The new Chris Evans movie on Netflix, Sacrifice—which began streaming today—is sure to get everyone talking.

Directed by French filmmaker Romain Gravas, with a screenplay written by Gravas and Will Arbery, Sacrifice stars Chris Evans as a fictional, image-obsessed movie star named Mike Tyler attempting to stage a comeback after an image-ruining incident. While attending a fancy gala on a remote Greek island, Mike, along with two other high-profile hostages, is kidnapped by an extremist group. The group’s leader (Anya Taylor-Joy) believes that she needs to sacrifice these three people to the volcano, in order to prevent a potentially world-ending natural disaster.

Also starring Vincent Cassel, Sam Richardson, John Malkovich, and Salma Hayek, Sacrifice first premiered over a year ago at Toronto International Film Festival. But the film was not well-liked by critics, and struggled to find distribution. In May, Netflix purchased the distribution rights, and now, finally, the film has been released via streaming.

Even though festival critics didn’t love the film, Netflix audiences might have fun with this one. It’s a high-concept film with an A-list cast, after all, and it’s the kind of movie that gets you talking. It’s also the kind of movie that might leave viewers confused. If that’s you, don’t worry, Decider is here to help. Read on for a full breakdown of the Sacrifice plot summary and the Sacrifice ending explained, including if the volcano erupts at the end of Sacrifice.

Sacrifice movie plot summary:

The movie opens on a young woman, Joan (Anya Taylor Joy) with her ear pressed down against volcanic rock. The shot widens, and we see that the volcano is emitting dark grey smoke, on the verge of eruption. Joan whispers to her mother that the volcano “spoke” to her, and that she knows what she needs to do to save the planet. We see that the mother Joan is speaking to is dead. As Joan prepares her mother’s body for cremation, she promises she will find “the three who will save us, for the fire.” We also hear something about a prophecy involving Joan’s younger siblings, Arthur (Yung Lean) and Louise (Jade Croot). It seems Joan and her siblings are leaders of an extremist cult movement. Fun!

We cut to a stretch limo driving along the coast of a Greek Island, where movie star Mike Tyler (Chris Evans) is on his way to a climate change gala. Mike, best known as the action hero star of the Octavius film series, is desperate to rehabilitate his image. It seems there was an incident on the last Octavius red carpet where Mike—following the death of his father—had a mental breakdown and used a flamethrower to burn the movie posters, while screaming about how he wasn’t real, he was a fraud, and also that he slept with everyone’s wives.

Mike arrives at the gala, which takes place at an old mine nearby a volcano. But he freaks out about the optics of arriving in a gas-guzzling stretch limo to a climate change event, and forces his agent, Oliver (Sam Richardson), to get out and walk the rest of the way with him inside. While at the gala, Mike takes a call from a director he is hoping to work with. The director dismisses the climate change event as performative and hypocritical, calling it “a virtue-signal circle jerk” where “no one actually sacrifices anything.”

After this call, Mike begins to feverishly write a “fuck you” speech on his phone about how the gala is hypocritical. He orders his agent to record, then gets up and takes the mic. Parroting what he heard the director say on the phone, he berates the attendees, yells at them to do better, and attempts to have a “mic drop” moment. But the crowd is not at all with him, and it’s just awkward. Mike tells his agent to post the video. During a performance from a pop star called “Mother Nature” (Charli XCX, with a banging new song), Mike starts to doubt himself, and goes to hide in the bathroom. While scrolling on his phone, he’s distressed to see that people online are not celebrating him like a hero, but mocking him for the outburst.

While Mike is in the bathroom, Joan and her siblings crash the event and take the attendees hostage. Joan informs the crowd they will be selecting three people. First, her sister Louise will select one person with “power,” who we will later learn is “the king” sacrifice. Louise picks Ben Bracken (Vincent Cassel), a tech billionaire and the richest man in the world. Next, brother Arthur will pick his “purest love.” Arthur picks Daughter Nature (Ambika Mod), a performer who was on stage with Charli XCX.

Finally, Joan herself will pick “the hero.” Joan once again puts her ear to the floor to listen to the volcano. She says the volcano tells her that the people must choose. So, she organizes an “applause vote,” and instructs the crowd to clap when she points at someone. Whoever gets the loudest applause will be the hero. When an unaware Mike reenters the room, Joan points at him, and the crowd bursts into applause. Mike, believing he is finally getting his mic drop moment, smiles and happily moves to the front of the room with the other hostages.

Mike, not understanding what’s going on, volunteers to be a spokesperson to speak to the police, who have gathered outside. Happy to have a platform for a righteous speech, Mike praises Joan and her group. “Forget your fake charity, this is real change, real courage!” he shouts. Joan is deeply moved by this, and tells Mike he is special. This seems to mean a lot to him!

The other hostages are let go, but Joan and her siblings take Mike, Ben, and Daughter Nature (whose name is actually Katie) on a boat to the volcano. Mike finally starts to understand the gravity of the situation, but still feels a real connection to Joan. Joan explains how the sacrifices will go: The King (Ben) will be thrown into the volcano by force. The love (Katie) will be thrown in by many hands. And the hero (Mike) must choose his own fate, and jump into the volcano of his own accord. If they do all these things, they will stop the volcano from erupting, and spare the world this potentially world-ending natural disaster.

But first, Joan says, they all need to drink this potion that will allow them “to experience the death and rebirth of the hero. It will lead the hero to find faith. We must share his journey. Nothing is real until one faces death.” Sounds like hallucinogens to me!

