During my watch in the cinema, when the credits started rolling and the lights went on...normally the watchers would leave quick...but everybody was flabbergasted by the wild ride at the end.
It was nice to see...it was over the top, but in a very good way.
I liked it more than Baby Driver, World's end...his best movie since Scott Pilgrim.
Bravo!
I predicted part of the final arc, but not the key part. It was definitely set up very well in that regard, cause I was also questioning my own conclusions as I was watching the film.
shareWould have made more sense if the baddie had been Jack in a Norma Bates kind of way, the baddie turning out to be who it was didn't make a lot of sense.
Then again, I was still unsure why the delusions happened in the library too. It made sense for her to be haunted in the bedroom, but why outside of it.
I think you stumbled on the potential explanation: delusions vs hauntings. I think she was losing touch with reality.
shareDelusions would have made more sense... but if that was the case then she shouldn't have been seeing the ghosts from the past because someone experiencing delusions wouldn't be seeing what actually was from a past they had never known. It seemed the movie was written by two different people and they didn't agree on what direction they were going so one went one way and the other went another.
shareI meant that I think both delusions and hauntings are happening throughout the movie, not one or the other. she experienced the hauntings in the bedroom, and those led to her creating delusions as she walked around the world. Her dreams/visions (both the positive and negative ones) wore on her psychologically.
To clarify further though, this is just the vague idea I'm working with because the movie is a bit messy in its presentation. I sense that it IS coherent though, which is why I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt until I watch it again.
And that's also why I'm still not entirely sure that her hauntings were restricted to the bedroom either. I don't think the library haunting was a haunting; I'm fairly confident that scene was just delusion.
The club freakout on the other hand, I think is more questionable. Was she just extrapolating the visions with her own imagination at that point? We know she's in denial at times, e.g. she tries to run away from seeing Sandie as a burlesque dancer, and she also assumes Sandie was murdered but she didn't actually witness the genuine act (this is why I said I thought it was well set-up. Ellie's not actually reliable after all.).
The movie seems to suggest that hauntings/ghosts are localized (e.g. her mom). But it's less clear when/where she has the capacity to have visions. (Are they also drug-induced? Head-trauma induced?)
It was a well done film in the first half.. but then it really just started falling apart. Frankly the change of Sandie from good girl to whore was too fast, it was almost as if the editor was told to chop out 10 or 15 minutes and they took it all out of one area. It does beg the question as to whether this was the full movie or some chopped down version. A few additions here and there and it could have been a much better movie. The cinematography and editing was quite good in some spots, but the weakness was the story that felt like it was wandering around toward the last half of the movie.
shareAgreed on all points there. Tho I'm not sure if even reviving some footage from the cutting room floor would have helped the ending, because I feel that the third act just wasn't as strong as the beginning in terms of the story or the visuals. I felt like they were going for a black swan/perfect blue descent into insanity, but didn't really pull that off well at all. There wasn't really any nuance, and Ellie herself doesn't really have much of a character arc either. This of course, could have been intentional. But it's just another reason why I feel that the movie ends up being much flimsier than it could have been.
It doesn't fulfill the promise of Ellie's first vision (which was super compelling both visually and narratively), but the movie doesn't really amount to anything compelling by the conclusion.
It's a very simple story. So...it's good enough for me and my base expectations, but yeah, it could have been a lot better; there was potential there.
The movie started falling apart close for me in the third act, it was a disaster and killed the movie for me. The hauting scenes at the end were ridiculous and diminished a otherwise good movie. Shame. It was a good ride till there.
shareThat's funny, I was watching this last night with my girlfriend and had the same questions..and suddenly remembered towards the beginning of the movie, her mom saying something about how she's "sensitive to things" like her mother was...or something. And something about not wanting her to have another incident because of it.
I think that's what the "phenomena" part of the movie was predicated on...her being psychically sensitive, if that helps explain much.
Yeah, the incident line is why I'm thinking a lot of the stress she's experience is delusional, i.e. in her head.
So I think she's sensitive to spirits, and can genuinely see them...but I think that causes her to lose touch with reality. So some of the stuff we see in the movie is actual spectral stuff that she senses, and other stuff, like the library scene, I think is stuff that her sensitive has caused her to now go into overdrive.
copy and pasted my reply from below here:
That's funny, I was watching this last night with my girlfriend and had the same questions..and suddenly remembered towards the beginning of the movie, her mom saying something about how she's "sensitive to things" like her mother was...or something. And something about not wanting her to have another incident because of it.
I think that's what the "phenomena" part of the movie was predicated on...her being psychically sensitive, if that helps explain much.
Dude, they aren't leaving because they are fall to sleep. That is why this movie bomb at boxoffice.
share