The murderous game of cat-and-mouse portrayed in What Keeps You Alive leaves audiences with one question — how did Jackie become a killer? Jackie claims she wants to off her wife for the insurance money, but Jackie's mysterious past says otherwise. Let's dive into what made Jackie a killer.
What Keeps You Alive starts off as the story of a lovestruck couple celebrating their one year anniversary at a lakeside cabin. But things quickly change when Jackie suddenly shoves Jules off a cliff. The rest of the movie follows Jackie's brutal hunt to take down Jules. When Jules desperately asks why Jackie is doing this, Jackie just vaguely states it's in her nature.
But there are clues littered throughout the movie that suggest other events from Jackie's past may have pushed her to become a killer. Since Jackie rarely reveals anything concrete from her past, the audience is left to read between the lines. Piecing together those clues paints a clearer picture of how Jackie became a serial killer—and it's all thanks to her dad.
Jackie's Dad Influenced Her Becoming A Killer
Jackie's dad had a powerful, but negative influence on her life. Early on in What Keeps You Alive, she reveals to Jules that her dad forced her to learn how to hunt. However, he wasn't kind and supportive in teaching his daughter the skill. He brashly woke Jackie and her friend Jenny up one more and informed the girls they needed to learn some life skills. Jackie and Jenny were young girls with zero interest in hunting, but Jackie's dad dismissed their cries and complaints. He deemed hunting an important skill, so he didn't care about what the girls wanted.
While he was teaching the girls to hunt, Jackie's dad passed on a mantra to them — only kill what keeps you alive. That, combined with her learned hunting skills set Jackie on a dangerous path. Those hunting skills are what she used to injure Jules, and likely her wives before her. The mantra her dad taught her is what motivated her in each of those murders. Jackie claimed that she killed each of her wives for the insurance money payouts. The audience isn't privy to whatever career Jackie might have held, but it's the money that she collected from their deaths that likely sustained her.
Her dad's influence stayed with Jackie for the rest of her life. After she revealed her true intentions to Jules, Jackie said that she isn't weighed down by emotions like most people are. But there is clearly some emotion tied to the memory of her dad. The Canadian horror movie takes place at Jackie's old family lake house. But as Jackie's childhood friend Sarah notes, she hasn't been to the lake house in years. Not to mention that, as Jules notes, Jackie refuses to talk about her dad. She always changes the subject when he comes up.
The memory of Jackie's dad triggers emotion, which is something deeply uncomfortable and foreign to her. Jackie speaking about her dad is the only time the audience sees her even the slightest bit vulnerable. Sarah alludes to the fact that something happened to him years ago. It's safe to assume that when whatever happened to Jackie's dad did happen, she shut down her capacity to feel and be effected by emotions. That inability to be weighed down by feelings is a common trademark of a sociopath, and sociopathic people easily transition into serial killers. Everything Jackie experienced with her father was the perfect storm to eventually turn her into a serial killer.
Jackie's Dad Was Indirectly Responsible For Jenny's Death
One of the biggest twists revealed in the Canadian film is that Jackie killed her childhood friend Jenny. Sarah shares with Jules the unusual circumstances surrounding Jenny's death. Jackie even tearfully defends her innocence later to Jules, proclaiming that the authorities cleared her of any wrong doing. But when Jackie kills Sarah in a fit of rage, she cruelly admits to killing Jenny all those years ago. It'd require a great deal of skill for a young girl to successfully commit a murder that stumped the police. Jackie had that skill, and she learned it from her father.
As Jackie is admittedly a sociopath, she likely exhibited symptoms as a child. By teaching her how to hunt, Jackie's father set her on a highly dangerous road. Hunting provides Jackie with a thrill unlike anything else. After Jackie killed Sarah, the camera lingers on her face. Her expression is that of ecstasy. That feeling she gets after a kill seems to be the only feeling left that Jackie can experience. Learning to hunt opened her eyes to that high. While her father taught her to kill for survival instead of sport, she clearly finds enjoyment in the act of murder. To Jackie, the next best thing after killing an animal would be killing a human.
While it was never explicitly confirmed, it's safe to assume that there wasn't much time in between when Jackie and Jenny learned to hunt and when the murder took place. That idea was fresh in Jackie's mind — only kill what keeps you alive. But she twisted it from her father's original intention. Killing for survival is a last resort. But Jackie decided that her life was more important than her victims, and she would profit and thrive in their absence. So she killed to survive in the way that she deemed appropriate for her desired lifestyle.
That's what makes Jackie a truly terrifying figure. Not only does she have the skillset necessary to commit murders, but she holds onto a twisted idea that she now knows as truth. Her life was more important than Jenny's life, so committing that murder allowed her to survive in the way that she wanted. Jackie decided that insurance money was more valuable than Jules and the wives that came before her, so she felt justified in those murders as well.
Each one of the murders in What Keeps You Alive can be traced back to Jackie's father. The brash way he insisted she learn to hunt and the layered meaning behind the hunting lesson unlocked something within Jackie that proved to be dangerous to nearly any person who got in her way. This complicated and chilling portrait of a sociopathic serial killer is why What Keeps You Alive is such an effective horror movie.