Loved the movie, every minute of it, especially the end. I'm really having a hard time seeing how anyone can be offended by it as well, i could go into detail on that line but i really can't be bothered. I'm only really posting a response to that enkibilal guys post.
I was offended by the movie, and you weirdos can call me a demon as much as you like. And I can just think how people feel who have someone in the family killed by a serial killer. There are those people out there. Should they accept this movie as a piece of fiction? How about someone makes a movie about Holocaust, with a twist ending, all those Jews were in fact demons who deserved to be killed. Well, the director could always say it is a fiction. Or someone makes a movie about 9/11, where all those who died were demons. Would people be offended then?
Your equating real life events to a movie, that doesn't work unless the movie in question is suppost to be based on actual events. Films about serial killers are nothing new, Summer of sam, Natural born killers, Saw, Copycat, matter of fact just about every well known serial killer has had their story laid down on film (Bundy, Manson). If a film is fictional it can take as many liberties as it wants, Natural Born Killers for example you find yourself routing for characters that if existed in real life you'd despise, which is okay because "its not real". Then you watch the story of Ted Bundy and you think to yourself what a wanker the guy is the whole way through, which is fine because it was based on real events. If they had made Ted Bundy out to be anything other than what he really is, an instrument of god for example, being offended would be easily justified.
This movie has a message that there are two kinds of serial killers. Those who are evil and those who are good. I refuse to believe that there are good serial killers, who do it in the name of God. And I am deeply religious person, and that is why I am offended. This is perversion of religion, and I think that those who are really religious people know that religion and God have to do with good things, not serial killing. Just as I am offended by Bin Laden when he says that killing of innocent people on 9/11 was God's will. Although it is clear that this movie promotes serial killing, I refuse to believe what it says. I don't want to accept that that lunatic father was really God's messenger, even in fictional terms. I still think that the older brother was right and innocent, and that he never killed anyone except his crazy father, and that the younger brother was a murderer of all those people. I repeat, the movie is not telling us this, but I don't care. From what I know, this movie could be demonic for perverting God like that.
What also shocked me is that the message of the movie is that it is o.k. to put your little son in a dungeon for weeks without food and water, for whatever twist predictable ending in the world.
First up the message behind this movie is not that its okay to kill people, or that there are good serial killers, the movie does not have a moral or a defining message. If theres anything the movie does do that has a deeper meaning its to inspire threads like this one. It is not a perversion of religion, remember God telling Abraham to sacrifice Isaac? i don't know why but i get the feeling that locking your kid in a basement for a couple of weeks is hardly comparable to gutting him on top of a mountain then burning him. People have died for "glory" of god and killed claiming "gods will" for thousands of years and it still goes on today. After 9/11 (which you've brought up too much already, worse things have happened, doesn't make it any less tragic but still..) what were George W Bush's exact words when asked how they're going to tackle this new threat? "we're gonna start a crusade!" is that the compassionate voice of christianinty i hear so much about?
Religous organizations (especially ones founded on the Bible) constantly change their scriptures to suit their needs, the bible for example has been chopped up rearranged and re-worded so many times now that i wouldn't be suprised if in 200 years time it will read "and blessed are the greek, for they shall inherit the earth". The point in this? just because this movie doesn't conform to your god and religion of today doesn't make it inaccurate and it doesn't mean the film makers just exploited your religion for a shot at being controversial. This movie is tame beyond belif to the crap thats in the bible, war, famine, incest, murder, torture, rape you name it its in there. Theres more stuff i could say about this, like how happy the 100,000 Iraqi people that we're killed while you were bombing the crap out of their country must have felt with George W Bush quoting scripture and spouting crap about how God told him to become president.
Now, why would someone make a movie like this? Is it because Paxton (who also directed) wanted to make his character good after all? Or because someone wanted to make a movie with suprise ending, in the style of The Sixt Sense, but because of the lack of talent gave us the ending as cheep as it is? Are these people aware how immoral the message of this movie is, for the sake of sensation?