Katie manages to escape by slitting Arthur’s throat with glass. As he dies, Arthur admits to Joan that Katie would not have worked as the sacrifice, because the one Arthur truly loves is his own sister. He was afraid to say that, not because of the whole incest thing, but because it would mean that Joan would have to die as a sacrifice.

So Joan, Ben, and Mike go on their little drug trip together. Mike has hallucinations that involve Joan instructing him that his entire Hollywood world is fake, and “only the fire is real.” If Mike wants to feel real—which we know that he does, based on what he was screaming about being a fraud in his flame-throwing incident (fire is real, I see what they did there)—then he needs to choose to sacrifice himself to the volcano. In the hallucination, Mike (now bald, as he fears losing his hair) approaches the edge of the volcano, but can bring himself to jump in, despite the fact that Joan and Ben are both screaming at him to jump to save the world.

When Mike wakes up from his drug trip, he finds himself in the strange home of an old man named Gunnar (John Malkovich). Gunnar explains that he is Joan’s father and a volcano scientist. He rescued Mike from his daughter, because he wants Mike to convince Joan that this plan she has is crazy and won’t work. But we soon learn that Gunnar was on board with the plan, until Joan revealed that it involved Joan killing both her mother and her father. Will Mike team up with Gunnar to save himself?

Nope! Mike finally feels important and real, like he’s always wanted. He wants to be a real hero who saves the world. Or at least, he wants to be seen as a real hero who saves the world. But he also does not want to die. So he calls his agent on Gunnar’s satellite phone, and tells him the plan: Mike will get right up to the edge the volcano, making it seem like he is about to the heroic thing to sacrifice himself to save the world. But then at the last minute, Mike’s agents will send in the helicopters to rescue him. But make sure to get the hero shot first!

Sacrifice movie ending explained:

Mike and Joan escape from Joan’s father, but Joan gets injured in the process. This shakes up Joan’s worldview, because she was supposed to be “protected” by the volcano. Even though Mike has a chance to flee with Joan injured, he instead takes her on the boat to the base of the volcano, where Louise is waiting with Ben, “the king.”

Mike climbs with Joan, Ben, and Louise to the top of the volcano. Ben confronts Mike, saying he heard helicopters and he knows Mike called for help, but Mike denies it. Ben realizes Mike intends only to save himself. Ben tries to tell Joan that Mike intends to betray her, and get rescued, because he’s a “fake.” Joan screams at him to shut up, but she clearly has her doubts about Mike and this whole thing, especially after she got injured. Will this even work?

Before he is thrown into the volcano, Ben asks Mike to tell his wife that he loves her and that he “died like a king.” Into the volcano Ben goes!

Next up is Joan, aka Arthur’s true love. Despite all her big talk, Joan also gets scared in the moment that she has to face her death. She claims she’s not ready, but it doesn’t matter to the cult followers. They lift her up on a stretcher to throw her in. Joan begs Mike to promise that he is with her, and that he will make the sacrifice to save the world. Mike promises. But do we believe him? Joan apparently does. In her last moments, she smiles at Mike, tells him “for the fire,” and lets herself fall. Into the volcano Joan goes!

Now, finally, it’s Mike’s turn. As he approaches the edge of the volcano, the rescue helicopters fly in, getting the hero shot, just like he wanted. But it’s not clear what Mike is going to do. Just like Joan would do, he puts his hand down on the volcanic rock and listens. (Yes, that would likely burn his hand off, but let’s just suspend our disbelief on this point.) He feels the heartbeat of the volcano. He stands and smiles at Louise, who smiles back. And then Mike runs and leaps off the edge of the volcano, right into the magma. The rescue team reacts in shock, having just watched Mike kill himself.

We also see a shot of the other cult members ritualistically cremating another body—presumably this is the body of Joan’s father, Gunnar, who Joan believed needed to die to complete the ritualistic sacrifices.

Does the volcano erupt at the end of the Sacrifice movie?

The volcano does not erupt at the end of Sacrifice. At the end of the movie, the smoke from the volcano is now white and seems to be dissipating, in contrast to the thick, black smoke it was emitting at the beginning of the film. This implies that the volcanic eruption has stopped.

The implication is made explicit in the final moments of the film. In a few brief shots over the credits, we see Louise dancing atop the now-dormant volcano. Whether the lack of eruption is just a freak of nature or a result of the ritualistic sacrifice, well, that’s up the viewer. But Louise certainly seems to believe in the power of the sacrifice. It seems that extremist cult won’t be dying out any time soon.

Sacrifice movie meaning:

The meaning behind the Sacrifice movie is up to the viewer, but my personal interpretation is that Chris Evans’s character, Mike, was an ego maniac obsessed with his image. He was desperate to control how other people saw him, and desperate to have people see him as a good person. But deep down, he knew the image he was trying to construct for the public was a false one, which is why he kept having outbursts to seek “authenticity.”

Mike’s self-inflicted death could be read as a literal suicide, or it could be read as a metaphor of the ego death that Mike needed to experience to truly transform his psyche. He needed to let go of this idea of being seen as the hero and actually be the hero.

As for the idea of death and sacrifice, that part of the movie is a little more muddled for me. At the beginning of the film, the pretentious director berates the rich celebrities for not “sacrificing” anything by attending the gala. And Joan says several times nothing is real, until you are faced with your own death. Is the message, then, that the only true, real, sacrifice is to give up one’s life? If so, I’m not sure I agree with the movie’s thesis.

But hey, that’s just my take. If you have a different interpretation of the film, let me know in the comments.