Why did Walter commit suicide?

Chris apparently discovers the truth too late, after he has already been set up as the family’s next victim. He is tied to a chair in the basement of the mansion while art dealer Jim Hudson, who plans to transplant his brain into Chris’s body, explains the process to his potential victim. When the time comes for the transplant to begin, Missy, the mother of Chris’s hypnotist girlfriend Rose, tries to put him to sleep. This doesn’t work, however, as Chris has stuffed cotton in his ears so he can’t hear the hypnotic sounds and words he uses. This plot point also serves as a satirical metaphor for the historical role of African-American slaves in the U.S. economy.

Instead, he kills Rose’s brother when he comes to take him to the operating room, then impales her father, a neurosurgeon, on the antlers of a stuffed deer head. Finally, he kills Missy and flees the house as Rose shoots him from a distance.

What about Walter?

At this point, Rose calls upon her grandfather, whose brain has been transplanted into the body of the family’s black groundskeeper, Walter, to run after the injured Chris. In life, the family patriarch was a sprinter who developed racist sentiments after being beaten by black Olympian Jesse Owens. He easily outpaces Chris, and the two fight on the ground. At this point, Chris remembers that the flash on his phone had previously disturbed another brain transplant victim, allowing her to briefly regain some form of consciousness. As Hudson tells him during his video explanation, “Some part of you will still be there, limited consciousness.”

Chris points the phone at Walter’s eyes and presses, causing the camera to flash. Walter immediately stops attacking Chris, stands up, and asks Rose for the gun. However, instead of shooting Chris, he shoots her before turning the gun on himself. At this point, the remnant of Walter’s consciousness returns, replacing Rose’s grandfather’s brain power and allowing him to control his own body again.

For the first time in the film, we see the real Walter, acting on his own free will to get revenge on Rose and save Chris. But ultimately, saving Chris also means suicide, because once the effects of the flash wear off, his body returns to the control of the racist family patriarch.

The flash motif may seem at first glance to be a convenient technicality on which to base the plot, but even in this aspect of the story, Peele’s inventive use of extended metaphors is not amiss. When he’s not trying to escape the clutches of his girlfriend’s racist brain surgery cult, Chris works as a photographer.

In fact, the role of photography in the film mirrors Peele’s role as a black filmmaker, shining a light on racial injustice through his innovative approach to the horror genre. If Peele’s visual art can deliver a shockwave of light that stuns people, even briefly, then the writer-director may be able to shift the collective consciousness, particularly among black Americans.

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