what is the purpose of the story of the piper?

Hello. The 2 stories depict the painful effects disaster can have on a small town.There is loss depicted in both cases.In this movie, the parents lose their kids because they die whereas in pied piper the parents lose them as they follow the pied piper and never return!!

I saw it in two contexts:

1. The Pied Piper was death, taking the children of the bus accident away because many of their parents had hidden sins. Nicole was left behind as the lame child.

2. The Pied Piper was the lawyer, who was trying to lead the grieving parents away from their normal lives down a path of deception and corruption.

The way the story was told in the movie was far more subtle and ambiguous than the way I remember it being told to as a kid.

Nicole's father is also a metaphorical piper, promising her a future as a rock star and luring her into an incestuous relationship, which she is eventually denied, as the "lame one".

I took the Piper as a story of stolen innocence. The piper steals the children.

examples in the movie:

father steals the innocence of his daughter
bus accident kills innocent children
attorney steals the innocence of the small town with the law suit
drugs take away his daughter's innocence