Analysing the film..SPoilers ..

OK, no offense but all you really said was it could be this, or this...or even this. when you make an analysis you form a conclusion. your conclusion is you are really not sure, but it could be any one of several explanations, so I can't see how you "nailed" it because you yourself are undecided. You certainly did make some valid points though.

anyway, this is obviously a psychological thriller/black comedy (I call them *beep* films)like something from david lynch. I wonder if even the writer/director is certain of some of these points or was it written with some ambiguity. I confess that I cannot form concrete conclusions about the film because some things just don't add up for me. that is not to say I didn't like, because I did.

I think it was clear that DHP was a schizophrenic. his hallucenations were as real to him as reality is to any normal person. he also took medication and there is medication that can help control Schizophrenia(but they often stop taking it, and that is alluded to in the film as he argues with "himself" about dosage).

it's clear he has a fetish for death/mutilation/control as a fastasy but not clear weather he has ever really commited murder. it is shown that he stages death/mutilation/torture and has the means, know-how and equipment to do it convincingly. it is not entirely clear as to why he is doing it. some have suggested he is trying to "scare straight" criminals but I don't think so. I think he is a police officer to gain access to horrifying crimes/photos and even see crime scenes and corpses because he gets a thrill out it and perhaps even a sexual thrill as suggested by the scene where he is nailing one of his "guests" in the bathroom as john lay "bloodies and tied" in the tub(I hope it was chelsea because she was *beep* hot!). obviously he didn't plan to catch wayward criminals by leaving fake postcars in his mailbox. a true schitzo really believes their false reality so he would have no recollection that he mailed himself a postcard or that julia didn't exist(she did to him). I mean you couldn't tell him that rupert or roman or chelsea didn't exist, he would have thought YOU were crazy since he just spent the whole night partying with them. you can see this is true when john starts to *beep* with him a little implying that no one is really there and this gets DHP quite unnerved. maybe even a schitzo on some minute level knows they are nuts but they will not allow anytihng to disrupt their false reality.

so we have a schitzo who is obsessed with death. I think he allows john in simply because he is an opporunist. he see john as a plaything. people here are saying he knew right away john was not a friend of julias because she didn't exist but that shouldn't have given him away because to DHP she did. DHP just saw an opporunity to "get off" and took it. I think he doesn't have the stomach(or just hasn't gotten up the nerve) to kill yet and the fake wounds have nothing to do with the chess game. technically he did untie him and set him free so he is not a liar(of course he really is) as john stays of his own accord and attacks DHP with the prop knife. I also don't think he allowed john to leave to get the money. again that was just opportunistic. he looks to be pretty well off and like he doens't need the heist money. I think he just took it to *beep* with john some more. show him who was in control.

now the ending has me really baffled. it was pointed out that the postage stamps were used and therefore could not have come by actual mail, in other words planted by DHP(or john, maybe he never left the country). I honestly didn't notice that, I just noticed the stamps had the word mexico on them. I thought the allusion was that john mailed it to get revenge on DHP. but then you have to ask when did he have the oppotunity to grab the photo and then would DHP be so sloppy after all his careful planning to not search him and not realize it was missing. also if it was john, why just the photo, why not something else to corroboate what it implies, like a detail of the account and like he threatened at one point, describing the house in detail. now if we assume it was DHP who sent the photo(some form of self-sabotage), we can assume it was one of his hallucenations who was behind it(maybe they are not all friendly or maybe one wants to stop him for his own good). in fact DHP is probably just as baffled how the photo got there but realizes he has to do something to preserve his reality. so does he kill the detecive or just scare him, supposedly like the others, and perhaps threaten him not to tell. I think even if he has never killed before he has to now, or he will be exposed. that makes sense. how many times has a serial killer fantasized about killing before they actually gradutate to it? or a rapist? it's probably not something that comes quickly but takes time, maybe years, to work up to. it makes no sense to me if the stamps were cancelled. obviously DHP had the ability to have things mailed and postmarked from wherever he wanted, as the postcard from austrailia proved, so he could have done the same thing with the photo. if it was john then it means he couldn't have actually mailed it and would have had to risk dopping it off in person and then why put cancelled stamps on it. I can't figure this out. another thing is dumping johns drugged body by his house. why? why not dump him somewhere else? too close to the crime scene and is this what he did with other victims?

If nothing else, this film is definitely provocative. I like a movie that has an after-taste. something that has you thinking about it long after the credits roll. I still talk about and think about "mulholland drive" ten years after I first saw it and it's still one of my favorite films. to this day I don't think I have figured out everything...and maybe that's why I like it so much.

"everybody wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die"

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