The End SPOILERS


So Im guessing it wasnt really David in the wall telling his son to kill himself, considering it looked like the mouth had a silver tooth or a black tooth. There really was something evil in the house that took control of him since he became so weak and frail minded after finding out about his wife. I feel bad for Billy, getting trapped in the house like all the other spirits. I also wonder who the father of Alice's baby was...

The only thing that could have made the film better is if they went into the whole Satanic cult thing more. Unless the pics he found in the wall was part of his mental break. A very slow burner of a film but I really enjoyed it. The actors that played David and Billy really had some good fatherly and son chemistry. Very believable.

reply

It was indeed very well executed.

What I'm wondering is was the estate agent Lady into the whole thing? Did she know everything what was going on with the house?

reply

Was the estate agent at the end the same one from the beginning? It did seem strange that at the end she just smiled when ghost Billy closed the door. Did she think he just came back for his toys or something? Or did she know he was a ghost? You bring up a good point.

reply

yeah I thought she was the same but i'm not 100% sure.

reply

They are(Eileen, named once in the beginning of the movie). I just looked back and forth for 30 minutes, because it seems to me she looks younger at the end of the movie for some reason. Make up, probably. But she is the same actress, and character, therefore.

So yeah, she must have been on it all along. Not doing much, per se.

I noticed she closed the manhole cover by the end, but at the beginning of the movie when David and Alice visited at first, it was open. Why did she only close it for the next visiting family and not for them years before? I don't get this part.

reply

As I see it, it wasn't David in the wall, but neither was is it something evil. It was a figment of Billy's nascent psychosis.

reply

Dont you think Billy was a little young to have psychosis? I mean he did suffer thru many traumatic things but I just dont see it. :/

reply

Psychosis is a symptom of any number of psychological disorders (e.g., schizophrenia), most of which of have a genetic component; and there's no such thing as being too young for psychosis. But I'll always opt for an non-ghost, psychological interpretation of a movie like this because, well, ghosts don't exist, and psychological horror is infinitely scarier than 'supernatural' horror.

reply

True, but from what we see from the beginning of the film David seems to be a perfectly normal guy. And for at least 4 of those years after they move in they are probably a happily married young couple. And you cant say 'ghosts don't exist' simply because you cant prove that they dont...just like I cant prove that they do. I like to look at it like a mix of both psychological horror and supernatural horror all mixed into one freaky little film.

reply

There are many (real-life) cases of perfectly normal people losing their marbles very quickly. It also bears emphasizing that, near the end, he remembers killing both his wife and his assistant. I'm not denying that it's possible that a 'ghost made him do it', but such an interpretation strikes me as bland.

reply

Well I dont necessarily think a 'ghost made him do it' either. But I do believe the negative spirits/vibe had a terrible affect on him once he started to break down emotionally. I think the pure evil that was in that house gave him that extra little push for him to really lose his marbles!

Do you think the pictures he found in the wall were actually real? If they are than it would explain why so much death has occurred there. And I wonder if this might be the real reason that the guy from 1905 killed his wife, not because she cheated but because he was part of a cult and wanted his children to be sacrificed.

reply

Actually, it's fair to say "ghosts don't exist". Proving that they don't is impossible, just like proving leprechauns don't exist is impossible (how would you do this? If you believe in leprechauns just substitute in some other fictional entity - Optimus Prime, the Flying Spaghetti Monster).

You say you can't prove ghosts do exist, but if they really did, you would be able to prove it any number of ways.

Nobody has proven the existence of ghosts, and the onus is on believers to do so. On top of which, there are many more plausible, interesting and frankly believable theories as to why people seem to see phantasms.

Also, the existence of ghosts doesn't fit in with the scientific worldview anymore than leprechauns do, so it is perfectly reasonable to accept the non-existence of this phenomena until some evidence comes along to show otherwise. I reckon we'll be in the same position a hundred years from now - lots of people will believe in the paranormal with no convincing evidence ever having come to light.

reply

The way I interpreted it was that he did it all and blacked it all out (such as a famous cases involving a certain American student) however the guilt manifested in hallucinations. The clue to this is the phone-call he made to his assistant.

