her condition.
Cooncel Rating
A great start could not get over the mediocre middle part and completely ruined finale. The name speaks for itself – it is a completely false positive.
Source: Cooncel.com.
Title: False Positive
US Release Date: June 25, 2021
Starring: Glazer, Justin Theroux, Pierce Brosnan, Sophia Bush
Directed by: John Lee
Written by: John Lee, Ilana Glazer
Synopsis: Lucy and Adrian find their dream fertility doctor in the illustrious Dr. Hindle. But after becoming pregnant, Lucy begins to notice something sinister behind Hindle’s charm, and she sets out to uncover the unsettling truth about him.
Trailer: False Positive Trailer #1 (2021)