Killer Book Club ending takes an unexpected turn as it finally answers the story's biggest question: who is The Mad Clown?
As it turns out, revealing the identity of the killer that has been terrorising a group of university friends is more complicated than we thought.
I Know What You Did Last Summer meets Scream in this Spanish slasher on Netflix that's fascinated by horror literature archetypes and killer clowns. The movie's ending is quite surprising, leaving us wondering about the fate of its heroine Ángela (Veki Velilla).
Starring Netflix regulars Álvaro Mel (A Perfect Story) and Iván Pellicer (Holy Family), alongside A League of Their Own's Priscilla Delgado, here's everything you need to know about Killer Book Club's shocking ending.
Major spoilers follow.
Killer Book Club ending explained: who is The Mad Clown?
If you're reading this you've probably watched the horror movie already, but here's a quick refresher on the story.
After accidentally killing a professor while pulling a prank on him dressed as clowns, a group of horror-obsessed university friends swear to never talk about it again. However, they start receiving texts from a mysterious user called "The Mad Clown", who is writing a story about them.
The professor's death is only the beginning of that story: each chapter released online focuses on the death of one member of the group. One by one they start disappearing, their deaths described with excruciating detail online while the survivors try to uncover the truth.
Virginia, Sara, Rai, Eva and Koldo die at the hands of the killer clown throughout the story, with only Sebas, Nando and Ángela remaining in the end.
When Sebas is kidnapped by the killer, Ángela risks everything to save him, only to find out that he was the killer all along.
Well, one of them.
As we learn, the key to everything can be found six years prior to these events, when Ángela published her first novel, La Niña de Carrión.
Unable to come up with her own ideas, she based the story on the real life of Alicia, a virtual friend who had confided in Ángela. Alicia told her how her literature-obsessed mother mistreated her, and Ángela turned it into a Carrie-type horror novel with notable commercial success.
Also an aspiring writer, Alicia promised Ángela to someday write something that would hurt her more than she had ever hurt her. After that, she burned her house down with her abusive mother in it. She was believed to have died in the fire, but she didn't.
Apparently, Sebas was Alicia's online boyfriend at that time — remember the user Gacy in that chat at the beginning of the movie? That was him — so both of them planned a surprisingly elaborate revenge to make Ángela pay for what she had done.
No, Alicia never died in the fire. In fact, we've known Alicia all along: she is Virginia!
The youngest member of the book club, who was supposedly the first one to die while waiting at a bus stop, created a new identity in order to execute her ambitious plan.
Both she and Sebas arranged the circumstances of the professor's death and murdered all of their friends, writing everything down so that they could become bestselling authors with a real-life-inspired story. Just like Ángela did. Oh, sweet revenge.
Unfortunately, they are so focused on explaining their grand plan to a stunned Ángela that they don't realise Nando is still alive, despite Sebas stabbing him, and is standing right behind them.
Nando then crashes a typewriter into Sebas' head, sending him flying over a Don Quixote statue at the university's entrance. He gets impaled by the statue's lance and dies. Just like the professor. Karma is a b***h.
Enraged by her boyfriend's shocking death, Alicia chases Ángela through the building's basement.
Alicia ends up burned alive, exactly how the rest of the world thought she died in the first place, after Ángela lures her into a pool of gasoline and sets her on fire.
Nando and Ángela survive, and the nightmare is over.
We see the couple one year later, in a new university, both studying literature. She has written a new book called Crimes on Campus, based on what they lived through the previous year.
It seems like things have worked out for Ángela, but suddenly she sees the killer clown once again. Is it her imagination playing with her? Is this a dream? A fiction inside a fiction? Or is that indeed a killer clown in front of her?
All of the students that were around her a minute ago disappear abruptly, and Ángela only has time to scream as the clown starts sprinting towards her, taking its mask off and revealing Alicia's burned face underneath.
Killer Book Club constantly plays with the notions of fiction and reality, so this is a last statement to leave viewers wondering what this scene really means.
If we have to bet, given how everybody inexplicably disappears from campus, we would say it's just a bad dream, perhaps meant to reveal that Ángela is far from living a happy existence. She's probably still haunted by what happened to her friends.
This final scene, besides its clear intention of shocking viewers, could be just telling us that demons will continue to chase her for a very long time.
Killer Book Club is now available on Netflix.
Deputy Movies Editor, Digital Spy
Mireia (she/her) has been working as a movie and TV journalist for over seven years, mostly for the Spanish magazine Fotogramas.
Her work has been published in other outlets such as Esquire and Elle in Spain, and WeLoveCinema in the UK.
She is also a published author, having written the essay Biblioteca Studio Ghibli: Nicky, la aprendiz de bruja about Hayao Miyazaki's Kiki's Delivery Service.
During her years as a freelance journalist and film critic, Mireia has covered festivals around the world, and has interviewed high-profile talents such as Kristen Stewart, Ryan Gosling, Jake Gyllenhaal and many more. She's also taken part in juries such as the FIPRESCI jury at Venice Film Festival and the short film jury at Kingston International Film Festival in London.
Now based in the UK, Mireia joined Digital Spy in June 2023 as Deputy Movies Editor.
