MovieChat Forums > The Moth Diaries (2012) Discussion > My Theory (Rebecca is a paranoid schizo)...

My Theory (Rebecca is a paranoid schizo) SPOILERS

posted 11 years ago by shwanks
7 replies | jump to latest

Rebecca is actually a paranoid schizophrenic.

-Charley just simply got high and did something dumb. Even if Ernessa did whisper in her ear and tell her to do it... She was high and out of control.

-Girl in room next to Ernessa's either really did commit suicide, or more likely--she went back on the ledge and slipped. Also, Ernessa didn't go through the window. Rebecca is just nuts.

-The teacher probably got attacked by an animal. (I don't know, best guess I can come up with.) Or Rebecca is so schizo that she killed her without remembering? but that's a far stretch.

-Lucy died of anorexia. It's very obvious. She stopped eating, she became very frail and anti-social, and stopped getting her periods.

-And in the end Rebecca lit the innocent new girl on fire. She sees the ghost Ernessa in the window--all in her head.

This would also explain why Rebecca is the only one who can smell the awful smell coming from Ernessa's room.

Also, Rebecca's dad wasn't mentally stable. Plus both are writers--writers tend to have a few screws loose.

This is just my random theory. (: Being a psych major, I always look at mental disorders as being an explanation in scary movies.

[–] matt-baen 11 years ago

I think that's a valid explanation and close to one of the possible scenarios I had about what was going on.

As a psych major you might enjoy the movies Let's Scare Jessica To Death, Habit, The Innocents, and The Tree (2010).

[–] TaxPayer99 11 years ago

The director certainly left the mental illness avenue open for consideration

[–] welsh_blue_blood 11 years ago

I agree. I watched the whole movie never really thinking of it as an actual vampire film. Its more the story of a highly unbalanced girl cracking up.

I think Rebecca starts the movie with mental health issues due to losing her dad and the trama of finding his dead body. And she is just about managing to stay stable. But even at the start of the movie you can see that Rebecca has issues and too strong of a hold over Lucy. They had a genuine love and friendship but right from the start Rebecca is possessive and suffocating Lucy.

It is stated more than once during the movie that Rebecca has inherited stuff from her father. I think that means his mental health problems as well as his imagination and talent for writing. An intensely vivid and artistic imagination mixed with paranoid schizophrenia. A dangerous combination.

As I said, I belive that she was already unbalanced and her jealousy over Lucy pushed her over the edge. Reading the book Carmilla then fed in to her paranoia. It put dark thoughts and images of vampirism in to her head and she projected it all on to Ernessa. Ernessa is actually an innocent girl that is only guilty of getting close to Lucy. But to Rebecca she becomes Carmilla.

Lucy definitely dies of anorexia. She was getting better when she was at the hospital because they were forcing her to eat. Not because Ernessa wasnt around. Lucy even got very touchy when the subject of anorexia came up when the girls were gossiping about Ernessa. She didnt get touchy because of loyalty to Ernessa. She became touchy because the subject of anorexia touched a nerve.

As far as the ending goes I think it actually went one of two ways. Either she actually did set her on fire and therefore murdered an innocent girl. Or Ernessa was never even in that room in the first place. So she would hopefully still be alive. Rebecca had hallucinated Ernessa being there and doing things in the past so it isnt a stretch of the imagination that she hallucinated that she was setting Ernessa on fire. When actually she was just setting an empty old room on fire.

[–] shwanks 11 years ago

That's a very valid point about the end, I never thought of that! I saw on the message board that there's a book. I need to read it now, maybe it will hint at even more.

[–] shwanks 11 years ago

Thanks for the tips! I'll try to find those.

[–] wanganegresse 10 years ago

Why would the new girl be sleeping in an antique trunk hidden behind a locked door in the off-limits basement?

[–] sanders_mike25 8 years ago

Personally I think Ernessa never really existed. Like A Beautiful Mind and Abandon, we have an unreliable protagonist so we really don't know whether or not what she was seeing or experiencing was really going on.

My Theory (Rebecca is a paranoid schizo) ***SPOILERS***

My Theory (Rebecca is a paranoid schizo) SPOILERS