MovieChat Forums > Haute tension (2005) Discussion > Why the ending was cheesy

Why the ending was cheesy


I think many people are confused by the ending because the director uses one of the most cheesy and confusing literary devices ever concocted. The untrustworthy narrator. This movie reminded me of the last episode of Rosanne. For the later part of the series, they win the lottery and do all sorts of cool things but at the very end of the series, you discover that she was just writing a fictional story, and in fact a bunch of crappy things happened and they didn't win the lottery...really cool right? SO basically, you can write anything, show anything to the viewer and can totally negate everything that happened, but saying the narrator lied. This is not new, in fact writers have been doing it for years. It is a cheap trick, used to create outrageous and seemingly unrealistic events in the story for cheap thrills, then justify them at the end by saying it in fact never happened. In this movie however, the device is used just for a cheap twist, similar to the Uninvited (which was a lot better).

The problem being, when people read or listen to a narrator, that narrator becomes the expert on the situation on the events they are describing. It is a documented human condition. It is the same reason when we watch a documentary on WWII, we are assuming all information that is given to us is correct. Same goes for teachers at school, expert lecturers all the way down to the guy who works in finance, giving you stock advice at the dinner table. We automatically submit to their experience, authority or expertise. Most people do not recognize a first person narrator in a story or movie as untrustworthy unless you are familiar with the actually literary device. You automatically accept there experiences as fact, since they are there and you aren't. And that is why people get confused.

If you read what everybody is saying about this movie, and they things they don't understand or plot holes it all relates to the fact that they saw or were told something, and they took it as fact. Why was the killer driving while Marie was trying to rescue her friend? Where did that truck come from is Marie got a ride with her friend to her house? These questions don't prove they don't understand, it just proves that the literary device being used is ineffective.

This is why the ending is cheesy. These kind of twists are best left in third person narration, where things can be explained logically and be based on the events that have been shown to the reader/viewer. The ending then, can be backed up by the whole plot of the movie without confusion.

That is my 2 cents.

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The Ending works with the film in so many ways, first of all, if you watch the movie MEMENTO, it shows that in the beginning , the main character was after something that he has been looking for a while, & later on the movie we learned that he got the wrong guy, BUT we later learn that the ending was the beginning, that the whole movie was a reverse rotation of the events that occurred in the beginning, you could say thats pointless, but its not, we see what he goes through, his redemption, all his actions that lead up to one event.

Thats what this movie is, almost, in the beginning we see an injured girl whispering to herself, & suddenly we see her running through the forest, bleeding to death, we automatically assume that it was all a dream, but something big is about to happen & she'll be the soul survivor, so it basically gives us a whisper.

This movie does NOT have any plots holes, if anything, everything we seen bough up in this movie has a purpose, there was NO Yellow sports car, The Truck was the farmer's because it had the shot gun in it, & the shot gun was seen on the family's furniture wall, the girls show in the car were probably the girls victims, I think everyone was pissed who the killer turned out to be, because she became such a likable character because of her survival instincts, & that the ending was so shocking that they looked at every possible explanation & turned it into a plot hole.

In my opinion, the ending was very unpredictable & it scared the hell out of me,

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obviously, you did not read my post...

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I would have found the ending unpredictable if they hadn't given it away in the beginning when she said she had a dream where she was being chased by herself. Because of that, I saw it coming a mile away. I like movies with the untrustworthy narrators. That's why I love Blair Witch 2 even though everyone else seems to hate it. I'm just pissed off they gave it away in this one.

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I think you are painting broad strokes in believing everyone thinks like you. I've rarely seen so much generalization. The narrator is shown to be in police custody at the very beginning and if that equates as a trustworthy narrator to you, that is your fault.

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[deleted]

". Why was the killer driving while Marie was trying to rescue her friend? Where did that truck come from is Marie got a ride with her friend to her house? These questions don't prove they don't understand, it just proves that the literary device being used is ineffective. "

Because none of it happened. Anything could be explained by "it didn't happen, it's all a lie the girl's telling." Which is the point of the movie. I thin it's somewhat interesting that she is portrayed as a victim in the film yet is actually the sadistic killer. Though it's kinda like TAKING LIVES in that regard, what with the killer "becoming" one of his victims... stupid unrealistic crap... and yeah it is lame that you can effectively push aside all flaws this film has, if you want, because 'she's telling a story and she's lying.' But essentially that's the film in a nutshell.

UNTRUTHWORTHY NARRATION is interesting when implemented in a unique way, see:Fight Club, American Psycho, Memento... hell, almost all films of the past 10-15 years seem to have a narrator you can't trust, Usual Suspects started this trend by having a stupid unnecessary copout ending where you don't know what is fake and what is real AT ALL... at least they made an effort in this film to separate fantasy from reality by showng some scenes more than once, from her lie story, to how they happened for real...

Once one gets over the twist and views the film as just a story she tells and then thinks about all the other pieces, the stuff she doesn't say, the notes she doesn't play, this film becomes more interesting psychologically... still, was a twist necessary? Nah. Does it make the whole film feel really pointless? Yes. Still, what is a horror MOVIE but a story filled with lies? We're watching a lied, filmed version of a lie. So there you go.

-
Shuji Terayama forever.

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