MovieChat Forums > Ask Me Anything (2014) Discussion > End Theories (Spoilers)

End Theories (Spoilers)

posted 9 years ago by odonnellnicole
39 replies | jump to latest

I think that Katie was abducted/killed and the director left many clues to show this point. The mother asks (something along these lines) "who would have wanted my daughter dead.... anyone" and the viewer is left with this same sentiment.

1) She texts Christian Slater's character that night saying "we need to meet". She could have told him she was pregnant, not taken Martin Sheen's advice and tried to convince him to leave his wife, then he could have killed her.

2) Martin Sheen's character locked the bookstore door and was super creepy when she went to talk to him. (esp. the whole "I will take care of your child" thing, which he denies when talking to the cops). He is a likely suspect esp because the viewer is only seeing him through Katie's eyes and not as he actually is (which the real version of him in the end is not as glamorized, mostly because he is a normal (not famous person) which is what I think the director was going for at the end of the film.

3) Her boyfriend or Justin Long could have been upset about the pregnancy and killed her.

4).Her mentally unstable friend, Joel, left her a mean voicemail and could have also been the killer,

I don't think she just randomly disappeared without a trace. The only part of the film that supports this type of end for Katie is the fact that all of her employers paid her in cash.

[–] movieloverforever343 9 years ago

3. She mailed a letter to that old guy from the flashback. She said he'd be really old or maybe dead. Perhaps he got the letter and it was him?

[–] raceblakhart 9 years ago

She never mailed the letter. It was just a therapeutic exercise as was explained when the therapist said "the letter isn't for him".

[–] Jutlander 9 years ago

She did put something into that mailbox, though.

I agree that it was meant to be a therapeeutic exercise as the therapist said so, but I cannot see what else it would have been that she put in the mailbox.

[–] KingoftheAndalsandFirstMen 9 years ago

Another alternative...as the blog had many fabrications and she did impersonate her mother once before, the ending may have been the blogs author's way of walking away from the blog without having any further expectations.

[–] TheSsm 9 years ago

This is a fantastic interpretation of the movie. The movie did show that everyone that she described had a completely different appearance in the end, including herself. And it is very well possible that she could be impersonating her mother in the end to give a grand end to her work. But I was wondering if you could explain why she would ask people to mail her or contact her if they had any information. Do you think it was just to increase the traffic of her blog or was it to see what kind of responses she gets in the end?

[–] KingoftheAndalsandFirstMen 9 years ago

My interpretation of this particular scenario would be she asks for people that have information to contact her, for one, because that is the expected thing to say in those types of situations. Also, it could have been for her own entertainment, to see what type of responses she received, as well as to keep further interest in her blog. Even if she was choosing to no longer actively continue the blog, she may still have occasionally monitored it for her own amusement, and she did leave the door open by going 'missing' rather than dying that she could possibly return at some point if she so chooses.

This is just one interpretation, the other interpretations are good ones as well. But with our protagonists penchant for being less than honest and attention seeking, a fabrication like this would fit the profile perfectly.

[–] TheSsm 9 years ago

It does make sense. Reading these inferences makes the movie way more thrilling than it appeared when I actually watched it. :)

[–] ananeke 9 years ago

That would be an interesting theory. She clearly never contacted anyone of her readers, she liked the whole anonymity of the blog, so she would know no one would have any information about her. So if it was a ruse, she could just be writing like a grieving mother would.

Good theory.

[–] roeheh 9 years ago

This is my favorite interpretation.

The entire movie, Katie is trying to find her way in life, even if it doesn't appear that way on the surface. She gets sucked in when these men share their "wisdom" with her (think back to her excitement over receiving that life advice note from the man she babysat for). She doesn't go off to college like most of her friends, but she is desperately trying to get a life going. The longer she breaks from posting on her blog, the more this becomes clear. People with lives, as she puts it, don't write or read blogs. Her readers get angry though. They have become attached through reading her thoughts, and feel like they know her, and she owes them. Funny enough, this kind of happens to us as viewers of this movie. We get an intimate view of her life, and we start to care. But then we get cut off the same way the readers of her blog did - the mother saying she's missing (which is most likely Katie ending her blog).

Katie says at one point "we all want to be famous," about her generation. And the internet is the perfect vehicle for that. Some say she made all the stories up, and that's possible as well. The attention she got from her blog is similar to the attention she got from the men. It was a rush for her, but in the end, she's just being used (for sex, for entertainment).

[–] KingoftheAndalsandFirstMen 9 years ago

Yes, and it was even more obvious in the novel, because most of Katie's last entries all mention how people with lives don't blog and how she has been cleaning up her act as far as the alcohol, drugs and relationships with men. It also makes it more obvious that many of the things we were lead to believed either never happened or they happened very differently than she led us to believe. To me she was giving her readers a grand finale of sorts.

