Why the ending isn't stupid!!!!

Dude you are a friggen genius!

Best explanation and most logical one ever... Post it on the boards man!

yeah..i think he built all the things from the stuff he stole from them

Wow Boova. It's amazing how other people interpret the film. I loved it on so many levels. I thought Manny dragged him to the womans house because that was the plan all along to get him to the girl he never spoke with before. I never even thought he was a creepy stalker and camped outside her house, but after thinking about everything you said it totally makes sense. Im glad Manny was REAL at the end. That would have ruined the movie is Hank was really crazy. In a way he is, but at the end he realizes what he's done and moves on like Manny. Thanks for your thoughts on the film.

I watched the ending, where Sarah sees the diary at the camp, a couple of times. It looks like that diary was handmade by Hank, like everything else. Compared the to the real one, that was in the picture on his phone.

There's a youtube video of the ending, the diary is shown at 1:51.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tKHMZd1fYk

Best explanation out there, but I'd like to hear the real explanation coming out of the directors' mouth, because it still doesn't explain the very ending where Manny "sails out" with his farts. Was that part of Hank's imagination? Maybe his fantasy so that no one would think he was insane?
The direction was superb, I must admit, but they could have been better at narrating the story or pinpointing the most important events because no matter if you want to make the most controversial film out there, there should be a minimum amount of objectivity so that everyone can get to a logical and different conclusion. However, this movie fails to do this.
Don't get me wrong. I very much enjoyed this movie A LOT. The most interesting indie film I've seen in months, but the ending kept me thinking too much, even researching for any common explanations, which even with that I could not find what the directors were trying to tell us.
8/10.

you might have been right, if it wasnt for the ending.

Just wanted to say - the diary we see in the bus model is NOT Sarah's diary. Look at the photo of Sarah writing on the bus Vs the book in the bus tree house. They are not the same book! The book on Hank's bus is clearly handmade. It's a mimic of Sarah's notebook not the real thing.

I don't think Hank stole ANYTHING from Sarah. I think the only thing that Hank ever took from the neighborhood near the woods was trash. Hank only took things that nobody wanted anymore.

The clue is in the raccoons we see throughout the film. Raccoons are nocturnal creatures that scavenge from trashcans at night. Hank was living like a raccoon. That's why at one point in the movie we see Hank wearing animal furs with a nose and whiskers drawn on his face.

I think that was just another subversion.

This movie attempts to defy the viewers' expectations at every turn so it wouldn't be surprising if the narrative structure itself was dubious. At the beginning of the film, savvy viewers are likely to expect it's a film like the short An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge or Jacob's Ladder where the protagonist has been dead the entire time. (Spoiler tag just in case you haven't seen those films). It's also hinted throughout that the protagonist might just be a crazy man. The ending seems to confirm that but then yanks that explanation away and the viewer is left to question what the hell they just watched.

The point is that none of it is true. It's just a film and films are fake and maybe reality is riddled with fakeness as well. This underlying message is hinted at by frequent roleplay by the protagonist, the need to watch your language and behave differently around others, and most importantly how intangible identity is throughout the film. It's all about artifice and how people spend much of their lives pretending for one reason or another while remaining "islands" deep down.

Is that a deep message? Well, no. It's almost juvenile. Just like fart jokes are juvenile. The film is having a laugh at people trying to shoehorn it into a realistic context, when in fact, it is fiction to begin with and therefore not real and the film knows it and plays with your expectations of what a film should be and maybe makes you question just how artificial you can be at times despite your actual desires. There's a reason Cotton Eye Joe by Rednex and the Jurassic Park theme are featured prominently-- the former is a polished, artificial rendition of a classic folk song and the latter is related to a film that presents ancient dinosaurs using artificial CGI.

Loved it anyway.

[deleted]

There's only 3 times when that happened and 6 times it didn't.

~Jesus wept.~