The Locals


So were they other experments, were they mad from tests, any ideas ?

I was born on this ship. The world passed me by, but two thousand people at a time.

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I just finished the movie and my head still hurts with all the questions but I'm kind of sure the locals are meant to be real humans who were abducted at some earlier point but weren't touched otherwise.
They were left around to help the aliens conduct some future experiments if a scenario came up where they needed the three augmented humans to be in a fully human-looking environment.
I think all the aliens have to be in hazmat suits not because of fear of contamination but to conceal "augmentations" and mechanical body parts.

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I agree with you about the locals, but the aliens not only had the suits to protect themselves but also set up a clean room several times (like with the truck driver before Damon went in to talk to him). Whether it's because they didn't want to be exposed to whatever the malfunctioning humans had contracted or exposed to the humans in general is unknown. In the end it really doesn't matter as none of the 'clues' given explain anything in the finished product and only bring up more questions.

In fact, many times they contradict each other- like when Damon said Jonah wasn't in the facility while Nic had been talking to him, that confusing conversation where Jonah said he was happy Nic was "in the vent", the necklace that Hayley seemingly threw away into the canyon that apparently comes back. If that wasn't confusing enough the director has stated that Nic is an unreliable narrator, meaning everything we see is called into question. This also applies to the nature of the aliens, the threat of contamination and.. pretty much everything we see in the movie. Do the real aliens look like the one we saw a glimpse of in the video? If so, is Damon an alien or an experiment- and if those in the hazmat suits are part human, why do they need protection from the 'locals'? It's like Eubank deliberately wanted to confuse and frustrate the audience- and for that he paid the price. Even similarly mysterious works such as Prometheus and the Lost series were a lot more entertaining and satisfying than this, so many people's dislike of this movie can not simply be blamed on the genre or the director's approach of trying to create 'intrigue'.

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aliens not only had the suits to protect themselves but also set up a clean room several times

Maybe they watched "War of the Worlds" and done the homework.

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I didn't think they were experimented on per se, they were just people who were abducted and went mad from living in one place for too long. I assumed the locals were basically the control group of the experiment. They monitored them for regular human activity and stuff like that, but didn't actually experiment on them. Then when Nic, Haley, and Jonah were abducted they knew the human anatomy and were finally ready to begin testing on new subjects

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[deleted]

Yes, they were experimented on. Experimented on to a point where they were mentally not 100% anymore.

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I believe the locals were tests subjects at one time. They were observed for mental and behavioral traits -- the christian lady filtered her alien encounter into angels and trumpet music. The truck driver and the folk in the restaurant were also passive and accepting of the situation. Nothing more to be learned.

The aliens wanted a more sophisticated, tech savvy set of test subjects. Selected three bright MIT students and baited their trap with the hack and text messaging.

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