The Evil Within ending explained: John's dark secret, revealed

It has been eight years since the horror film The Evil Within was released. Helmed and penned by the late filmmaker Andrew Getty, the film was posthumously released in 2017.

Starring Frederick Koehler, Sean Patrick Flanery, Dina Meyer, Kim Darby, and Michael Berryman, the film follows Dennis, who struggles with mental health issues. He faces nightmares involving an evil entity named Cadaver that provokes him to commit murders.

But what happens at the end of The Evil Within? What could be the possible reason for Dennis to have suffered in this manner?

Disclaimer: This article contains major spoilers for The Evil Within. Reader discretion is advised.

It is revealed that it was, in fact, John’s actions in his childhood that led to Dennis’s mental instability. He reveals to his partner, Lydia, that as a child, during a verbal fight, John had attacked Dennis, causing him to fall down the stairs. Ever since then, things have not been the same, and John is filled with remorse.

But things are darker than what John initially reveals to Lydia. Let us find out more about John’s past actions toward Dennis as uncovered in the ending of The Evil Within.

The actual reason behind John's actions in The Evil Within, explained

The Evil Within explores the story of Dennis, a 30-year-old man who lives with his brother John. Dennis suffers from mental instability and regularly experiences nightmares. In one of them, he sees a demonic entity named Cadaver entering his body. There is also a large mirror in a secret basement, which Dennis believes to be the portal through which Cadaver enters his life.

Dennis begins talking to his reflection in the mirror and sees it respond. The evil entity eventually commands him to commit murders. It starts with animals and escalates to people. Dennis is even complicit in the death of Susan, a girl he likes and wants to date. However, after she rejects him, Dennis terrifies her. She runs into the street and is killed in a road accident.

Dennis gradually descends into a violent killing spree. As a result, the police, along with social worker Mildy Torres, arrive to take him in—but Dennis kills them as well. That’s when John tells Lydia what actually led Dennis to become this way.

It is revealed that when they were children, a verbal fight ensued between John and Dennis, which then turned physical, leading to an accident. Dennis fell down the stairs as John attacked him. The incident had a lasting impact on Dennis’s brain, and he has suffered from nightmares ever since. John expresses deep remorse for what he did to his brother.

However, Lydia is then attacked by Dennis. John rushes to the basement and sits on a chair—but he cannot get up, realizing it has been laced with glue. Dennis turns the entire scene into a theatrical display, shining a spotlight on John and performing a puppet show with Lydia. It is revealed he had done the same with his previous victims.

In this crucial moment of The Evil Within, it is then revealed that John had actually not attacked Dennis by mere accident. It was carefully orchestrated by John, as he was driven by extreme envy towards Dennis, feeling he was more loved and favored than him. There was no scene of Dennis rolling down the stairs; it was John who made up this story as a cover-up for what actually happened.

When Dennis was sleeping, John had violently attacked him on the head using a baseball bat. Before the attack, Dennis had been a gifted child. However, ever since this brutal assault, Dennis’s life changed drastically.

Cut to the present scene: when John witnesses the gruesome dead bodies, he is overwhelmed by the disturbing visuals and ends up killing himself with a gun. An entity created in Dennis’s mind—a cross between Cadaver and a spider—takes him down. In actuality, it is not an evil entity; it is the police.

Towards the end of The Evil Within, it is shown that Dennis is still in the clutches of Cadaver in his mind while he remains at the asylum.