Why would someone make a movie like this? Maybe because theres so much tripe coming out of Hollywood that they thought people might like to see a movie that actually went back to basics, you know simple things like characters a plot and a script that wasn't pulled out of some B-movie hacks arse. Also the ending was anything but cheap, i was actually pleased they had the guts to go through with an ending like they did because it actually makes the film better. You've chosen to ignore the films story and made your own film (replace the word film with book and its again pretty accurate to most religions, funny how that works).
In your film you watched a story about some guy who goes crazy turns one son into a maniac and forces the other to kill him because he fears for his saftey after being abused by his father. I watched the same film but then got to see it in a whole new light just because of that ending. I saw it from the father and youngest sons point of view, they weren't just a couple of evil maniacs anymore, they were good people doing what they belived was right. Does a good person doing evil things for a good reason make them evil or good? without that insight from their perspective we don't see the good in what they were doing so we just assume that they were evil, the ending ensured that the lines became blured like they usually are. Since your so fond of using real life examples to justify how the films ending is so "cheap" and offensive, i'll employ the same method.
If i could somehow travel back to 1930 and put 2 bullets in the back of Hitlers head would that make me good or bad? i've just killed someone, thats bad, but in the process i've saved how many millions of lives? thats good right? so does doing a little bit of evil for a greater ammount of good make me a good or a bad person? Things aren't always cut and dry, you can be a good person and do bad things, you can be a bad person and do good things, the only way to know if you really are a good or bad person is knowing the reason why you do the things you do.
Finally skipping over most of your post because this is looking long enough already..
1)"Only The Innocent Survive" tag line doesn't make any sense, because, the old sherif was killed (it is confirmed that he was a human, not a demon). What is he then, a collateral damage? And on top of that, he didn't even have to die, because he wasn't believing the boy after all. Was it also God's will? This is either a plot hole or a hint that maybe majority of people are wrong by interpreting this movie and that the sides of good and evil are the opposite from what is suggested. And we never see the older boy kill anybody except his father. We know that he is a murderer only by Adam's story. I would like to believe this theory. It would make the move intelligent after all.
Okaaaay..
Well first up I don't recall the tagline coming from the script, and yes its true we only know that Fenton was a serial killer by adams story.
But wait just one second....wasn't the entire film adams story? i think it was, so really the only time we see Fenton as Fenton is when hes going crazy in his appartment making up lists of dead people. You know the list that the FBI find when they go to check out his appartment, and then theres the whole thing of adam walking straight into the FBI officers office in plain sight and they can't catch one shot of his face, then the whole thing where he touched the FBI officer and saw that he had killed his mother......face it man, you know the ending and it isn't the one you made up yourself.
2) Why would a demon (FBI agent) want to capture another demon (older brother)? Wouldn't he try to cover him up, because they are on the same side? Buffy is more inteligent than this piece of garbage. Or maybe not?
Reward? fame? promotion? i think your looking for someone to say they were meant to be actual demons as in straight outa hell....i'm not that naive, people can be demons in nature and i think thats what they used the word demon to describe in this movie.
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cuttingedgenyc
19 years ago
Not sure what there is to be offended about here. Movies in general don't really claim to be realistic, but especially not in this genre. In a horror movie, anything can happen. If you are offended by the possibility of supernatural things happening, you probably shouldn't be watching horror movies.
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FrankNFurter-2
19 years ago
The "offense" taken by some is probably something else. The viewer is invited to invest a lot of affection into Fenton, then is surprised by an ending that makes Fenton look very bad. It is a mark of a good movie when people can feel much affection for a character and it is not to everybody´s taste when the created emotions get twisted in the way it happens here.
Our'love' for Fenton is betrayed because he is (in the logic of the film) a demon - so ironically we are exactly in the position of his dad - who pays with his life for his inability to believe the angel when his own son is concerned - because he loves him.
A second thought: In a movie like this, we expect a twist. I don´t think we have a real twist here. A twist usually is a third solution that has not been forseeable for the viewer, or only if he was Sherlock Holmes himself. Here we are denied a real twist, all we get is "Fenton wrong - Dad right - full stop". I wasn´t "offended" by that, but it appeared to be a very unimaginative and lame ending for a movie that was very entertaining for three quarters of it´s lenght.
(Forgive my English, it´s not my native tongue.)
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