so all in her head or were there ghosts?
whatcha think?
shareWell it's up to the viewer's perception I guess, personally I think she was responsible for killing everyone as she saw them as some sort of demons/ghosts of the old miners. Maybe it was caused from breathing in toxic gases/unstable air, but it seemed to be limited to her alone(nobody else saw the "white eyes") which makes me think she had some sort of psychotic break and since the story of the old mining disaster was told at the start of the film it helped to fuel her breakdown.
Actually I just went back to the part when they were in the "safety oxygen box" and we see the bloody handprint on the window, then the oxygen is disabled, all while the woman was in the box with everyone else. Then the guy's dead body is found outside disemboweled stuck with a pick ax and the oxygen tanks were gone, I don't have an answer for that, there was no way she could have taken the tanks. There had to be another player involved
They were all going nuts and killing each other. I think it only showed Samantha's hallucination specifically because she's the main character and the only survivor to tell the story in her perspective. Not only the bloody handprint part in the Rescue Chamber, but there were other parts that show it wasn't just Samantha going crazy.
-When Strode got his arm chopped off, Samantha was with her father and Randy. Which resulted in Grubbs disappearing and likely the one that did it.
-When they all went back to the rescue chamber, Mundy (broken leg guy) was freaking out about "somebody being out there," when he was by himself. So obviously he was hallucinating. Samantha was with the rest of the group.
-Masek attacks Randy, Samantha and George. Later, Randy asks Masek about him attacking them, and he has no idea what he just did. Masek was the one hallucinating then, not Samantha.. Randy and George were witnesses.
-There were times in the film where Samantha sees the people losing their minds and fighting each other and freaking out and she doesn't see the creepy faces on them. Showing she's feeling fine at that moment and the others are starting to hallucinate and freak out.
-The film shows Samantha actually killing, Mundy, Randy and her father. The rest of the time when she saw the scary faces, she was trying to get away.
I honestly think the toxic air and the lack of oxygen was causing all of them to hallucinate. I don't think it was demons or monsters. It was all psychological.
It is either that or the 19 were possessing people. We do see her get milky eyed at the end! Or, it was a combo of both!
shareVery nice response b530, I think you nailed it.
shareCan I add that it's awesome of you to work all that out!!!!
I happen to know the answer to all of this, but I won't say.
See you in L.A., Marvin. - Jack Walsh
Then, why do we see her eyes gloss up at the end besides dramatic effect?
shareIt clearly shows us that she indeed has lost her marbles, still caught in that toxic air hallucinations, and had she stayed down there longer the next one she would have killed is of course herself.
shareYeah, I'm boarding b530's train on this one because seriously, man, she killed her dad in the end.
And that's just coz she starts hallucinating again, seeing him being one of those ghosts, and natural intoxicated instincts kicks in her to survive and end up killing him.
For all we know he was probably just trying to grab hold of her just to sooth her and telling things'll be fine, because the stick light was finally going out leaving them in the black darkness again, or perhaps it was just him grabbing her coz of the effects of his last moments in breathing his final breathe before he's out for good.
I believe in this scene, we see her see herself go all ghosty in her reflection in the mirrored metal of the ambulance. So, could be her hallucinating still.
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Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!"--Pres. Merkin Muffley
b530 - this was an excellent response! Hats off to you :)
shareYup... either toxic gases or some kind of hallucinatory spores in the old mine that they cracked into. There was nothing supernatural in the movie.
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See I'm in the camp that it was both. I think the film tries to show this as well. The "whooshing" sound occurs initially as the hollow section is broken into combined with the backstory about the previous miners heavily suggests ghosts or at least something that was sealed into the mountain and then released, while much of the behavior suggests people going mad. Ultimately it is up to the viewer to decide which one they want it to be or both, but there's one glaring issue in the way of it being only hallucinations. If they were just hallucinations, then they wouldn't stop once they started nor would they have started as early as they did. Remember they all first heard the tapping sounds and then screams of someone else when they were in the rescue chamber which was almost immediately after the cave in. There was still enough oxygen and not enough toxic air for them to *all* hallucinate the scream in the first place. It takes a lot more intake to hallucinate that vividly(and all of them the same thing, none the less) than they had at that point, and it would have persisted. However, they all remained pretty lucid for a substantial time after that, and even when the hallucinations would kick into gear more, they'd fade again for another X amount of time. And of course, the ending. Frankly, to show her face at the end like that just to say "she's still hallucinating" is flat out pointless. She's still hallucinating..okay, so she would start to freak out and they would inject her with meds until the methane wears off and she's fine. How riveting of an ending. It's meant to be the final "it was real". Or at the least, part of it was real. It's to suggest that the ghosts/spirits/whatever was sealed in the mountain is now free, and one resides within her. It's the typical non-ending to a lot of modern horror that is meant to say "the worst is yet to come but we're not going to show you that".
IMO..the movie takes a lot of influence from The Thing. Meaning at any point, a person could have been insane or they could have been possessed since both were occurring and you're never directly told or shown which is which.