I just noticed something...

Last night I gave this film another viewing. I noticed something that I didn't notice before. In the scene where James and Sara are in the woods, venturing off into the seven gates of hell...James didn't technically drop acid. And here I always assumed that he did. Sara is the one who dropped acid, and then kissed James, passing the LSD over into his bloodstream. I'm not sure if that's even possible...but still, it's something that I just noticed. Now the plot makes more sense. James basically feels like he's lost his mind, due to the seven gates of hell urban legend. But in reality, he unknowingly tripped on acid, and has now found himself in a nightmarish trip that never ends. It's as if going through a bad trip was similar to hell (the 7th gate that he intended to find). I think the film is using a bad trip as a metaphor for being trapped inside an internal hell. The message the film is trying to send, is that hell isn't a real physical place...it's a mindset that we ourselves manifest. If that makes sense.

But still, that doesn't explain what happened to Sara...