The film seems to be centered on sex, following a promiscuous young woman testing her options. But then concluded by some kind of appeal to find a missing person. Is this fiction within fiction? In any case, there is so little of her non-sexual life shown on the screen that it all looks like a big farce. How are you supposed to find a missing girl who, it seems, has ever met only a dozen of people in her life?
I just finished watching this without knowing the fact that this was based on a missing person case.
I wish I hadn't known, as soon as the mother was updating her blog it ruined the whole thing for me. What a piece of hyper dramatized crap.
As much as I try to understand the ending of this film and how it links with the entire plot, I still don't understand. Could you care to explain?
shareBritt Robertson delivered a fantastic role, and she's beautiful, and her voice is calm, soft, and perfect. So for me the ending was, of course, completely unexpected and very very sad. I liked this person. I didn't want it to end this way.
I thought "it must be true" but apparently not. (I still haven't fully figured that out).
And so I thought perhaps it was cautionary tale ... she was, perhaps, too open, too honest and was confused about her identity.
Would it be a surprise if someone kidnapped her based on an internet relationship?
Your mileage will vary greatly.
- greg
As much as I try to understand the ending of this film and how it links with the entire plot, I still don't understand. Could you care to explain?
It wasn't based on a missing persons case it's based on a novel...a work of fiction.
shareI found the whole film a waste of time. The whole thing was a fiction within a fiction, yes. It was a long way to go to end up saying "no one really knows *beep* about this girl because everything was a lie, now she's gone"
The only reason I watched this movie was because I like Britt Robertson. If it was someone else, I might have turned it off. Since she was blogging, I didn't really think of her changing the names as a lie. Everyone her mother got in contact with was in her blog just like she wrote it. It seems she added a few extra things that maybe she hoped the few people in her life would have said. ? I had no idea she was going to go missing. By the end, when she was in the bathtub, she almost seemed too positive. At the same time, I thought she might try and slit her wrists. When I found out she was missing, I was completely confused. I thought what does that have to do with the story. If she didn't go work and live with the guy from the bookstore, why was she so positive about starting a new life? We don't find out if she gets an abortion or keeps the baby. I just watched it earlier and I came here, thinking someone would have explained the ending or understood it. Now that I'm thinking about it, it didn't makes sense-I heard her mother say she hadn't taken any money out of her account so if she did go somewhere to start a new life, it definitely wasn't with anyone we saw in the movie. A lot of things were odd about this movie. Even though her parents were divorced, wouldn't her mother have gone to her ex-husband's eulogy, even if it was just to be there for her daughter? Her mother was hardly around yet somehow made her go to therapy the second time. I wonder what the writer was thinking when he wrote this?? 'Let's just say she went missing so we don't have to tie up any loose ends.'?
shareI don't think she went missing. She went to find herself, her own life.
If I wanted to start a life without anybody from the previous one, I'd do exactly what she did. Otherwise they'd find you, because you know they're going to look under ever pebble.
Just my opinion.
But she took her car and left her money. If she left to start a new life why wouldn't she take her money? She just would have had to withdraw the cash and no one could track her. The only reason I can think of would be that she wanted everyone to think something bad happened and she was dead so they wouldn't come looking...but she took her car. Thats a way bigger giveaway to her location then cash. They'd be looking for that car.
shareEverything about everyone in her whole story was made up. She didn't just change names, she made up complete fictional relationships and stories with all of them. The whole movie was basically a delusion in her mind. All the people involved barely knew her in reality when her mother went looking into it.
shareNo it wasn't, did you watch the end of the film? The people interviewed all said what she wrote about them was true save for small things, or in the case of the couple with the baby some major details. But the husband could have easily been lying about the sexual relationship.
shareThe ending is open to interpretation. I have expressed elsewhere that I think Katie's 'disappearance' was just an easy, butdramatic way to put an end to her blog, which was at least partly fictional, if not mostly or entirely fictional.
sharePoint is, a person can say whatever online as whoever. Like I could write something horrible to someone today, and then apologize tomorrow saying my little brother had been using my account. I think this movie was less about sex and more about her need for attention in whatever form (sexual, online from strangers, father, etc.).
shareThe whole thing was a fiction within a fiction
This is what I think has happened. The guy that molested her as a child received the letter she sent, has rang her up for her to come see him (she drove over in her car) and he has probably killed her. He would be the first person to speak to.
