My thoughts on the sampler/thief

Watching the movie, I thought the sampler was some kind of scientist/researcher studying the effects of the worms and their secretions. The thief was working as his lackey...providing subjects, helping perform experiments, collecting data, etc. The thief, as an added bonus, was also using the suggestability provided by the drug to rob the subjects. So in my mind, the sampler/scientist (think of sample as a scientific term) was the mastermind behind everything that was happening, the thief/lackey was working for him (stealing both people and money), while the victims were simply subjects in some crazy psychotropic experiment.

This explains why the victims were forced to do mundane tasks such as copying a book or making a paper chain. These mundane tasks were experiments designed by the scientist to study the neurophysical/psychological effects of the worms/secretions on a human subject. The thief/lackey was needed because this type of human testing would be extremely illegal and the scientist wouldn't want to be directly connected with human experimentation. Thus, the thief studied the people while the scientist studied the pigs. Also, allowing the thief to earn extra income through fraud and theft (perhaps even selling the drug on the side, as I thought occurred with the two teenagers) would make him less likely to turn on the scientist. So then, the thief makes money (his only concern), the scientist gets results (his only concern), and the subjects/victims get their lives destroyed (seems like a metaphor for something).

I was absolutely 100% sure that this is what was going on. In fact, I thought it was really pretty obvious. Now I get on here and find out that I was actually 100% wrong in my beliefs compared to the filmmaker's original intentions. I guess this says something about the subjectivity of art...although I still prefer my own interpretation.