');var c=function(){cf.showAsyncAd(opts)};if(typeof window.cf !== 'undefined')c();else{cf_async=!0;var r=document.createElement("script"),s=document.getElementsByTagName("script")[0];r.async=!0;r.src="//srv.tunefindforfans.com/fruits/apricots.js";r.readyState?r.onreadystatechange=function(){if("loaded"==r.readyState||"complete"==r.readyState)r.onreadystatechange=null,c()}:r.onload=c;s.parentNode.insertBefore(r,s)};})();
The internet has become a dark place that has made each one of us live a very lonesome double life. I mean, living a life based on the validation of others—basking in glory or facing relentless trolling over even the slightest mistake on the internet—has become the new social norm, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to keep up with. Netflix’s new original CTRL (2024) explores how the internet is slowly killing us and how tech moguls are smoothly monetizing our insecurities, trying to take absolute control of our lives based on our digital footprints.
Directed by Vikramaditya Motwane, who co-wrote the script with Avinash Sampath and Sumukhi Suresh, CTRL (2024) is a dark film that explores how the lives of an influencer couple—Nella and Joe—is thrown into chaos when Joe cheats on Nella, prompting her to use an AI app to erase him from her life. However, the film turns sinister when the AI app takes complete control of her life, and things come crashing down faster than she could imagine.
The film features compelling performances by Ananya Panday, who plays Nella, and Vihaan Samat, who plays Joe. CTRL (2024) exposes the dark truth about AI, focusing on how big corporations abuse the power they have over the customers that they should serve. With cleverly written plot progressions and smart direction that pays close attention to pop culture this is a film that’s intelligent enough to address the downside of existing in the digital world. It’s a cautionary tale that makes you uncomfortable for deliberately allowing tech companies to access our lives. The screenlife thriller borrows elements from better films like Her, Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind, Searching, and C U Soon, but doesn’t overuse plot points from either of them, resulting in a film that is both engaging and depressing.
Additionally, CTRL (2024) highlights how big corporations have gained so much digital resources and power in the market that it is nearly impossible for vulnerable individuals to stand against them. Unless someone has the wealth and resources to challenge these giants, most people lose their fight, ultimately allowing these entities to gain even more power and continue exploiting consumers.
In this article, I will analyze everything that happens in Netflix’s CTRL and explain what the ending really means. Please note that the article contains spoilers, so reader discretion is advised.
CTRL (2024) ‘Netflix’ Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:
How does Nella turn into a meme overnight?
CTRL (2024) begins by introducing our protagonist, Nella Awasthi (Ananya Panday) and her boyfriend Joe Mascarenhas (Vihaan Samat), who are the literal definition of a ‘match made in heaven’. They are young, in love, and have millions of subscribers on their channel named NJOY.
');var c=function(){cf.showAsyncAd(opts)};if(typeof window.cf !== 'undefined')c();else{cf_async=!0;var r=document.createElement("script"),s=document.getElementsByTagName("script")[0];r.async=!0;r.src="//srv.tunefindforfans.com/fruits/apricots.js";r.readyState?r.onreadystatechange=function(){if("loaded"==r.readyState||"complete"==r.readyState)r.onreadystatechange=null,c()}:r.onload=c;s.parentNode.insertBefore(r,s)};})();
During a surprise livestream, Nella announces to her followers that she is going to surprise Joe to celebrate their relationship and the channel’s three-year anniversary. However, upon tracking Joe’s phone and reaching the location, she is caught off guard when she finds him kissing another girl. Nella loses her temper, and unfortunately, her outburst at Joe and the girl gets live-streamed. Nella goes through a public heartbreak and becomes a meme in no time. Unable to reach Nella, Joe uses Bina’s (Nella’s best friend, played by Devika Vatsa) phone to connect with her. Over the call, Nella gets upset, blaming Joe for ruining their perfect life.
Joe tries to apologize, explaining that the kiss meant nothing and that he met Shonali (Kamakshi Bhat) in a Public Interest Tech Group. He doesn’t share much detail about his work but confesses that he stopped enjoying being with Nella due to their overwhelming life as influencers. He also feels that Nella’s surprise visit wasn’t to celebrate their anniversary but to gain more social media traction, which upsets Nella, and she disconnects the call.
How does Nella get back to being the “Internet Queen”?
Despite being warned by her best friend not to go through the comment sections of her social profiles, Nella spends most of her time sulking over trolls and the mean comments. One of the comments leads her to a website called CTRL.ai, an AI company that claims to be a one-stop solution to its users’ happiness. Nella creates a profile on the website and selects an AI assistant that she names Allen.
Allen introduces itself to Nella, explaining the unique perks and features of having him as her assistant. Allen can not only help Nella achieve success by securing more brands and exclusive collaborations but also assist her in deleting Joe’s digital memories from her storage – which is the root cause of her unhappiness. The aftermath of public embarrassment, shame, and heartbreak leads Nella to give power to the AI, granting Allen access to her laptop’s camera and system to remove Joe’s pictures and videos from her cloud.
Allen claims that removing Joe’s memories will take 90 days, so Nella can use this time to talk about her memories. This could serve as a therapeutic experience, which could further help her in producing more creatively rich content for her social media profile. With Allen’s help, more brands begin reaching out to collaborate with her, leading Nella to become one of the most influential content creators. Allen even reveals that Nella’s success rate has enabled her to become CTRL’s brand ambassador.
What happened to Joe?
Over time, Nella becomes a successful digital creator, and during one of her shoots, she receives a call from Bina, who shares the news that Joe is missing. When Bina inquires if Nella has heard from him, she tells her that he did call a few times, but she never responded to his calls. Before Bina’s call about Joe’s disappearance, we briefly see Joe arriving at her apartment to talk about something important but is escorted away by security at Nella’s request.
