My take on the film

*** Severe Spoiler Warning ***

(This is quite long, as it is a very in-depth examination of the movie. Ye've been warned.)

I saw this on The Movie Network tonight, and I turned it on about 5 minutes in so I missed the very beginning where Raden's and Sara's childhood friendship is established, but I think I've been able to gather what happens in those few minutes from reading other posts. I have to say, it's refreshing to finally find a movie that requires intelligence to truly enjoy it. I've read a bunch of posts in the 11:11 board, and I think I have a unique perspective to bring to it from what everyone else has said.

It's fairly obvious that Sara was being groomed by Raden to serve some purpose, which is evident from when Raden says "You weren't ready then." That clearly implies that Raden was taking steps to make Sara ready for something. Remember how it's repeated throughout the movie that Sara and Raden grew up together? That's plenty of time. I think the movie's not about Sara, but about Raden.

Let's work backward. Very near the end of the movie, we see Sara with a gun to Seth's head, twice. The first time she makes a deal to go with Raden if she lets Seth live, and the second time she shoots him. In both instances, Sara ends up going willingly with Raden. I think the first time we see what Sara sees, and the second time we see what actually happens. Raden knows that Seth will do everything in his power to keep her and Sara apart, so she has Sara kill him while thinking that she's making a deal to let him live. The key is that she has to go willingly.

But why is it so important for Sara to be the person Raden goes after? Raden says it herself, some people are born with one foot in the corporeal world and the other in the spiritual. Sara's professor told her she was basically a beacon for paranormal energy. This clearly made Sara unique in such a way that Raden could make use of her.

Sara clearly wasn't ready yet though. She had to be led in to a situation where it would make logical sense to her to go with someone who's (quite plainly) evil. This is usually done through psychological attack, in this case by plucking how Sara says she wishes people would die and making it happen. Laura drowns, Jake burns, and we can only assume Dacia choked on a guitar string.

Raden also had to make sure Sara would survive long enough to fulfil her purpose. That meant standing in the road when Jake kidnapped her (notice how she didn't even flinch, as if she knew Jake would swerve in time?), and breaking Jake's window to distract him when he was about to tear in to Sara. In both those cases she seemed to appear out of nowhere, just in the nick of time.

January 11, 1992 was the first time she did this, by shooting the two escaped criminals before they could shoot Sara. Sara said she didn't shoot either of them, but the first one took the bullet square in the chest. Further, the second one didn't see Raden on his way in! He enters the frame from the left, and is then shot from the left, so the only reasonable way for him to not see her is if she wasn't there at all, and spontaneously appeared as she does the other times in the movie.

We know from the end of the movie that she can influence people enough to make them pull a trigger, so I think she made Sara shoot the first criminal, but Sara wasn't mentally mature enough to realize she'd done it because it wasn't her choice. Then Sara lowered the gun, so it wasn't possible for her to shoot the second criminal, so Raden had to materialize and shoot him herself, which is why he was shot from an angle.

But if Sara is the one Raden was after, why was she hanging around Sara's Mom and Aunt, Claire and Laura? I have two theories for this. The first is that she really wanted to make sure Sara would be born and survive as needed. Under this explanation, it's entirely reasonable to assume that she'd been tracking Sara's eventual conception for generations, perhaps even influencing her ancestors' mating choices, just to make sure everything went to plan. By Jan 11 1992, Claire was no longer needed because Sara had already been born, so it didn't matter whether Claire lived or died. It turns out she was destined to die, and as Raden says, you can't escape your fate.

My second theory is that she initially felt Claire had the properties she required in a person to use them, and she was probing her to see if she was right. It then turned out that Claire's relevant traits were latent, and that Raden would just have to wait another generation for them to become prominent. If you recall, Raden looked really, really upset in the close-up of her on the film.

Either way, Sara was then born, and Raden had the person she required. She appeared to Sara and started playing with her as a child, and it wasn't relevant for Claire to see her so she didn't let her. Then when Claire was murdered, she was able to see Raden, and realized what she was. Sara said she started seeing her mother almost as soon as she died, and the book in the library said the third type of possession was in order to warn the person about something. It stands to reason that someone would also be valid.

Since the 11th gate isn't supposed to open until 2011, the movie clearly isn't about opening it. Actually, it's quite clearly established that the movie takes place during the opening of the 7th gate. The book that information is taken from exists for two reasons: to give context to the movie, and to introduce the concept of Absolons.

I think it's generally accepted that Raden is a demon Absolon. What is Claire? Whenever someone dies in this movie, they always have an out-of-body experience and then vanish. Claire is the only person in the entire movie who dies and then keeps coming back. I think Claire is an angel Absolon, but Raden always controls more of the situation because she's more powerful.

Remember how Sara says she started seeing visions of her Mom after she died, but that the visions were getting progressively more frequent? It stands to reason that when Claire first became an Absolon, she was very weak, and was only able to appear infrequently and for short periods of time. As time passed, her strength grew, and she was able to appear more frequently, eventually even manifesting instances of 11:11 on the porch and in the wine.

The only time Claire and Raden are ever in proximity is in the graveyard as they're burying Laura. Claire approaches and reaches her hand out, and Raden literally appears out of nowhere to tell Sara everyone's looking at her, at which point Claire is gone. Odds are Raden used her power to send Claire away, and she didn't reappear until she drew Sara's attention to the books in the library, to alert her to the 11:11 prophecy more directly.

Of course, if all this is true, then what exactly was Raden grooming Sara for? Remember that the radio was talking about how there's all kinds of scientific evidence to support the theories of reincarnation? That's the only part of the movie that hasn't yet been brought in to play. Since nothing in the movie was just for show, it stands to reason that the ending of the movie has something to do with this event near the beginning.

The second theory for the armageddon foretold in the 11:11 prophecy was that it was transcendence to a new form of life, which is very similar in scope to reincarnation. If Claire became an angel Absolon when she died, it stands to reason that Raden became a demon Absolon when she died, destined to appear 7 years old for all eternity. Suddenly, Sara came along, with all her extra-sensory power, and was just what Raden needed. Then Raden started aging, because Sara expected her to, and between their abilities it began happening. Now Raden was growing older in appearance, but she still wasn't alive again.

In getting Sara to voluntarily turn herself over, Raden had finally gained the last thing she needed: someone willing to sacrifice their own life for her. Raden led Sara to the portal, where they returned in appearance to the ages they were when Raden died, and when Sara met her. Then they went through the portal, and Raden was reincarnated at the same age she died, but in present time.

Claire knew what Raden needed, which is why she was going to such great lengths to try to warn Sara away, and it had to be Sara because of her mental abilities. She was wrong though, probably due to how recently she'd become an Absolon; Raden didn't need someone to actually die for her, she just needed someone who was willing. Since Sara never died, she was returned to the present time exactly as she'd left it: 19 years old.