The nurse and the train hobo, what was that meant to signify? and the train station where he was locked in and all the people on it staring out the back[
Someone oughta teach you some manners Vernon
Well it ain't gonna be you prag
Those are his demons, they are suppose to help push him to raise his demise
Realize his demise
shareOkay but do you mean the train people or the thing in peoples heads?
Someone oughta teach you some manners Vernon
Well it ain't gonna be you prag
[deleted]
^^^^ this
shareLooks more like the worm from Silent Hill 4, but I guess a single horn directly in the center of the head is possible
Someone oughta teach you some manners Vernon
Well it ain't gonna be you prag
[deleted]
The only reason I keep going over it is that they looked phallic. I thought there was a metaphor
Someone oughta teach you some manners Vernon
Well it ain't gonna be you prag
They are demons, like many of the other characters in the film. The subway hobo has a devil's tail and the nurse has horns growing out of her head. It's a creative modern take on traditional symbolism.
shareOthers above commented on the demons/horns/tails, I want to comment on the train station where he was locked in.
As I watched that opening scene, since he was unable to leave, and the way it was shot, I almost immediately thought of the phrase, and hence the French play: NO EXIT.
To quote Wikipedia:
No Exit (French: Huis Clos, pronounced: [ɥi klo]) is a 1944 existentialist French play by Jean-Paul Sartre. The original title is the French equivalent of the legal term in camera, referring to a private discussion behind closed doors; English translations have also been performed under the titles In Camera, No Way Out, Vicious Circle, Behind Closed Doors, and Dead End. ... The play is a depiction of the afterlife in which three deceased characters are punished by being locked into a room together for eternity. It is the source of Sartre's especially famous and often misinterpreted quotation "L'enfer, c'est les autres" or "Hell is other people".
Since that subway scene was in the opening first few minutes, it was obviously intended to introduce we the audience to the basic theme of the film we were about to experience. I doubt it was an accident that there was so many camera shots looming on "EXIT" signs while our protaganist was unable to exit. And it was one half of a bookend in the story -- in the end he figured out what were his personal metaphorical locks keeping him stuck, and he was able to exit.
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Chipping away at a mountain of pop culture trivia,
Darren Dirt.
I read that the demons first was supposed to look like more traditional demons with horns and hoves and such, but the director thought that it would be to cliche so he made his own imagination of demons, so i think that it´s just something that he found unnerving. ( Sorry for bad english, it´s not my native tounge )
shareThey're horns. A few years ago, the special effects studio put some props from the movie up for auction and the description described the nurse prosthetics as horns.
It rubs the butter on it's skin, y'all.