Okay so, Heather's power was being able to balance things. Why did the 'witches' need her, what purpose did her power serve? I guess I am asking, is there some sort of signifigance to 'balancing' that was needed to transfer the witches souls back into their bodies?
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I think each of the girls had rolls of significance and also had a teach that was fond of them. Marcy had a 'Siren' voice, Anne I'm not so sure, chanting?
Heather to balance things. Balance is important to most religions and cultures.
I think Heather's power to balance gave Ms. Traverse the power to finally complete her spell.
This is all just half baked here. Though, once I see the movie again I probably can think of a better reason.
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Yeah they needed the 3 to complete the spell to free the rest of the family's spirits and give them the bodies of the rest of the girls, blood, singing and balance.
She explained it in the end.
"Life is something that happens when you can't get to sleep."
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This is just my impression as a viewer, so take it all with a grain of salt...
I know it sounds weird but the concept of balancing rocks struck me as a vivid visual metaphor for a special state of mind...call it meditation, contemplation, ecstasy, charism, dhyana or a number of other words.
I think a lot of people are getting the impression that balancing rocks was itself a unique gift that was somehow a piece of the puzzle the witches needed to complete, but I didn't get that impression. It rather seemed to me that it was simply an indicator that she was more spiritually in tune than the average person. She was able to enter into that state of mind that allows a person to work magic.
Again I know it sounds weird but the image of balancing rocks communicates fairly vividly how it feels to be in a state of dhyana. It seems to be the idea of the movie that a person who can do this is in contact with their spiritual powers.
Maybe that doesn't make any sense at all, I don't know exactly how to say it.
No I think your answer was well put... reasonable.
I like yours better than mines
You're not my own critic!
wow....i never really got it either...but after reading psychicaudio's theory...it makes sense...they did say they needed her, but never really explained why but with this it puts 2 and 2 together.
shareOne thing that I liked about this movie was that everything wasn't explained at the end. Some movies I like to have everyting explained, but this one I like leaving it open for discussions. I think balancing the stones was like building a bridge for the other consciousness to take over the girls. As Heather built the stones higher, the branches and roots seemed to wrap around the girls more.
I don't think the three girls were human at all, at least Clarkson's character in 1965 had black blood. I don't know about the other girls from the past, but I think the woods were trying to find people with enough power to release them into human forms. Throughout the years girls with power were kept there and they became the teachers. That explains why there were more than three members of the cult at the end. I'd have to watch the movie again to see if one of the original three girls had her neck broken, but it seemed when the one girl was telling the old story that two girls had branches wrapped around their necks and heads, that would explain the one teacher's twitching all the time; she always had her neck covered. She may have been one of the three original girls, only allowed to age. So at least I don't think Clarkson's character was human at all, the other two might have been, but weren't powerful enough so they were killed, but possessed as the other teachers were over the years. The ones with power became the teachers and the cult.
Then in 1965 they finally found three girls with enough power to release the sprits of the woods. I wish they would have explained the girls' powers better, but the blonde girl seemed to have some psychic power over dreams, when she communicated with Heather through Heather's first dream, before Heather had even met her. The other girl had a special singing voice that may have allowed her to open a channel to let the spirits through. In some cultures song spells and voice intonements were used to communicate with higher beings, and I think that is what was going on here. Heather had the power to balnce the objects, some sort of "Carrie" like telekentic power, but in this case I think it was used to build a bridge between the worlds. The other girl used her voice to call to the spirits, while the blonde girl communicated with her psychic powers. Togther they were supposed to use their powers to bring through the spirits of the woods to possess the other girls. i don't know, but that's what I got out of it.
My take was that the three girls (including Miss Traverse) who originally came out of the woods were three of the wood spirits. For a century they collected girls with power to help them free their sisters. As the spirits were freed the girls who helped to free them were consumed and so more had to be found. The spirits who were freed became the teachers, not the girls who helped free them.
shareThat's a decent interpretation... I just wish the movie could have portrayed her balancing skills in such a way that they didn't look like Junior Jedi mindtricks. As it is they didn't come off as 'balancing', they looked like she was holding them up with her mind... particularly the silly bit with the pieces of broken radio.
Even then... singing, balancing and bleeding seem pretty darn random and not particularly creepy/scary... well, being 'gifted' at bleeding is kind of creepy, but otherwise... meh.
I thought she had the gift of telekinesis just did not know how to fully use it-particularly with the story of her staring fires (if I heard right my cc wasn't working on this movie)before she came to he school.
I can't hear you over the volume of my hair.
Well, balancing rocks was part of the ritual they needed to do, along with Marcy's singing. I'm not sure *why* it was part of the ritual, but it was.
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I always though Anne was being drained of her blood, and that was her only "special" gift.
From the ashes springs new life
I just watched it on Netflix instant (and had to rewatch it because I felt a bit confused at the end and wanted to clarify a few points).
I noticed when the story of Clara is being told that Clara and her two other sisters have the same "powers" that Anne, Heather, and Marcy have when they possess the other students that follow them into the woods. If you pause it you can see that the witch on the left has her mouth open and moving like she is singing. Clara (who is in the middle) is balancing rocks. And the witch on the right has all those vines around her face and you see blood dripping (kind of like what happens to Anne).
I'm not sure why these three powers (singing/chanting, balancing, and blood) are necessary for the spell but I did notice that the three original witches do those same things. So perhaps, since they did them, they needed three other girls with the same powers. Marcy and Anne were easier to find (a good singing voice and blood) but Heather was, as Samantha said, the key or the final piece of the puzzle because she could balance rocks like Clara (i.e. Ms. Traverse, right? It seemed like they were suggested that Ms. Traverse was Clara, which is why she oversaw Heather's supernatural training).
I can tell you this, singing, blood letting and balancing of stones (Stonehenge anyone?) were all considered important aspects of pagan Druid rituals harnessing the power of nature. Maybe the writer was familiar with this (or more likely did 15 minutes of research on "druid ceremonies") and thought it made sense to weave this into the story. They could have done a better job conveying that these three girls had these marvelous powers though. Maybe show Anne bleeding and every drop caused things to sprout as if to show the potency of her blood and we needed more than just Marcy singing choir songs to know she had magic vocal chords. Maybe a scene where she is singing to herself and it causes flowers to open or something. And Heather should have been in a flashback scene where we see her as a young child balancing toys or pebbles or something with her mind. And her mother secretly observing this and thus explaining why she feared her. But hey Im no Hollywood script writer...
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Back in the day, the three witches were discovered and ostracized. They made a pact with the forest spirits to take revenge on the non-witch girls at the school, in exchange for the non-witch girls souls, as spiritual capital, and employ the three witches as servants to the forest in the quest for more. The academy was business as usual or generations where non-scholarship girls would come learn and leave. However, the witches tired of being enslaved and indebted to the forest, award scholarships to candidates who can replicated the spell the three witches performed,whereby,taking on the burden of the curse, and the the three witches' debt. The witches were teaching the special girls the tools to implement the spell. It took a hundred years for girl like Heather to come around. When she did, the spell went on. In the meantime, girls who could not cut it were killed.
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