Knuckleball Movie Ending Explained- Why Did Dixon Hate Henry, Who Was In The Cage, And How Did They Get There?

The Broad Strokes:

• Knuckleball is a twisted survival story like a horrific Home Alone or Becky.
• Dixon hates Henry for a very specific, decades-old reason. Dixon, Mary, Jacob, and Henry share a dark secret.
• Jacob was the real monster.

Survival movies are great, particularly in winter weather, in isolated encounters where it is kill or be killed. These types of films are more fun still when vulnerable kids are the protagonists. Knuckleball by writer and director Michael Peterson has been described as a horror version of Home Alone. In reality, it has more in common with the surprise hit Becky. It’s bloody, brutal, and more fun than you expect it to be. It also takes a hard left turn in the final act, throwing everything into question. Here’s everything you need to know about Knuckleball: who was the caged woman, was Jacob a bad guy, and why Dixon wanted Henry dead?

Mary and Paul leave their twelve-year-old son, Henry(Luca Villacis), with Mary’s dad, Jacob, for the weekend. Mary and Jacob do not have a great relationship, but they don’t have many choices as they are on the way to a funeral. When Jacob(Michael Ironside) dies overnight, Henry understandably panics. His grandad has no landline, and Henry accidentally ran down his cell phone battery and forgot to pack the charger. He made one call to his parents and left a message, but it was hard to hear on their end. Making matters worse, a snowstorm is bearing down, and odd neighbor Dixon(Munro Chambers) is only too willing to help.

Right away, there are red flags. Before Jacob died, he was aggressive with Dixon and seemed afraid to leave Henry alone with him. When Dixon takes him to his house, he refuses to let him use the phone and acts inappropriately. Henry catches him putting crushed pills in his drink, and he acts threatening to him. Luckily, Henry is intelligent and resourceful, and he is able to outthink the psychotic young man.

Why does Dixon hate Henry?

Little hints are dropped early that Dixon resents Henry for very specific reasons. He talks to him as if he knows him despite never having met. Shortly after bringing him to his house, Dixon tries to drug him but ends up ingesting the drugs himself. When he realizes Henry switched their glasses, he lunges for Henry, and the cat-and-mouse game of chase begins in earnest. In the final act, it is revealed that Dixon hated Henry because Jacob abused and mistreated him when he was a child. Dixon is Henry’s step-uncle.

Henry was treated like a cherished family member, while Dixon was treated like a disappointment to be hidden away. Jacob made sure he had the basics but not the love he craved. Not only was he probably physically abused by Jacob when he was young, but the older man had been controlling him his entire life. He resented Henry because Jacob loved and acknowledged him as family. Dixon had been denied by his father his whole life, making him angry, unstable, and very dangerous.

The ending of Knuckleball explained

Throughout most of the film, Henry schemes and avoids Dixon. He sets him on fire, cuts him with a knife, and makes him fall down the stairs into barbed wire. Henry’s parents heard enough in the message to worry and sent an officer to check on him, only to have Dixon savagely kill her with his baseball bat. While they desperately attempt to return to the farm, Henry is on his own. He stumbles into the barn, and the final shocking twist drops. There is a caged woman. The woman helps Henry load a shotgun and shoots Dixon. Unfortunately, she gets shot in the process, but Henry is saved.

The reality is Jacob is the real monster in Knuckleball. Dixon was the antagonist for the majority of the film, but everything that happened when Henry’s mother was young shaped who Dixon was and why he went after Henry. Jacob was a killer and potentially a rapist. He may have captured, raped, and held Dixon’s mother long ago. His wife had suspicions, and when she pressed him on what he does in the barn, he showed her the caged woman.

This is what Mary’s story about her mother’s suicide was about. Mary relays memories of her mother’s death to Paul. Her father told her, “I let her in, and she couldn’t handle it. When something breaks down, you fix what you can and move on.” He was talking about her mother being horrified by what Jacob had been doing to the other woman. The second line in this story could also mean that Jacob killed Mary’s mother but made it look like suicide.

These two could have been hunting and killing women since Dixon was young. It may only be Dixon’s mother they held the entire time. We have no way of knowing how depraved they were and how many victims there were. Dixon calls the woman “momma,” but that doesn’t have to mean literally the woman who gave birth to him. It could be what Dixon calls every woman they capture and hold hostage. Jacob may have told him to call every woman his mother in some sick game. We know Dixon hated but obeyed his father but was growing rebellious. He killed Jacob’s dog, and from Jacob’s reaction, it was cruel and vicious.

At the end of Knuckleball, Henry kills Dixon with the help of the woman in the cage and waits for help. He is saved, but Mary and Henry will need support as they face what happened. Henry will need to face he had to kill someone while Mary is just now realizing why things were so strained in her childhood home. Who knows how much more she will remember?

Who was the woman in the cage?

The woman in the cage was someone that Dixon called mother, but that could have been what Jacob told her to call him, or it could be that she was his mother. We have no reference for which is true. At least Jacob and probably Dixon, as soon as he was old enough, had been holding at least one woman and potentially lots of women. Mary’s mother probably found out about the rape and imprisonment and killed herself. It is also highly probable that Jacob killed Mary’s mother and made it look like a suicide. It is obvious there was something very wrong with this home.

Is Jacob’s ghost real?

Henry and Dixon both see Jacob’s ghost for different reasons. Dixon sees it as a specter of the control Jacob had over him, and it is a product of his drug-addled mind. Henry seeing his ghost is more complicated. Jacob protected him from Dixon in their short time together, but what he learned about his grandfather made him think he was a terrible person. Seeing Jacob provides closure and is a warning. Henry may have escaped Dixon, but the implication is he may not be able to outrun the legacy of violence. Knucklball is streaming for free on Tubi right now.