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An Italian film was recently released on Netflix. It is a suspenseful drama that runs for around 90 minutes.

In this blog, I will explain the ending of Vanished into the Night.

After their kids are kidnapped from Pietro’s house, the couple is forced to take Nico’s help. However, Nico wants Pietro to deliver drugs to Greece to get the money he needs.

When Pietro is on his way back upon finishing the task, his boat malfunctions. He contacts the Coast Guard for help.

The men in uniform arrive and fix the boat. They drop him at the shores of Otranto since it is the nearest place the boat’s fuel can take him to.

Scroll down to find out what happens next in the story.

Don’t forget to read till the end, where I have answered some subtle questions you may have about the plot.

Vanished into the Night Movie Ending Explained

Pietro reaches the shore of Otranto and fails to get a ride to Bara. He then runs to the bus station and boards one of the buses to reach his destination.

Pietro gets paranoid that everyone around him suspects him of doing something illegal. Meanwhile, he borrows the mobile phone of a fellow passenger and dials Elena.

Once again, she doesn’t pick up the call, and he has to leave a voicemail informing her that he will be home soon.

He keeps the bag filled with drugs close to his body. On the way, Pietro mistakes two children sitting in the bus for Giovanni and Bianca.

When the bus reaches Bari, Pietro’s run resumes. He crosses roads and tries to get a ride, but no one stops to help him.

Rushing carelessly, he spills out the drug packets in front of a transport vehicle. But before the riders can notice anything, Pietro packs them again.

He reaches Nico’s place, where a house party is ongoing. Nico is high on drugs and offers some to Pietro as well.

However, the latter declines the offer.

Nico seems emotionally perturbed and blunt due to the effect of intoxication.

They go inside his room, and instead of giving him the promised money, Nico points a gun at Pietro.

He is filled with anger as Pietro is his childhood friend. They were involved in illegal business before he got married.

Ever since Elena came into his life, Pietro started sidelining Nico. He gave up all the illegal tasks and became a family man.

Nico has an argument with his old friend while still pointing the gun at him. He even fires a shot near his leg to frighten him.

Pietro pushes him down onto the ground, and they indulge in a fight. Both hit each other alternatively while the rest of the members stay quiet.

In the end, the two friends lie down together, exhausted. Nico tells him the location of the money and his phone. Pietro takes them and leaves his house.

Subsequently, he rushes to Elena’s place. But to his extreme surprise, he finds Giovanni and Bianca having lunch inside.

The kids greet him as if nothing ever happened. Pietro showers them with hugs and kisses before digging further into what just happened.

However, the kids have no idea. The last thing they remember is sleeping peacefully at their father’s place.

They find Pietro’s behavior strange when he consistently asks them questions as to how they came back.

Elena enters the dining hall, and Pietro finally gets to ask the right questions. But his wife remains in denial mode.

Desperate for answers, Pietro begs with folded hands to tell him the truth. Elena, on the other hand, asks whether he is hallucinating or he is on drugs.

Pietro narrates the whole story from last night, from the disappearance of their kids to Elena sending him to Nico for money.

He even shares how he had to transport drugs on his boat to fetch 150k Euros to pay the ransom.

While Elena denies everything he says, Pietro doubts if she wants to prove him mad to get the pending divorce and the custody of their kids.

She calls him crazy and unwell and orders him to leave the house. Moreover, Elena says that he is scaring her and her kids.

Her last warning involves calling the cops if he doesn’t leave ASAP. Pushed to the brink, Pietro finally exits the place and gets behind the wheel to reach home.

He makes a stop at the gas station, where Pietro changes his clothes. When he resumes his journey, he receives a voice message from Elena.

It contains their conversation at her house a few minutes back. Apparently, she recorded him talking about transporting drugs and getting 150k euros in return.

In another message, she informs him that she is taking the kids to America. They have a flight at 9 PM, and Elena wants him to meet them at the airport and sign the consent papers.

Elena warns him that if he doesn’t sign, she will take the recording to the cops.

Pietro immediately calls her, but she doesn’t answer. He then goes to her house, but nobody answers the door.

An idea strikes him, and he decides to meet his kids at their horse-riding session, where he asks them about the other night, but they don’t remember anything.

He tries to lead them with events that happened prior to their disappearance. However, the kids fail to reminisce how they reached their mom’s place in the morning.

As he gets more intense, Elena enters the premises. She expresses discomfort with him talking to their kids like that.

She tells him to stay away from them. Also, Elena reminds him that he can go to prison for the crimes he committed last night.

In his defense, Pietro asks whether she is trying to blackmail him since she recorded him earlier without his permission.

