the ending -SPOILERS-

no one else is confused by this? :S

I agree the ending is a bit of a letdown. I thought the first half was pretty scary but the film basically fell apart in the second half. For one thing I was disappointed that the wife & the husband were kept apart for so long because the two actors did a really good job of conveying how much affection they had for each other in the early part of the film & that love between them - which could have boosted the drama enormously - was ignored in favour of a cliched 'wife thinks husband is mad' setup. Also, why does the husband abruptly become so obsessive about what's going on in the house? That didn't make sense to me. I kept expecting an explanation but we never got one. What was the point of the scenes with the old woman? She hangs around outside the old house, delivers a few lines but the script can't seem to find a satisfying use for her. And the final scene, with the wife screaming that it wasn't her husband, seemed highly contrived. The wife spends the entire film being the sceptic & suddenly she undergoes a complete role reversal for the sake of the plot! I agree it's bizarre that the filmmakers didn't feel the need to show/explain what happened when the husband went back into the room to find the baby. Nor did they explain why the other man was his exact double. Was the woman in the bath his wife? And why did he murder them anyway? As I say the first half half of The Baby's Roomis terrific but the second half much less so. Still, I've seen worse & at least the acting here was uniformly good.

Mai Yamane! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mD83P-vn5JI&feature=related

I understand the ending, except for one thing. Why would the "good" Juan, choose to stay in the other world and let the "evil" Juan go free? It doesn't make sense, I could see if he was forcibly made to stay, but the show him alive and well at the end. So why? What was different there?

Some of the responses may have touched on some of this--apologies if I'm repeating some info already given above.

Aside from the typical horror/haunted house film trappings, this was unique in being a film inspired by the "many worlds" interpretation of quantum mechanics . . . by way of the Schrodinger's Cat thought experiment and a lot of literary license. The basic idea was explained by the old guy (sorry, I forgot his name--I'm terrible with remembering character names) from the newspaper who Juan went to see at home.

Here are the ideas from the world of science in a nutshell . . . this will be oversimplified a bit, but I'm trying to keep it as short as possible. The best thing to do is read about this stuff--either in books or by googling:

* The standard view in quantum mechanics is that subatomic particles are often in "superpositions", where they're not really in one state or another. For example, say for the idea of spin, where spin could be in direction x or incompatible direction y--the standard view is that the particle is not really in either spin state, but in an indeterminate state somewhere between both. Things like observations result in the particle settling into one state or another, for at least some properties (there are things other than observation that can do this on most theories, such as decoherence).

* There is an interpretation of quantum mechanics called the "many worlds" interpretation. Under this, it is believed that every possible state is actual, it's just that there are many worlds, constantly branching off from each other. An implication of this is that there would be a HUGE number of duplicate "yous", each having branched off from your current you at each point that quantum superpositions would have been in play. So there are duplicate yous branching off at just about each "moment" of your history. (One of the biggest contemporary proponents of this theory, by the way, is a guy named David Deutsch, so if you're interested in reading more about it, google him in conjunction with "many worlds".)

* There is a thought experiment about the standard view (from the first point), known as "Schrodinger's Cat" (this is what the old guy in the film mentions). The idea was initially to show the absurdity of the standard view, under the interpretation that human observations are what make the superposition collapse or resolve, but it kinda backfired on Erwin Schrodinger (the guy who came up with the thought experiment) and is instead often taken to be more of an explanatory aid than a refutation. The idea is that if you put a cat in a box that's sealed off from any kind of outside observation, and in that box, set up a device that contains a vial of poison gas, and make it so that the poison gas is controlled by a subatomic particle in a superposition so that if the particle has spin "+", say, the poison will be released, but if the particle has spin "-", the poison will not be released, then per the standard view where the particle is in some indeterminate state between the two prior to observation, it would follow that the cat is in an indeterminate state between life and death prior to observation.

--all of the above are actually views in science, believe it or not . . . not science fiction. I won't comment much on my views about their worth as theories/ideas/etc., except to say that my view of them isn't very charitable, lol. But that doesn't matter, the important thing is to know something about and understand something about those ideas.

SO, this film is basically positing Juan and his family as being something like Schrodinger's cat, with their home as something like the box the cat is in in the thought experiment. The idea is that you're seeing the superposition of Juan and family--being two ways at once, or that you're seeing how Juan and his family are in two of the many worlds (and this is where a lot of the literary license comes in, because a lot of things about the film don't quite make sense in the context of the usual scientific views about this stuff--especially not the contemporary views (where quantum superpositions do not obtain on a macro level, for example, because of decoherence)).