Also I thought it was funny how when she went missing then every single person shown from that point on was uglier than the stars portraying them. Ain't that always the way. Mind you I'm no oil painting.
equalthree, this is very plausible explanation.
If you thought the real people looked funny you should watch ID. The dramatizations they do are absolutely ridiculous in that respect.
shareMy take was, the first 95% of the movie was just a teen dating drama and for some reason the writer thought it would be neat to tack on a twist at the end where one of the guys she was stringing along killer her. If that was the plan then this need to be a full on television series or a trilogy of films. It makes very little narrative sense as presented.
That twist would have been great, as the ending to the first episode of a new A.M.C. murder mystery show, along the lines of "The Killing ( Season Five )" or something.
That was my thoughts exactly. I watched plenty of true crime, FBI files, and such, I immediately thought It's not one of her followers. It's the child molester from her past who found her and killed her. They show him as an old man, a grampa, but what if he's only 20 years older than her? No one else looked like the people that were portrayed. He could be 42.
shareThe problem I have with this theory is, first, Why would she visit her molester? Second, why were police unable to trace the number, even though it was blocked? Shouldn't they be able to trace any number regardless?
shareEver heard the term "burner phone" used before? He could then throw the phone in the shallow grave he buried her in. Untraceable at that point for sure.
shareYes, the idea of a "blocked" number is stupid. They should have mentioned it was a blocked number to a single-se burner phone, and avoided saying anything about her druggy friend also having a blocked number. The pertinent detail in that strand wouldn't be that the girlfriend said it wasn't her, but that the burner phone number did not match the friend's "blocked" phone number.
shareYou made laugh today
shareThough I would believe he would be the only person that might do it even that doesn't make sense. Why in the world would she drive over in the middle of the night to see a man she hasn't seen in years that molested her? I don't buy it. Yes she made some really stupid decisions but that doesn't even seem like something she would do. Plus as she said the guy in her flashbacks was already pretty old and she seemed little back then. I don't believe that he would be either living or have the capacities to orchestrate a murder in his old age. And for the person that noted he might not be as old as she claimed..yes the other men in her life didn't look like what she described but their ages matched up so that doesn't explain it either. Also for all we know she might have imagined (as some things were in her mind) that she even sent that letter..or that it was even addressed to anyone in particular. Overall what a cop-out of a movie..I don't even know if that's the phrase..but seriously. It took a movie that albeit was missing some focus and the characters weren't exactly believable and it just throws a curve at you which comes out of nowhere..but not in a good way. I just feel like the writer after basically finishing the movie took like 5 shots of tequila in a row and decided to just throw that in there out of nowhere. Sorry for the rant..I'm guess I'm just disappointed in the result of this movie.
shareif you read this it gives a little more insight:
http://www.thewritingnut.com/film-review-based-book-undiscovered-gyrl-allison-burnett/
From the article: "Katie Kampenfelt is a perceptive and intelligent soul trapped inside a frustrating cycle of self-abuse and it would take an amazing actress to pull off the role."
Intelligent? Really? Nothing she did was at all intelligent, moreover, the girl didn't even know what simple words like "broodmare" or "transcendence" meant! This reviewer is way, way off.
Yeah and she couldn't even spell simple words that most middle school students can spell.
It's a big stretch that her blog would have so many followers... most blog readers expect that the writer has at least some conception of grammar and spelling.
--
http://pink-nightmare.com
sarcasm/cats/stories
1. Spelling is largely a matter of memorization, not intelligence.
2. She misspelled words when she was drunk.
Intelligence is not the same thing as knowledge.
shareI agree.