Moreover, he says he will not sign the consent papers. But Elena is adamant and tells him to be prepared for jail.

Pietro reaches his home and gives himself some time to think in quietude, but nothing of use occurs to him.

While bathing, he continuously plays the eventful night again and again inside his head. But to no avail.

Suddenly, his eyes strike the toilet seat, and he finds something floating on the water inside. Pietro takes it out and finds an empty blister pack of a medicinal pill.

He remembers that the flush button was not working, and it needed to be pressed two to three times to flush anything inside.

He didn’t throw the empty blister inside. His kids cannot do that. Hence, someone must have come into his house.

Putting all his doubts on Elena, he takes his car and leaves for her place. He knows she must have left for the airport, which gives him the chance to scour her house for clues.

Pietro tells the security attendant at her house that his wife has forgotten their daughter’s passport. And he must take it to them.

Finding the reason genuine, the attendant gives him the house keys. Once inside, he directly checks her cupboard and finds a box of medicines.

Pietro comes across a tablet strip with one blister missing. He matches the one he has got with the strip and tries to fix it.

The result? The empty blister sits perfectly on the strip. He also finds a receipt and then connects the dots.

On his way back, he drops a voice message for Elena, saying he is ready to sign the papers and that she should wait for him at the airport.

A flashback plays out, showing how Elena entered his house that night and injected the kids with a drug. While leaving, she dropped the empty blister inside the toilet and flushed it.

However, since the flush button wasn’t working properly, the water pressure couldn’t take the blister down to the sewers.

She then put the kids inside her vehicle and took them to her house.

Pietro reaches the airport to find them waiting for him. He tells the kids that their mother is going alone to America, and they will live at his house.

He asks the kids to sit on the resting benches while he talks to Elena. Pietro tells the woman that he knows how she drugged their children.

Elena says that nobody would believe him. However, Pietro throws a bluff, saying he talked to a physician who told him that the traces of the drug remain in the hair for a while.

If she tries to take them to New York, he will report it to the cops. Moreover, he would also get the kids’ hair tested by someone in New York.

He calls her act terrible while she tries to silence him, saying she knew what she was doing and the kids were never in danger.

Elena says that she did it because Pietro never wanted to come to an agreement or compromise of any kind.

All she did was for the sake of her children. However, Pietro says what she did was shameful. And she has to leave alone if she doesn’t want to be in prison.

Pietro further gives the reason behind giving her a way out. He doesn’t want their kids to know what their mother did to them.

While bidding them goodbye, an emotional Elena tells Pietro that the kiss they shared at the shore earlier was not a lie.

The kids go home with their dad and play together. On the other hand, Pietro looks at their family photo and gets emotional.

This is when a blurred Elena appears at the door. Pietro sees her, and the movie ends on a high.

Were the Kids Really Kidnapped?

No, Bianca and Giovanni were never really kidnapped. They were taken by their mother, Elena.

Who Kidnapped the Kids in Vanished into the Night?

Elena staged the kidnapping of their children.

What Was Elena’s Plan?

Elena wanted a divorce from Pietro, but the latter was deferring the court proceedings for a long time.

He wanted them to get back together.

Now, her only way to get the divorce and the subsequent custody of the kids was by proving him mentally ill.

She staged the kidnapping of their kids and made sure the cops didn’t get involved. Only the kids knew what had happened in reality.

Elena injected them with a drug that affected their memory, and they couldn’t remember anything from the past few hours.

It is why Pietro couldn’t get the truth out of them. The poor kids didn’t know what had happened in reality.

How Did Pietro Find Out About Elena’s Plan?

Pietro found an empty blister of a pill in his toilet seat. His flush button was not working properly, reducing the water pressure in it.

When Elena flushed the empty blister, though it did get a push, it wasn’t enough for it to be entirely flushed out.

Pietro then went to her house and matched the empty blister with one of the medicine straps in her cupboard.

Once it fit properly, it was clear that Elena had come to his house and drugged their kids.

What Happens in the End of Vanished into the Night?

In the end, Pietro takes the kids back with him and tells Elena to travel to America alone. However, the final frame of the movie shows that Elena comes back to her house, giving up on her plan to settle in the States.

Did They Get Together?

It is only a possibility that Elena and Pietro got together. The movie doesn’t explicitly show this. That Elena comes back to her children in the end is a sign that the couple reunited.

Interestingly, when he was leaving the airport, Elena had told Pietro that the kiss they shared at the shore earlier was not a lie.

This is an indication that she was still in love with her husband, and with the odds against her, it is possible that she came back to him.