Plot twist: Everything is fake, it was all a lie
Great job movie, great job.
Honestly I would have liked this movie so much more if there was no twist. If it was just a satanic cult doing some f'up *beep* It would have been scarier at least. It's hard to take this movie seriously when you know that none of it was real or true.
shareThere was no twist at all. It was based on a true story and if you know anything about all the "satanic panic" that was going on in the US in the 80s, you'd know that the outcome was going to be that it was all b.s.
"It's as much fun to scare as to be scared" -- Vincent Price
Yup.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_ritual_abuse#As_a_moral_panic
And the book the cops read is based on this trash:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Remembers
It was very predictable. I usually never 'guess' the twist, but this one was blatantly obvious.
shareWas it even a twist? The cop partner dude said what was going on at the very start (missed out the sleeping with a minor bit admittedly)
shareI think everyone missed the point. The point wasn't in what Watson's character was saying, but in what was going to happen to the dad. With that said....
The father willing to go to jail, even though he did nothing, in an attempt to win back his daughter's love. That was a heart wrenching moment when the dad and Hawke truly confront what was going on.
The ending should have been powerful...but it was just a massive letdown. The film rarely played up the whole 'daughter hates father' emotion to a great extent, and was more concerned with ramping up the tension about this crazy satanic cult in the barn.
The overall consequence of this is that no-one cared that he sacrificed himself to be jailed over nothing in order to win her affections, because we were all so wrapped up in the cult plot.
Basically, I agree with you but the direction of the film was badly executed because it prioritised certain plotlines over others and lost it's emotion and gravitas in the process.
Personally, I'd have preferred (based on the direction of the film) that they scrap the 'based on a true story' slant and just went head-on at the satanic cult plot. I was really into the film up until the last 20 minutes and it felt disappointing.
I don't watch trailers, because they market a film one way and people expect it to be that --or-- they give away everything about the movie. I like to go into movies blind, which was the case here. Only reason I knew about the movie was, because Ethan Hawke was on TV and said this was his latest project.
Anyway, Regression falls into the former (trailer wise). Either the editing or direction (or both) could have smoothed over some of the transitions between scenes, but throughout the movie, they are toying with what could be real vs what is real. The film is putting into place all the pieces, then we watch them all fall into place leading to the ending - which gets to what the story has been doing throughout (what's real and what's not).
The ending represents the reality. That's what made it so powerful, because discovering the ultimate truth is far more painful then anything a devil's cult could've done.
Think about it for a second. His daughter hated him so much, that she did all of that. If she had just killed him, it would've been done and over with. The dad has to continue on with living life knowing that he created the monster. I think that's a powerful notion. Everything that's being done, story wise, zeroes in on that aspect.
PS: Isn't it ironic? For a movie that's about what's real and what's not, that life imitated art in regards to how the movie was marketed?