The film is smart in that there are no less than three killers, as follows:
- There's the old Shaman that lurks in the woods, who obviously kills Robert Ritchie at the very end.
- A little earlier it's Robert Ritchie who kills his adulterous wife Julia, after she "killed" him and left him for dead in the barn (with good reason, I might add).
- However, it's Ben, the son of Robert and Julia -- returning home from the Marines -- who's the main killer throughout the movie, wearing a mask of the old Shaman.
While critics say this confuses things, I think it makes the film more interesting -- it's not just the proverbial boogeyman who has the potential to kill, but everyday fathers, mothers and children.
There was no motivation for anyone to kill Rose (the doctor's daughter) or the guy she was screwing... Are we to believe it was the Shaman? ...I'm referring to the scenes in the very beginning.
There are two possibilities regarding who killed Rose & her date (the couple that left the basketball game in order to copulate at the camp):
1. It may have been Ben as a boy since he was at the scene of the crime (by the huge hollow log). If so, he was wearing the mask of the old Shaman, as revealed at the end when the Sheriff pulls the mask off.
To explain, we know the Sheriff left his patrol car in the woods to have sex with Julia in the barn or what have you (I have no idea why he left the emergency lights on, even if the encounter was going to be a "quickie"; I'm assuming the director made the decision for practical reasons -- to have proper lighting for those scenes).
Ben couldn't handle keeping his mother's unfaithfulness a secret and it psychologically drove him to create a fiendish dark side. In this specific situation, he would've been angry about his mother having sex with the Sheriff and so has a fit, killing the teen couple who just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.
2. Another possibility is that the Shaman murdered Rose & her beau and Ben just happened to be there to see it. And this is what inspires him to become a killer wearing the Shaman mask. The Shaman's motivation would've been that he was simply a crazy aged AmerIndian, known for cursing his own people and having a penchant for attacking trespassers in general.
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