I really love the ambiguity of the ending, it gives all of us the option to play optimist or pessimist about what actually happened.

[–] blondiebear_17 9 years ago

Your theory makes me not feel like this movie was a complete waste of my time. It is so much more entertaining than the literal interpretation.

RIP Cory Monteith your fans miss you dearly

[–] jlprizm86 9 years ago

Thank goodness for this interpretation. Unlike others on this board I was very disappointed in the ending of the movie and it kind of ruined the whole film for me because the whole missing person thing just seemed like it came out of nowhere and added nothing to the rest of the story. But I really like this version on the blog entry from the mom at the end. It seems more of something the girl would've done especially as it was mentioned she has impersonated her mom in the past in emails and she seemed desperate for attention. I had this disappointed feeling about the movie in general b/c of the end but it has been salvaged. Thanks for sharing.

[–] morebeme 9 years ago

The ending was a complete surprise. I don't get it, honestly. Was Katie living at home with her family and doing all of those things that she posted about in her blog? If so, did she disappear at the same time the blog ended? How long has she been missing?
At the end of the movie it shows her in the bathtub and she smiles as she slips under. I actually thought she was going to commit suicide. I don't understand how the ending ties in with the life that we watched for an entire hour and something minutes.

[–] kay_rock 9 years ago

I also think her disappearance isn't real. Whenever she talks about the blog she talks about the fact that it has been partially fictionalized. We later find out that what we've been seeing the entire time wasn't entirely real, either (we were seeing her blog version of reality rather than real reality). Remember when she's laying in bed talking about how depressing/humiliating her life is, she says "Good thing my name's not really Katie." Yet that's how she's referred to during the entire film. This is our first clue that what we're seeing isn't real at all.

Faking her disappearance makes absolute sense. THAT girl is gone now, having chosen instead to grow up and move on. I'm sure our "real" heroine is reviewing the responses, thrilling to the fame of it all.

When you think about the fact that she perceives every man in her life as being sexually attracted to her, and think about how teenage girls think of themselves and their burgeoning sexuality, the entire story takes on a more fictitious feel.

(It's hard talking about "real" when the entire film is fictitious... so of course I mean "real" in terms of the construct of the film)

Movies are IQ tests; the IMDB boards are how people broadcast their score.

[–] greenfairyXO 9 years ago

I could see that--but then why did everyone have different appearances?

[–] KingoftheAndalsandFirstMen 9 years ago

I think no matter what theory you believe , the point of the ending with the different people is the same. Not only was much, if not all of what she told us untrue, but her real life was far less appealing than she led us to believe.

[–] Cyraxote 9 years ago

From what I understand, the book was written in the form of a blog. If the blog was exaggerating her life, it stands to reason that a visual form of the blog (i.e., this movie) would exaggerate people's attractiveness.

[–] ckimsey-1 9 years ago

You said everyone had different appearances. They did? Can you explain? Different appearances from when to when?

[–] goodfolk 7 years ago

Because Katie wasn't stable mentally. She didn't like the life she had. So in her mind she fantasized about having money and sleeping with professors and rich admission counsellors from elite universities. That she felt was better than being around normal poor people like herself. It's also why everyone else was more beautiful to than what they were in real life.

[–] ruthierocks 9 years ago

I'm going to pretend that this was the author's intention because it makes the whole thing a little more likable. Great theory.

--
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sarcasm/cats/stories

[–] MaliMadness 9 years ago

I think you nailed it.

Most often, those who are caught lying on the internet, don't just make one fake blog, they make many. This goes for everyone, not just bored teenagers. Even corporations rely on fake social media accounts to boost sales.

I'd be willing to bet most of it was real, to an extent. Her whole 'confessions of a promiscuous teen' thing was all based on real people and real experiences. In fact, maybe all of this happened to her in her youth but she's now blogging as a bored housewife (a la Maggie Spooner) but I'll happily believe it was all fabricated for online sympathy. So by tacking on this scene at the end where the 'mother' is asking for help, it's a way for her to change the narrative. Now instead of being "19 year old promiscuous teen Amy/Katie," she can play the distressed mother of a missing girl Caroline. This was her way of ending the blog, but always having a way to go back to her loyal readers as the sympathetic grieving mom character. In fact, after all the hateful comments she was getting, she'll probably embrace all the 'omg i hope she's okay' support.

It tends to be a pattern amongst internet catfish. It's addictive and one profile isn't enough, they create entire families in order to sell the lie.

[–] thulk01 8 years ago

Cool theory but what exactly would be the point? If she wanted to stop blogging so she could start a new chapter of her life with her privacy intact, it would make more sense to just delete the blog without notice and people will forget about it. On the other hand, if she still craves peoples' attention, then leaving the blog seems counterproductive because she'll only be able to milk the "distressed mom" character for a little while before everyone gets bored and the blog stops getting traffic. So fictionalizing her disappearance doesn't really fulfill any goal and it just passes up on much better options that she could have chosen.