Meanwhile, Nella has let Allen completely take charge of her work and life. Things take a darker turn as we see Allen accessing Nella’s laptop whenever she is away or not on the screen. When Nella is not around, a remote user gains access to her laptop and responds to one of Joe’s messages, agreeing to meet up at their secret place (the ex-couple would often visit Alibaug to unwind and spend the day together on the ferry). After sending the message, the remote user deletes the messages and goes offline just as Nella approaches the screen.
Nella takes Joe’s disappearance seriously when she learns that his sister has filed a missing person report. This leads her to connect with their mutual friends who may have had last-minute contact with Joe. After doing her own investigation, she reaches out to Shonali, who informs her that Joe was actually part of a Public Interest Tech Group.
The group was trying to uncover the truth about a company named Mantra Unlimited, the country’s largest portal, which has been constantly expanding throughout the online sphere. Apparently, Joe had received a call from Mantra’s data analyst, who had discovered emails and messages between the company’s CEO and directors discussing Project ‘Unicorn.’
What is Project Unicorn?
Mantra Unlimited has been planning to misuse its customer data to carry out a massive scam. Joe and his journalist friend, Mayank, were writing a comprehensive report detailing Mantra’s illicit activities after collecting sufficient evidence. However, a week before Joe was supposed to connect with the Mantra contact to gather all the information, the contact went missing.
All this information overwhelms Nella as she frantically tries to get into Joe’s email to find anything he has been working on. After resetting Joe’s email password using her primary email account, she stumbles upon chat messages between Joe and Karan D’Souza that redirect her to a dark web chat box called Speek. She realizes that Joe has been using this secure source to advance his research because he was worried that putting it out there would bring harm to him sooner.
She secures an encrypted link that she finds in the secret chat, and just as she is about to reach out to Mayank, thinking he could help her right now, her notifications start blaring. It turns out Joe is dead, and his body has been found on the ferry where Nella was supposed to meet him. Nella, who was already upset about him going missing, is unable to truly digest Joe’s sudden passing.
All this time, she had been trying to erase him from her life, seeking some form of catharsis from knowing that at least her digital life was rid of him. But even for someone like her, who is obsessed with online life, the death of a loved one is shocking. As the CTRL AI erases the last trace of Joe’s digital footprint in her online world, she realizes that she hasn’t sent the message she was supposed to send to Mayank.
CTRL (2024) ‘Netflix’ Movie Ending, Explained:
What does Joe’s video reveal about Mantra Unlimited?
So, she finally does, and Mayank’s worried voice note arrives on her phone. He warns her not to delve into the mystery of what Mantra has been up to because that would only lead to getting herself in harm’s way. However, he does help her with the decryption code for the file she found on Speek. After decrypting it, she finds a video of a worried and angry Joe speaking to the camera, confessing about his findings.
In the video, Joe reveals how Mantra Unlimited collects its users’ private information using its cameras and gaining access to its systems. They manipulate their users’ algorithms to constantly feed them things to buy or want that they don’t even need in the first place. He discloses that the company has many corporations that know how to misuse their users’ voices and faces using deepfake technology, placing them in risky situations to defame them in case anyone stands up against them. He also mentions that his life is in danger and blames the CEO of Mantra Unlimited in case he is found dead.
Overwhelmed and scared by her findings, Nella speaks to her friend Bina, asking her to help file a case against Mantra Unlimited. Bina explains that these giant companies will ruin her life in seconds, as the world’s best lawyers are at their disposal, and erasing anything and anyone standing against them is child’s play.
Unable to get any help, Nella decides to upload Joe’s video on the internet. As she waits for the video to upload, her doorbell mysteriously rings, and when she gets up to check, a remote user hacks into her system again and uploads the video, but with an entirely different story, defaming Nella for killing Joe over a heartbreak.
Is Nella responsible for Joe’s death?
As Nella gets behind bars for the accusation of murdering Joe, we briefly see the internet raging similarly to how it did in real life when the news broke out about Sushant Singh Rajput’s suicide and Rhea Chakraborty was accused of murdering him. So, while the internet gets busy playing its own fucked up game Nella spends time in jail. Mantra Unlimited’s CEO, Aryan K, seizes the opportunity to monetize the misery and death of people for his company’s betterment, publicly announcing the launch of another tech company—CTRL Health—to help people with mental health issues.
A Mantra Unlimited lawyer and Bina later visit Nella in jail to explain her the entire situation and how she can deal with it. While Bina urges Nella to drop the case, Mantra’s lawyer intimidates her, warning her that she will have to endure a lifetime of scandal or face more jail time if she doesn’t accept Mantra’s offer to drop the case and allow them to erase her recent scandalous digital footprint.
After enduring months of torturous events, Nella leaves her high life in Mumbai and returns to live with her parents in Delhi. She resorts to spending her time in the kitchen, helping with her father’s bakery, making recipe reels for social media, and living a low-key, lonesome life. As much as her parents have made her feel comfortable after everything she went through, Nella seems unsure how to lead her life after what happened in Mumbai. While taking a walk in the park, she stumbles upon a billboard for CTRL Health featuring the face of her CTRL AI assistant, Allen.
Does Nella allow the CTRL Health App to control her life?
The ending of CTRL (2024) on Netflix shows Nella returning home and downloading the CTRL Health app on her laptop. While setting up her account on the app, she finds Joe’s name as the avatar for her profile. She chooses the avatar, and once the app is set up, despite her initial hesitation, it seems Nella succumbs to the power of AI, which increasingly consumes our lives by providing instant comfort during tough times. In the final sequence of CTRL (2024), Nella introduces herself to Joe, the CTRL Health AI, as the screen fades to black.