‘Come and Find Me’ Ending Explained: Where Is Claire and What Happened to Her?

Welcome to the Ending Explained for ‘Come and Find Me,’ a 2016 thriller film written and directed by Zack Whedon, brother of the famous or infamous Joss Whedon. This is Zack’s first and only directed film, although he has experience directing TV shows, including episodes of the fantastic and underrated Halt and Catch Fire. Here in ‘Come and Find Me,’ we can find some traces of that show. However, sadly, ‘Come and Find Me’ just doesn’t have the amazing scripts of Halt and Catch Fire to back it up and take it to the next level.

The film stars Aaron Paul, Annabelle Wallis, Garret Dillahunt, and Chris Chalk. While the cast is full of competent actors, the script is just a mess and fails to find reasonable justification for what happens on screen. I don’t know why, but I have never seen Annabelle Wallis have chemistry with anyone on screen, and yet, they keep casting her as this sort of love interest for protagonists. She is a fine actress but doesn’t have chemistry with anyone. And so, it is very hard to believe when the movie tells us that the relationship and love between two characters are the reason for everything happening.

The following paragraphs contain spoilers for ‘Come and Find Me’. Read at your own risk.

How does Claire disappear?

One of the first things you notice in ‘Come and Find Me’ is its length. This movie is about two full hours, yet after you finish watching it, you realize that it could have easily been 90 minutes or a bit less.

The first act runs for almost an hour before our main character, David, played by Aaron Paul, enters the world to see what is happening. The movie feels overlong mainly because it works on two separate timelines, the present and the past. The movie jumps back and forth between them, intending to show just how much these two characters, David and Claire, love each other.

Of course, the movie fails in this regard because these flashbacks give us no hints to other aspects of the story. Their function is merely emotional. But, as I pointed out before, the actors have no chemistry with each other, and all these flashbacks feel pointless. It would have been so much better to leave all this to the imagination.

Let us imagine who is this woman that would make David go to such lengths to find. What is shown to us in the movie just doesn’t have enough power to make us believe he would sacrifice so much for her.

What really matters happens in the present timeline, and what is there is a bit of a mess. We meet David and Claire while they are already living together, and then we have flashbacks showing us just how much they love each other and how quickly they move in their relationship.

However, one day, after a very pleasant evening, Claire disappears, leaving absolutely no trace. Apparently, David becomes confused, as Claire has never done something like this before. Days become months and then a year and a half. At this point, David’s life is a mess, and many people are worried about him.

Things begin to unravel, however, when Buck, a friend of Claire, appears inside David’s house. He is looking for something, and David wasn’t supposed to be at home so early. Buck knocks David out; he calls the police, and they start searching for Buck, but it seems there is not much they can do.

Detective Sloan, who took the case of missing Claire, approaches David and tells him that his digging has only found inconsistencies between the information David has and the information they have on Claire. Most of the information Claire gave David about her is wrong or a lie. It seems Claire has some very dark secrets.

Where is Claire, and what happened to her?

David is baffled; how could Claire have lied to him? Or a better question would be, why did he lie to him? While looking through her things, David remembers that she used to spend a lot of time in the garden. He starts digging and finds an envelope with old photos, a pen drive, and a camera roll.

David starts looking at the pictures and finds some weird ones that portray a car shop on the other side of town. In desperation, he goes to find the place. He finds it, goes inside, and gets in trouble there. The people inside the place are not friendly. They look like criminals, like organized criminals. They torture David, but when their leader sees David is just really looking for Claire, he lets him go, advising David to stop looking for Claire.

At home, David is frightened after his encounter with this strange mafia. An intruder enters the house at night, but David is prepared and knocks him out with a hammer. In the morning, David starts interrogating the guy, who can be seen in one of Claire’s pictures. The man informs David that Claire’s real name is Eve, or so he thinks, and that he is also looking for her. Claire did something; now she has this type of man on her tail. David gets enough information to know that Vancouver is his next stop. Once there, he is contacted by a government agent named John Hall. Hall kidnaps David and takes him to an undisclosed location.

Hall and David have a conversation, where Hall reveals that Claire is a sort of secret agent, and her relationship with David is just a cover, one of the many she has had throughout the years. She apparently went on an assignment the day she disappeared and died while performing her duty.

Hall shows pictures of a dead Claire to David, who falls to his knees in grief. However, on their way home, David notices Hall’s injured leg and connects the dots. The man with a cane in the pictures is none other than Hall himself. Hall sees David’s realization, and he prepares to kill David, but the car crashes in the middle of the altercation, and David manages to escape.

David manages to contact Buck, who has also been looking for the pictures. He wants him to contact Claire because she knows he is still alive. Hall’s assassins are on his trail and manage to capture David. They get ready to torture him to find out where the photo’s negatives are. At that moment, Claire appears, killing everyone on her way. She saves David and reveals that the pictures would reveal Hall dealing with organized crimes, making him a traitor.

That is why he is ready to kill all of them. Claire and David try to shoot their way out, but the movie ends right before they open the last door to their freedom. The ending is left ambiguous, but from a realistic point of view, both David and Claire die in each other’s arms, killed by Hall’s forces.