MovieChat Forums > Whistle and I'll Come to You (2010) Discussion > Can someone please explain?

Can someone please explain?

posted 13 years ago by The_Man_The_Myth
12 replies | jump to latest

I quite enjoyed this. It has some genuinely creepy moments and the atmosphere was spot-on. However, I'll be damned if I understood any of it. The ring? What was that all about? Was his wife dead? Was she haunting him? Was it all in his mind?

I know it's possibly open to interpretation but the feeling I get reading about the original 60's dramatisation was that it was far less ambiguous than this.

Please help.

"People like Coldplay and voting for the Nazis - you can't trust people."

[–] NoodleLizard 13 years ago

Watch the 60s version, it's just better all around. In many ways it's more ambiguous, but on the whole it's a lot simpler.

The whole dementia wife plot was added for this one, and served as the foundation upon which the rest was hastily built upon - I suppose the ring (which was actually a whistle in the original (HENCE THE F|UCKING TITLE!)) is symbolic of a wedding ring. The rest isn't even worth thinking about - it was just playing right into the hands of modern horror audiences who are obsessed with bad "twist" endings and ideas shamelessly ripped-off from Asian horror movies.

These bastards!

[–] spotlightne 13 years ago

QUOTE:

by - StrappingYoungGent on Tue Dec 28 2010 17:37:19 Watch the 60s version, it's just better all around. In many ways it's more ambiguous, but on the whole it's a lot simpler...
================================================================

If the 1960s version is better then why didn't you explain it to the OP? Instead you ramble on about what's wrong with the 2010 version.

[–] NoodleLizard 13 years ago

He asked about the differences in the levels of ambiguity between the 2010 and 1960s version ... I explained, but without giving anything away about the latter (since he hasn't seen it yet). What's the problem?

I also answered his question about the ring.

In short, my post was a lot more useful to him than your one.

These bastards!

[–] noknickers 13 years ago

The whistle was perfectly explained with the use of the song.

Also, try looking up 'adaptation' and get off you high horse, you snob.

[–] NoodleLizard 13 years ago

Singing a few lines of a song doesn't explain anything.

And yes, it's an adaptation - just like the first TV version was. It doesn't make needless changes for the worse any more tolerable. Read the story, watch the 1960s TV version and then watch this one; it sticks out like a sore thumb because it misses pretty much everything which made the original version(s) what they were - they may as well have just abandoned any similarity to the source whatsoever and just made an original film.

These bastards!

[–] noknickers 13 years ago

This keeps coming back to the point that this was an adaptation.

Academic goes on holiday to lonely seaside resort

Finds mysterious item on beach

Gets haunted by figure on beach and things at his hotel

You claim to have read the original story but if you missed these points then I'm not sure you have.

[–] noknickers 13 years ago

The whistle was perfectly explained with the use of the song.

Also, try looking up 'adaptation' and get off you high horse, you snob.

[–] PurpleProseOfCairo 13 years ago

Forty five minutes of atmospheric tedium, ten very scary but confusing seconds and a fashionably confusing ending. I want my money back.

Awight we're The Daamned we're a punk baand and this is called Carn't Be Appy T'day!

[–] 13 years ago

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[–] By-TorX-1 13 years ago

How does the woman who runs the hotel discover the body, then? It is an interesting reading (a bit mind-bending, though) but it still does not change the whole thing from being a huge disappointment. If the BBC wants to make a ghostly tale about an imagined hotel and an elderly couple in limbo, fine, but why link it to a classic M.R. James story and bill it as an adaptation?

"Rap's Rambo! One man army had it with your mumbo jumbo. Switching roles now I'm Columbo".

[–] 13 years ago

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[–] splunkett2 7 years ago

The wife had died years previously in childbirth. The child also died. The ring with the inscription about waiting for who is to come refers to the anticipation of the child's birth. Her apparition on the beach showed her appearing to rock a baby in her empty arms. The weird bust of a child in the hotel room represented the lost child.

The angry banging at his door was a symbol of either his own rage at his losses and his now-empty life, or death coming for him. He did not believe in any sort of afterlife, or see much meaning in his human life, in his old age.

His wife's empty chair at the bizarre home signified that she was never really there. She had continued to live only in his memory. When he died, even that was gone.

In the alternative, he and his deceased wife had longed for a child they never had. Either way, a sad story. It bears little resemblance to the M.R. James classic, but still I enjoyed it for its evocative and moody atmosphere.