New Life ending explained: What happened to Elsa in the end?

New Life is currently streaming across platforms across the US (Image via Instagram/Hayley Erin)
New Life is currently streaming across platforms across the US (Image via Instagram/Hayley Erin)

On May 3, 2024, a thriller movie titled New Life had a limited release across theatres in the United States. The film is written and directed by John Rosman and is produced by XYZ Films and Brainstorm Media. It stars Sonya Walger, Hayley Erin, and Tony Amendola in lead roles.

Rotten Tomatoes provides a brief synopsis of the movie which reads:

"Jess is a woman on the run, desperate to cross the Canadian border to escape her past. On her tail is Elsa, a resourceful agent, whose recent life-altering diagnosis leaves her one step behind. As their chase narrows to the mountains of the Pacific Northwest, holes in Elsa's investigation begin to fill with fresh bodies."

It continues:

"Soon the pursuit spirals toward its harrowing confrontation between the two women, in search of meaning and redemption, on the razor's edge of catastrophe."

Following its release, New Life soon gained traction. One of the most controversial talking points about the film involved its ending, which took the audience by surprise.

Towards the end of the film, it was revealed that Elsa, who was chasing Jessica the entire time had also been infected with the virus she had been trying to keep at bay.

Disclaimer: This article comprises spoilers. Please read at your discretion.


Jessica faces the same fate as Elsa in New Life

Throughout the film, Sonya Walger's Elsa Gray is seen chasing Hayley Erin's Jessica Murdock, who has been unknowingly infected with a virus from a genetically modified dog. Elsa has been hired by Tony Amendola's Raymond Reed to find Jessica and stop the virus from spreading further, even if that means getting rid of her.

The chase pretty much ends in a closure with Jessica losing her life to the virus. But Elsa's life is also not spared in the process. Towards the end of the movie, she discovers that she too has been infected with the unnamed virus.

However, she finds out that she is an asymptomatic carrier of the same. Due to that, she did not show any symptoms of the infection but she was aware of what awaited her in the future.

Unfortunately, Jessica Murdock does not survive by the end of New Life. From the beginning, the audience has an idea about something going very wrong when they notice the movie's title character running with blood all over her face.

As it turns out, Jessica who was out with her boyfriend on a camping date had been infected by an unknown virus while she was petting a dog in the woods. The dog she was petting had escaped the laboratory of a research facility where it was being used for experiments.

The dog was part of an assignment from a pharma branch that worked closely with the US government. The pharma branch had assigned a project to a big conglomerate that would work towards testing a virus for research purposes. The dog that infected Jessica was the same dog that was used for the experiment and had escaped the laboratory.


New Life is currently running across selective theatres in the US. It is expected to be released in the United Kingdom on June 3, 2024.

Edited by Prem Deshpande
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