The movie was an allegory about mental illness/trauma. Its obvious that witnessing the suicide of her patient triggered repressed and unresolved trauma from childhood, causing a psychotic break.
Overall I thought it was disappointing. After watching "Barbarian" recently, I thought I'd check out a new horror movie and this one was a swing and a miss.
While in some sense, yes, it was an allegory, I don’t think that’s all it was. I mean, they even pointed out an ongoing string of similar scenarios going back 20+ incidents.
Childhood trauma played a small part in this one, but clearly the happenings in the present were the focus. This was a 6/10 for me. Barbarian was a 7.5/10.
If it was once, you'd have a point. Twice could maybe be a coincidence.
19 out of 20 times in a row(that they know of) is a very clear pattern and proof that there is an entity at work.
The trauma was there just so the normies had something to blame her "hallucinations" on.
shareI'm not sure how you would get a different interpretation of events. I think her watching a suicide did help trigger her trauma, but it was said the entity does feed of trauma, which made her a perfect candidate for Mr. Smiley. The proof would be the dude in prison. A conversation that was not in her head. Look how it escalated. And then there's the linkage of the past suicides. This definitely wasn't something just in her head.
shareShe hallucinated some of the things / events as shown in the movie, but to say that ALL of it was just in her head is wrong.
There were things that happened outside of her sphere of existence, such as the previous victims (like the ones in the gas station), the black guy who committed murder to break the curse and the professor's gradual decline. Her cop friend actually followed up the cases and independently realized there was a pattern too.
If you think all of it was in her imagination and nothing actually happened, you weren't paying attention or didn't understand the movie properly.