In a way similar to how time travel paradoxes tend to occur in film, this film has a superposition paradox on the assumption that Juan from one of the many worlds (where he's good) can create a "bridge" to Juan of one of the other many worlds (where it turned out that he murdered his wife and kid). The way he does this is with the aid of a now traditional "contacting spirits" device--through technology that can pick up electromagnetic signals from the other world. Specifically, the technology allows him to not only see a door that only still exists in the other world (the door that used to be where a wall now is in the "good Juan's" world--this is where the window was covered up, too, that he notices from outside), but to manipulate that door. It's important to notice in that scene that in the one world, Juan is just running his hand along a wall with no door, but in the other world, viewed through the baby monitor, his hand touches the doorknob and is able to open it. Opening that door was opening the bridge to the other world, which allowed the "bad Juan" to cross over. From that point on, the bad Juan has free access to the "good Juan's" world, there are two Juans in one world (but not two of his wife or baby, as in the "bad Juan's" world at that point, they're already dead), and that's still the case when the film ends.

The old woman, by the way, seemed as if maybe she was supposed to be the observer who would cause the collapse of the quantum superposition--and the radio was her observation device. However, as she was crazy--she wasn't just any old observer, but a crazy one--she might have been the person responsible for Juan's ability to bridge the other world.


http://www.rateyourmusic.com/~JrnlofEddieDeezenStudies

I'm not gonna get into all the scientific mumbo-jumbo, but I do agree with several posters that the 1st half of the film was brilliant, while the 2nd half was only "so-so" & just seemed to fall apart.

Me & my wife were a little thrown off by the end...MAINLY Juan on the TV watching over the baby (apparently trapped in the OTHER world...but not by force or anything).

My straight up interpretation was that OW Juan did indeed "force" his was to the RW Juan's life (his hand was not cut), leaving RW Juan in his world...evident by the hermit old man's explanation halfway through the film as well as the intro where a boy is taken into a puddle (his reflection) only to have his doppleganger re-emerge (all traumatized lookin') later...

all in all, it was a pretty weak build up & ending...a shame!

--
Machete: 7/10
Graduate: 8/10
Date Night: 5.5/10
Fade To Black: 6.5/10

I think maybe there is just ONE baby and ONE wife, but good Juan switches with bad Juan just so he won't kill them, and now good Juan is the "ghost." Cause earlier in the movie they saw bad Juan "sitting" next to the baby on the monitor, but that didn't mean he was in the real word, so neither does it have to mean that good Juan was in the real world at the end. He was just watching over the baby from "the other side." I may be wrong, that's just my take! :) Good movie, just kinda confusing.

Just thought I would clear this up once and for all: at the end of the film RealJuan does not have the baby.

Remember how the very first time that RealJuan saw OtherJuan it was through the baby monitor? The camera was in the baby's room in the RealWorld pointed at the crib. On the screen RealJuan sees the RealBaby in its crib and OtherJuan sitting next to it.

RealJuan is seeing the two worlds combined into one image. The RealBaby is in its room in the RealWorld and OtherJuan is in the baby's room in the OtherWorld, but they both show up in one image. The last shot of the film is a repeat of this image under different circumstances.

Just before the end of the film OtherJuan has crossed into the RealWorld with the RealBaby leaving RealJuan trapped in the OtherWorld (by stealing the monitor and camera). After the RealWife is taken to the hospital OtherJuan must have come back into the empty house, placed the RealBaby into the crib and aimed the camera at it (note that the camera is not present in the final shot, only the monitor).

The camera now shows the RealBaby in the RealWorld, and RealJuan in the OtherWorld, combined into one image. RealJuan is trapped in the other world, in the OtherBaby's room, alone (remember, the OtherBaby and the OtherWife were murdered by OtherJuan). RealJuan only appears to be next to the baby, the way that OtherJuan did in the beginning of the film, because of the overlap of the two worlds.

The one good part of this is that the existence of the camera means that it could still be possible for RealJuan to find his way back to the RealWorld and defeat OtherJuan, but for now he is trapped and anyone who questions OtherJuan will appear insane.

"so the juan from the other world(OW) got into the real word(RW) but how? in the end the good juan is seen just sitting there... i mean did they fight? why would the good juan just let him into the RW and allow himself just to stay in the (OW)

im very confused, he loved his family so much so what the hell happened?!"

It's not that confusing if you paid attention to details.

During the middle, there's a scene where "Juan 2" kills his wife, but you can see that she reacts to him normally, really loves him and is completely unaware that he is about to kill her (she is shocked when he stabs her).

Now, there was never "evil" version of Juan. Whole movie is based on hyper-reality, meaning there are countless dimensions of the same events\people. In Juan2 world, he kills his wife.

In Juan1 world, he has a fight with his wife (at the end). She is freaked out by him, and they had a fight when he tries to leave with baby. They would probably never recover from that event or trust each other.

So... Juan1 and Juan2 switch places, because in Juan2 dimension that fight never happened and his wife fully loves and trust him, opposite of Juan1 dimension wife. In other words, both Juans will do what they always wanted (Juan1 living with his wife and child, loving them both), Juan2 probably killing his wife and child, only in their alternative dimensions)

That's why Juan1 has that sad and worried look on his face in the last shot, because he knows what Juan2 will do in dimension that was once his.

anyway, it's a really great movie with intelligent story, and perfect example how horror movies can be simple when it comes to effect, but be effective when it comes to story. Those shots of Juan2 just sitting beside baby (at the beginning of the movie) were LOT creepier then any high production monster (or CGI effect).