What kind of "intelligent" girl goes around having UNPROTECTED sex with more than 1 men?
I agree with "Cloneclubber" and some of the others. Her sex life was probably exaggerated in her blog (especially how attractive she claims to be) and there's no reason you should trust the end any more than the sex stuff. If this were a CAUTIONARY tale, they would have made it clear she was horribly murdered, not had this ambiguous fiction-within-fiction Chinese box of an ending.
The truth is if you're an aspiring writer today, you're probably better off pretending tho be a sexy, promiscuous 17-year-old girl in an internet blog (even if you're male) because people are just so fascinated with callow youth and "real life", even though all the "real-life" internet stuff is actually LESS realistic and definitely less HONEST than straightforward fiction. That might be what the character here did, and I definitely think it was what the male author/screenwriter/film director did. I thought it was brilliant actually.
For anybody halfway literate hard to tell with the internet generation), you might check out the Joyce Carol Oates short-story "Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been?". For anybody film literate, check out "Ghost World" if you haven't. Both have similarly ambiguous endings.
I feel like a lot of you are oversimplifying the ending. I think it tried to give the impression of fiction sliding in to non-fiction, movie in to real life, art in to real life, which was why it looks like the characters in the end are not stars/actors, but real people, and the photo in the end is a different girl. Almost as if it's a reverse way of a moving beginning with the line, "This story is based on true events", we get that at the end. Because the things that Katie went through/happened to her COULD happen to anyone and DO happen everyday in this world. A very, very intriguing device used by the director.
shareHer sex life was probably exaggerated in her blog (especially how attractive she claims to be) and there's no reason you should trust the end any more than the sex stuff.
Finally got chance to watch this and for me to posdibilities:
1, The guy who had supposedly molested her was the last call.
2 Since she had strayed from the truth about the true facts, maybe the affair with the married man didn't happen, as she is actually an unreliable narrator for the blog. The stories were changed in some way at the end. Similar to some writings in The King in Yellow by Robert Chambers, which the forest short story was an unreliable narration.Plus as she said, everyman wants to be fair.Plus, at least in her mind. Just an idea.
Well, *beep* me gently with a chainsaw. Do I look like Mother Theresa?
I'm not going to watch this again, so maybe someone can shed light on the scene where the protagonist had a run in with Martine. The protagonist said she'd need an extension on a paper, which left Martine puzzled. Was Martine puzzled because her boyfriend works at a video store? In other words, who was lying about being a college professor, the protagonist or the young man?
As for the murder-mystery aspect, there's no point trying to solve it because it's completely open-ended with many potential suspects and zero evidence. This is what the filmmakers intended, and it's a cheap cop-out.
Martine was a character within the story. Perhaps if "Amy" did run into the real Martine, the conversation had different details.
shareFor the first time in my life, I am fully confused about a movie, and I am mad! Four days ago we all (we who use FaceBook or read the newspaper or I guess buy those mags at the check out stand) just learned (And was sick and angry and wanted to hit him) that Joshua Dugger is a child molester, did these things to his own sisters - then I am watching this film, crying and being so sad for this fictional girl (and glad that she is fictional, but still so sad for all women she reminded me of, like my own cousin) who are broken and who look for love through sex then numb it all out with drugs and alcohol.
Then this ending - WHAT? This is true? But there was no address to send e-mail if anyone did know where this missing PREGNANT girl is.
So I go Google it, ut looks like a female wrote a book that is fiction, nope, Allison is also a guy's name, who knew?
I watched this film because I love Martin Sheen, he chooses projects with integrity and there were some other solid actors here.... but this was all some cautionary tale about ... about what? Not writing a Blog? Do we worry and pray for this person or is she a figment of Allison Whatever's fairly sick imagination?
I don't know, but I do know that the fact that a man wrote this makes me feel even more sick. I wish I could un-watch it, I have enough people in my life who truly need help. I lost friends in terrible ways. And I just don't understand this. If anyone does, can you help?