[–] derek-adrian 8 years ago

Finally. I agree 100%...

[–] WriteOrWrong 9 years ago

I think she got bumped off by someone following her, maybe Rory. He was pissed that she was pregnant and also that the baby wasn't his, and then she told I think it was Dan that the baby was his and she was getting an abortion if I remembered right. Maybe Dan didn't want to give her the opportunity to change her mind and 'inconvenience' his by keeping the baby so he made the choice for her. Had she lived his fiancée probably wouldn't have married him once she found out he got another woman pregnant. Margaret could've somehow found out about Paul and Katie and knocked her off, Katie could've committed suicide and that was her definition of being free because she didn't know which direction to turn...tons of possibilities.

[–] trfruin 9 years ago

since she did love walking home all alone at night, she could of been picked up by a stranger. it would be hard to go any of the characters in the film since they were altered anyways at the end story

[–] AgentBlue 9 years ago

It was either Christian Slater or martin Sheen.

Lose the Game!!!!!!!

[–] goldpink23 9 years ago

@AgentBlue. I think either of them probably killed her too.

[–] lazarillo 9 years ago

I agree with "Clone Clubber" (and I think I started a thread once somewhere). But the point is the movie is clearly AMBIGUOUS. If you think she was murdered, that's a very valid opinion. If you think she was OBVIOUSLY murdered though, you're wrong.

She may have willing disappeared, pretended to be her mother to end her blog, or she MAY HAVE NEVER EXISTED AT ALL. This was originally called "Undiscovered Gyrl" and it's odd that the male writer intentionally misspells the word "girl". Maybe this is just a fictional writing exercise where an older male explores what it's like to be fictional "gyrl"?

[–] owenZpitt 9 years ago

She didn't really disappear.

The final post by the "mother" never mentioned the police, just the PI. The cops could get that blocked number from the phone company in two seconds. They would have also listed her car as wanted and it would have likely turned up.

[–] regahsof 9 years ago

Yeah, clearly there is a lot missing or that we don't find out regarding the police investigation because it's the end of the movie. Any further scenes seem, to me, like they should explore suspects more in depth, specifically, in my opinion, Christian Slater's character, as he had the most to lose from charges of infidelity. We also don't seem to get a conclusion from him regarding his reaction to learning of the consequences of his action to sleep with his under-age employee. The art film guy seemed like he WANTED to break things off, Martin Sheen's character doesn't seem like he would do such a thing to somebody who is basically still a stranger to him, and the girl's boyfriend/ex-boyfriend is really just a kid still, it seems. Regarding Joel, he was the one who wanted what was best for Katie, regardless of his own personal health struggles.

[–] hoz49 9 years ago

Katie isn't dead and she's not masquerading as her mother. She moved to LA is considered a superstar in the porn industry. She films under the name Riley Reid.

[–] WhenGreyjoysCry 9 years ago

That's why the ending sucks. They present five equally plausible alternatives (the fifth being the guy she accused of molesting her when she was young comes back to silence her). These ambiguous endings work when there is one intended outcome and there are clues lying around to lead us to the correct conclusion, but here there isn't. It is just a "pick your ending" kinda deal and it sucks. Damn you Sopranos for making these ambiguous endings popular*.

* There are very tell-tale clues in the last season of Sopranos that suggest Tony was killed.

"Gold buys a mans silence for a time. A bolt to the heart buys it forever"

[–] ckimsey-1 9 years ago

I agree. Ambiguous endings are a cop out on the director's part.

[–] lazarillo 9 years ago

I totally disagree. LIFE is ambiguous. What happens after you die is ambiguous. The best kind of art doesn't have an obvious "message" that it beats you over the head with. And if you always need to have a "point", try looking on the top of your head.

This would have been a far less interesting movie if you knew for sure she had been murdered at the end, or that she had even REALLY "disappeared".

The unreliable narrator and the ambiguous ending are pretty common in literature, which is a more sophisticated and adult-oriented art form than Hollywood movies. "Catcher in the Rye", for instance, is pretty open-ended and ambiguous and it is considered a masterpiece.

"Let be be finale of seem/ The only emperor is the Emperor of Ice Cream"

[–] ckimsey-1 9 years ago

You are welcome to your opinion on what kinds of books and movies suit you best, but keep in mind that classic books and classic movies with ambiguous have only come about in the last approx. 50 years.
It takes more talent to tie up all the loose ends than to leave things hanging. That's why I almost feel like I wasted 6 years on Lost--even though the script and acting was very good.

[–] skater_girl_amanda 9 years ago

Maybe there was someone she didn't write about in the blog

I am now a checkerboard chick!