well...who the hell is *spolier*

Well, there are very, very subtle hints that the mom is crazy. I'll quote a post I wrote up about this movie (of course my opinions on what exactly means what) in an attempt to explain it:



I will try to sum this up the best I can after having watched it, and then rechecked a few scenes...


As far as the mother being allowed out of the institution and around her children, ESPECIALLY being allowed to have another child...that you just have to chalk up to it being cinema; perhaps just assume that she was deemed "cured" and "fit for society" by a psychiatrist or something--again, cinema.

There is a scene where the mother is fumbling through her bags, and she tells her husband "you forgot my blue bag." ---which I assume is the bag with her medication in it that she takes to help control this split personality.

Not too much later after that scene, the father goes back to Madrid and will be returning the next day. The explanation was that he had to do something at the office, without much explanation why. I assume the mother was just telling the kids that, and that he actually returned to get the medication that was forgotten at home.
In this same scene the kids unlock the basement--which the keys were left with the father's friend, Carlos (perhaps to keep the mother from being able to go downstairs and see all of the old memorabilia that was down there--which I assume would cause a relapse). One interesting thing was that Cristian and July found a poem written by their mother with the opening line "When my light goes out..." which Cristian then quickly stopped July from continuing to read due to it being "boring."

Next, with the mother now missing her doses of medication, you see her sleeping while it is daylight outside with a lamp turned on at her bedside--with this I am going to assume that either she has already been changing into her Elvira personality and staying up all night (there was a scene where the dog was barking at something at night--perhaps Elvira trying to get into the maze) or else she is sleeping during the day so that she can try to stay up at night surrounded by light in an attempt to prevent Elvira from forming while she is off her meds.


While the mother is asleep, Cristian and July decide to go videotape in the maze. As they go to the gate, they unlock the chain link that was keeping it shut. During these same scenes of walking through the maze, they notice a person (their mother) hunched down looking at something. I assume that the reason the maze gate was chain linked shut was to help prevent the mother from venturing out there and seeing something that would trigger a relapse to Elvira (perhaps what she was hunched down looking at).


Now that the mother has her Elvira personality coming back, she kills the dog. Cristian and July find the dog at the bottom of the well, and return to the house while it is still daylight out, walking upstairs assuring Jose that everything will be ok, you can still see sunlight shining in through the window. Now they are upstairs, and it is found out that the sister unplugged the camera cable so they would be unable to see what happened to the dog, and then you see them laying in bed (nighttime) when the mother starts to frantically call Jose's name.
--Now you can assume that sometime after Cristian and July went upstairs (perhaps they had dinner as a family then went up or something--or maybe they even just stayed up there all day) the mother turned into Elvira and overpowered / killed Jose (perhaps lured him outside and did it to prevent any noise from traveling). Then after killing Jose, Elvira put him in the fireplace and lit it, and then eventually returned to her normal personality. So, you hear her calling frantically for Jose and then comes upstairs telling Cristian to come help, because I assume she doesn't realize what her Elvira personality did. As July is walking down the stairs filming Cristian, right before she exits the house you can see that the fireplace has a fire burning in it.


Being out in the maze in the dark of course brings her back into her Elvira personality. It was said earlier on that the mother pretty much knew the maze like the back of her hand earlier in the movie. Which can help her navigating through it after dark, plus her not using a flashlight could also lend to her developing the night eyes that people get after being exposed to darkness without light for a certain period of time. It is not impossible for people to develop a form of super-type strength, especially when facing psychological conditions such as what the mother is facing, therefore that can be used to explain her overpowering her son. As for the daughter being able to recognize what had happened to her; when the son found her, she was obviously in a state of shock / unconscious (the brother had to move her in order to get a reaction from her), so perhaps before she even realized it was the mother she could have been knocked out and dragged / tied up.


Then of course you see what happens from there with the daughter, and the brother. And for those of you who are saying the father is dead, we do not know what happened to the father (have to assume he is alive and is on his way to find out what had happened); the one who called 911 was Carlos, who was the father's friend that Cristian and July saw driving up to the house earlier in the movie. I assume he found the bodies of Cristian, July, and Jose, then called the police in his frantic shock that you heard him in as soon as he saw the bodies--the operator even asked if anyone was in the home and he stated he didn't know, which shows he wasn't really looking much or for too long. So most likely the mother was in the home at the time he called 911, and killed him just as he was reporting it, because the police found him dead on arrival.



It is 4 in the morning right now, I am bored, so there is my best explanation! hahaha. Every other hole such as the VHS tapes of the mom's therapy sessions, I would say just chalk it up to the movies.