The Takeover follows the journey of Mel Bandison, a young hacker who’s attempting to prove her innocence as she’s being chased by Interpol in relation to a murder.
Directed by Annemarie van de Mond, the Dutch crime thriller The Takeover stars Holly Mae Brood as the protagonist Mel. The additional cast members include Frank Lammers, Geza Weisz Susan Radder, Walid Benmbarek, Noortje Herlaar, Jeremiah Fleming, and Werknemer Rogers.
The Takeover Story Summary
Hacker Buddy Benschot (Frank Lammers) helps Interpol in finding the person behind
the privacy breaches occurring at precisely 3 am every Wednesday in the Air
Force base. To his surprise, the person responsible for the breach turns out to
be a teen, Bandison (Holly Mae Brood), a 16-year-old brilliant hacker.
On questioning Mel, Buddy is impressed as he finds out that she is an ethical hacker who was just stopping the jets so that the noise doesn’t scare the seals away. Finding out her intentions weren’t harmful, he lets her go with a warning.
Ten years later, Mel works at Eurocode where she checks for errors in the software. While talking to her boss, she finds out about a privacy breach in the software of Rotramax, an automatic bus system company. She fixes it temporarily in order to go on a date with Thomas Dean (Geza Weisz), a cafe owner.
Finding her date to be too cheerful for her taste, an awkward Mel leaves the date midway after making an excuse. For a side hustle, Mel also works with other hackers and hacks the software of companies responsible for damaging the environment, rendering their software useless.
Things get rough for Mel when one night, two strangers intrude into Mel’s home and chase her for a while before Mel manages to escape. Later, the strangers hack into Mel’s data.
Police Officer Dries Daudi questions Mel when she goes to the police station to report the intrusion. When she finds the same men who intruded on her home chatting with the police, sensing foul play, Mel takes shelter in Thomas’ place. But the men somehow find her whereabouts.
Thomas and Mel escape to a cafe where it occurs to her that the mess may have something to do with the hacking she’s been doing on the side and suspects she may have messed with the wrong people. But how do they figure out she was at a cafe? They track her via her phone and therefore, she decides to destroy her phone.
Thomas suggests she go to the police as she remains unsure as to what to do except run with Mel because the men are after him as well. To Mel’s shock, on the TV, she sees shocking footage of herself firing on an unidentified man before fleeing the scene. The video is so convincing that anyone would believe Mel is the one shooting an innocent man. Thereafter, headlines emerge on the TV highlighting Mel as a murderer on the run.
Meanwhile, the police track Mel via security cameras. Thomas believes Mel is innocent and helps her figure out her way out of it. Thinking hard to get out of the situation, Mel deduces it’s time to stop the pipeline that was created by the hackers on Rotramax’s software by using her trojan code.
While the police decide to investigate Mel’s current employer and friends, Thomas gets a call on his phone, and the caller asks for Mel. The caller introduces himself as Rogers and offers her a deal that lets her escape by proving that the video is fake if she gives him the encryption of the trojan horse code.
In a video chat, Mel’s hacker friends advise her that the only person who can help her is Buddy. But initially, Mel appears reluctant because she used to work with him previously and turned him over to Interpol. After some reluctance, Mel agrees to seek Buddy’s help. She destroys Thomas’s phone, and they both escape on a stolen bike to a remote place decided by Buddy as the meeting spot.
As they wait for Buddy to arrive, Mel tells Thomas that both of them worked as partners before until she realized Buddy was just using her coding expertise for his personal gain. Therefore, she handed him to the police. Hence, she remains doubtful if BUddy will agree to help her now.
The Takeover Ending Explained
To Mel’s pleasant surprise, Buddy arrives and takes her and Thomas to a remote place in Belgium where he carries his undercover hacking while on the run from Interpol.
Buddy tries his best to find solutions, but everything seems to fail. However, he does provide Mel with the reason for being framed in the murder. The bus company Rotramax is involved with Xiao Ming, a Chinese software company that specializes in facial recognition.
The hackers who hacked into Mel’s data and Xiao Ming work for a company that violates user data via facial recognition and collects the user’s personal information, which goes to the Chinese Government later, illegally.
Why Was Mel Framed?
When Mel stopped the pipeline breach in Rotramax’s software with her trojan horse, not only did she stop Xiao Ming, but she also ended up stopping the data breach that many companies relied on for collecting this data illegally. Hence, they framed her in the murder case through a deepfake video, knowing very well that even if Mel figures out the truth about these companies, no one will believe a violent murderer on the run.
Mel calls up Dries Daoudi and clarifies that she isn’t a murderer and informs him about Rogers. When he asks her to turn herself in, she gives up and disconnects the call.
On remembering that Rotramax had scanned her face when she boarded the bus, Mel figures out, that’s where Roger’s men might have accessed the scan to use it to create a convincing deepfake video. In the meantime, Rogers and his men track Mel and Thomas to Buddy’s place with the help of the phone call she made to the police.
Rogers’ men arrive and kill Buddy while he was trying to delete the traces of their research. Aghast at witnessing Buddy’s murder, Mel and Thomas make a run for their lives in Buddy’s van.
Mel is left with only one option – hacking the bus camera and accessing the scan – to prove her innocence. Thomas tries his best to stop her as he considers it a dangerous choice. Instead, he remains of the opinion thatpolice can help and informs them of their whereabouts, unbeknownst to Mel.
When Thomas reveals this to Mel, she disagrees with his plan and runs away just before the arrival of the police. Thomas is taken into custody, and he informs the police where Mel is headed. As planned, Mel makes her way to the Rotramax and gets into the system.
Van Erp, Rotramax’s owner, is well aware of the privacy breaches, but she refuses to cooperate with the police interrogation. It’s the day of the automated bus launch, and Van Erp is about to give a demo bus tour for the 15 people onboard the automated bus and informs them that it’s completely safe.
While Mel attempts to get her facial recognition scan video from Rotramax’s system, Rogers arrives at the place and asks her to give him the encryption code for the trojan that disrupted his illegal business.
Mel tricks Rogers into thinking that she’ll get rid of the trojan code but when she finds him distracted on call, she attempts to run away. However, quickly after, the police catch her based on the information given by Thomas.
When Rogers destroys the server accidentally, the automated software system controlling the bus collapses, and the bus goes out of control. It’s concluded that the bus can’t be stopped without getting into the software via hacking. Hence, Mel is allowed to work on the software by Dries.
Did Mel Prove Her Innocence?
Fortunately, Thomas, who was released by the police, calls Mel just in time from Buddy’s phone to check in on her. Mel figures out that if Thomas can install the transmission device which is available in Buddy’s van on the bus, she can access the software through it and save the passengers.
Risking his life, Thomas chases the bus and manages to bring the van in front of the bus and enters the bus through the opening at the top. Finally, he places the transmission device which helps Mel get access to the software. Just when the bus is about to fall off the bridge, Mel manages to code her way into the system, bringing the bus to a screeching halt.
Having gotten her hands on the code, Mel also finds the video footage and finally proves to Dries her innocence, clearing her name from the murder accusation. The police end up arresting Rogers for his crimes.
After a few days, Mel and Thomas, who are happily dating, receive a video from Buddy. The video was scheduled to be sent out after some days of inactivity. In the video, Buddy reveals that while he was heartbroken at Mel’s betrayal, he did end up using the money he had to build a network for Mel that she can use in the future for her ethical hacking endeavors.
Thanks to Buddy’s generosity, Mel will no longer have to look for side hustles to do good with her exceptional hacking skills.
The Takeover is now streaming on Netflix.
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