Unfortunately the last 5 mins or so, while powerful do really ruin the movie for me by bringing in the purposeful ambiguity "it was spirits all along" which is the kind of ending you would expect in the most cliched Hollywood fare.

reply

I'm honestly not sure, and I kind-of prefer just not knowing. The film seemed to be going for a very purposeful sense of ambiguity (Was it just David? Was there other darker forces at play? How much of what he say/envisioned was real and how much was merely a trick of the mind or of the spirits of the past? Etc.), and I sort-of like the fact that there isn't a "real" answer. I'm sure it's the sort-of film where everyone can take from it what they will... but I like just accepting that the answers are out of my hands and not knowing... it almost makes it more frightening for me. So I'm apprehensive to give my opinion of the ending.

And FURTHERMORE, this is my signature! SERIOUSLY! Did you think I was still talking about my point?

reply

I agree with everything you said. The only thing I didn't get was the last scene, where the kid closed the door. Who was the woman, that looked up at him, smiling?

reply

I believe David really did see his wife as a ghost because after he killed her she was sort of haunting him. Then....she got revenge on him and since they were even by killing each other, he wanted his child to kill himself to join them as a nice haunting family. It sort of ends happy in that aspect.

His suspicions of his wife cheating I believe brought out the evil spirits and they edged him to kill but he didn't really know it until the end. Once he knew, then that's when his wife's ghost came after him full force.

I think he was forced to kill the assistant near the end. His wife might have influenced him instead of the other evil man in the photos.

I thought it was pretty dang good. Had a good look and was pretty creepy.

I'm not sure why other people could not see the ghosts though. Maybe the house was to blame....??? The babysitter/nanny got out alive. She heard noises but luckily got out in time. Did David attack her or was it really a dark figure/evil man doing that? At first I thought it was David but he usually killed everyone when he blacked out. But instead...he saved her. So I wonder about that.

http://www.youtube.com/user/alphazoom
https://soundcloud.com/#carjet-penhorn

reply

Pretty sure the lover

reply

I think the Lady knew the home was haunted. The Grandmother and Billy left the home. She was walking down the stairs. There was no way Billy could of ran back up passed her without her seeing him and go close the door. I wonder if she was or possessed by the Wife that was killed back in the early 1900s. Doomed to bring back innocent couples so her Husband can keep repeating the killings.

reply

The Grandmother and Billy left the home. She was walking down the stairs. There was no way Billy could of ran back up passed her without her seeing him and go close the door.


Yes, but remember that the scenes were intercut out of sequence. We saw Billy in the car, then in the house, then in the car, then at the crack in the wall, etc. We can't be sure what the real sequence of events was. Perhaps the estate agent saw Billy in the bedroom when he went to fetch his book, and the scenes of Billy in the car happened later, even though we were shown them earlier. The time sequence is deliberately unclear precisely so that the ending can remain ambiguous.

In the above scenario, the agent smiled because she thought Billy was cute, nothing more. There's nothing sinister in and of itself about the same estate agent selling the house both times; it was only five years later. My parents' house was sold by the same agent who had arranged the purchase 20 years earlier.

Billy throwing himself out of the car is not an ambiguous act, but we don't know why he did it. He could be: (a) complying with his demon/father's request to join his parents in death; (b) insane like his father, in which case he imagined his father's voice and complied; or (c) suicidal out of grief and a belief that by dying he could be with his parents. Suicide in children so young is rare but not impossible; it's also a very disturbing idea, of course. Anyway, only (a) involves the supernatural. It's also the most obvious interpretation, but (b) or (c) are also possible, thus maintaining the ambiguity - was it all insanity, all demonic or a combination?

reply

My take on it was the evil WAS REAL after all.
We spend much of the film thinking that David is just crackers, when it appears in the last minutes of the film...he is not!

I highly doubt that the 5 year old son just 'suddenly' gets such a complicated (VERY!) psychosis.

Its pretty clear that the evil took the form of his dad. In lore, demons often literally trap human spirits in homes with them.
This was what happened in the house, starting in 1902 when they first summoned the demon using the rituals & child sacrifice.



I'd say this cloud is Cumulo Nimbus.
Didn't he discover America?
Penfold, shush.

reply

Why do posters keep referring to the 'Claire' character as the protagonist's "assistant"? She was clearly his boss!

reply