I'm guessing this movie is full of symbolism

Overall I liked it... I can't really explain why. It was definitely weird, and a bit sad. After reading the trivia section, it is interesting to read that the original script called for Sonny Boy to be a deformed monster (hence the ability to rip people apart and the more FRANKENSTEINish aspects later on).

Taken on face value, it's pretty stupid: why didn't the sheriff much less any of the "Harmony" townsfolk simply assassinate Paul Smith and/or his family, especially when Brad Dourif was bragging about the family's secret weapon?

But on a more symbolic viewpoint, I can more understand what the director was trying to get at, specifically why he decided to use a good looking male actor as opposed to the original monster concept. I took SONNY BOY to be a look at how a family can manipulate a child into a tool to be used by the parents, whether it's how you see mothers turn their six year old daughters into beauty pageant contestants, or push them into acting or singing, much as fathers may push their sons into sports to fulfill an unfulfilled goal in their own life. You also have the opposite aspect of a parent simply treating their offspring as a hired hand to be used as a tool. The sheriff and the lawyer (Charlie P.) represent how impotent "the system" is, much less how it can invert to serve the criminal element against the people. Rose represented freedom (as she is the one who provokes Sonny Boy to want to leave and be more than a tool for his father), where the doctor represents the failed dreams of most older adults (though he does succeed in giving Sonny his voice back, after it was taken away from him by his father).

Now maybe I'm seeing too much into this, but I did appreciate the ambiguous ending, so much as Sonny didn't ride off into the sunset with his girl. Even if he did, there was always the lingering memories of what he did and the people he killed, being the monster with a conscious that he was.

I would also like to add this comment from NOZZ from one of the other threads:

"I don't like violent movies, but-- at least as I saw it broadcast-- this was not a what I would call a violent movie. A violent story, but not particularly gruesome visually. I see it as showing a little world, Slue's compound, in which women are excluded and violence has taken over the function of love. Sonny Boy is at first embraced as a triumph by which that world can perpetuate itself, but inevitably he comes into contact with the normal world and even his extreme conditioning hasn't completely immunized him against its influence."

One last note: I find it amuzing that the drunk doctor in this looks a lot like the drunk clown doctor in the Adult Swim show CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL.