A telepathic showdown between father and daughter, ala Carrie. That was really my only letdown from this amazing movie. It seemed to run out of steam and turned into a slasher. I still enjoyed it but really expected a brain melting, head exploding, showdown like in Scanners.
"Call me if you ever feel to old to drive" - Me and You and Everyone We Know
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Thought the ending was perfect the way it was. The "slasher" feel only lasted for a few scenes and the deaths were only really there to accentuate Barry's complete lack of remorse or sanity; his last shred of humanity was gone.
As for a sequel? I hope I never see one. This movie should stand on its own.
I thought Barry's limp death was kind of the point.
He was kind of a pathetic, repressed character. We see it in his interactions with everyone else. He's a bit of a "yes ma'am" or a whipping boy. When he "comes out" to his wife / mother / whatever, he's meek and completely timid.
Once all his laboratory toys were stripped away, he couldn't stand on his own. And so he went out like the chump he was.
It was surprising at first, and certainly a ballsy way to end your film, but the more I think about it, the more I feel this was the right decision.
They thought they were alone...
The last shred of Barry's humanity was gone as soon as he returned in 1966. The medication is the only thing that kept his insanity at bay for 16 years.
shareI disagree, man.
The drugs helped, but he could easily have stopped the medication anytime he wanted. He took the medication because part of him still wanted to be normal.
Prequel?
shareIf you expect a film like Beyond the Black Rainbow to ever have a sequel, or a remake to boot, then you have no idea what you have watched.
shareI think the true essence of this movie is a twisted one sided love story.... The fact that Barry Nyle is obsessed with Elena, and she wants nothing to do with him. His twisted way of trying to win her over and the fact that his mutiny/elimination of obstacles ultimately lead to his down fall and death...
shareYou could almost stipulate that the final showdown occurred between Nyles and Elena. With Elena no longer under the restrictions of her cell and the mind controlling (or subduing?) pyramid, her telekenisis reached a new element of infliction and control. Did Elena "will" Nyle's "accident"? We saw earlier in the institute that she does have the ability to control other people's body's and actions (a la her care taker's face explosion scene.) I thought it was quite poetic in its simplicity and drew a line between Nyle's need to create control in his physical action/appearance (i.e. violence and his "appliances" as Maryanne describes them) because he could not create control mentally (either for himself or his subject.) Elena on the other hand, had been physically controlled to exaggerate her mental abilities and contain her in the institute, once released, her boundaries in the mental and physical world were apparently limitless and only controlled by her instinctual and emotional reaction to her environment.
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They aren't father and daughter.
shareI agree, I was initially disappointed.... But then I got to thinking. Every movie like this goes in exactly that direction. A part of me feels that Panos made a brilliant decision in, almost comedic, having us robbed of that Scanners-like showdown because the antagonist, in his own obsession and hubris and greed, just can't accept that his leg is entangled in a root and ends up tripping and killing his own self by falling. Sure, I would have liked to have seen what you said... But we've seen it so many times before. This was... an amusing anticlimax. :)
shareran out of steam? it never had any steam
Who cares about stairs? The main thing is ice cream.