MovieChat Forums > Honeymoon (2014) Discussion > Lazy Endings (Spoilers)

Lazy Endings (Spoilers)

posted 10 years ago by joshua-289
32 replies | jump to latest

Movies seem to be getting more and more lazy. Lets make an alien movie, but lets not have any reasoning or explanation, but we can hide behind the now cliche "do you need the ending spelled out for you"? Yes.. Perhaps I do. Perhaps I want to know what was really going on and why. If I wanted to have to "interpret the ending", why watch the movie in the first place? I could just sit at home and make up my own stories. And the writers and directors don't have to defend it. A legion of self-rightous ego fans will run in, screaming how stupid you are for needing an actual ending.

I don't mind some well played ambigious endings. Total Recall (90's version) was interesting because you really didn't know if it was all a dream or not. That's interesting and well played. But recently there simply seems no more payoffs, just sad, abrupt stops in the story for no other reason than to look cool. I'm a hip director with a hip movie cause my ending was wide open and everyone can guess how it actually ended. Really?

So on this movie, again, no payoff. No reasons, no ideas, no real understanding of what the heck was going on. It just stopped. And if anyone questions that, well, apparently they are all dumb and ignorant and not cool.

[–] ezizabef 10 years ago

Yep. I completely agree.

[–] moisan4 10 years ago

I agree 100% as well. Ambiguous endings are fine for a select few films that have impeccable writing and the movie has directing specifically intended for an open ending. I've noticed a continuing trend over the last decade to make very abrupt endings to films that shouldn't have them. Directors and producers can say whatever they want about being intentionally vague, but in 99% of these films its just lazy writing and poor directing. Since this has become a trend, they figure not actually making a plot makes the film intelligent, and those that question the film are just ignorant and dimwitted. Even if it's not in the film (or book) good writers know the answers to every question in their works, and they will intentionally omit certain details due to limited quantity of content available for things like running times, or use metaphors, etcetera.

Unfortunately many recent films have deplorable screenwriting, and the writers don't know the answers themselves. They have an outline for a screenplay, and instead of writing a final draft, the film is shot and edited with the hopes the audience will do the writers work for them and just fill in the blanks. Just like any job there are people that are great at what they do, and then there is everyone else who just puts in their time. Thanks to cheaper digital filming techniques and do it yourself editing tools, and digital distribution there are far more poor works of media being released than ever before. Just like the music and video game industry, production and more importantly distribution of these forms of media is cheaper and easier than ever before.

[–] spiralout-3 10 years ago

Very well worded. Exactly how i see it.

[–] therefdotcom 10 years ago

+1

"laugh and the world laughs with you. Weep and you weep alone." - Dae-su Oh

[–] songod-95003 9 years ago

Couldn't agree more.

I see this technique primarily in genre films but it has also crept into mainstream movies like "Gone Girl". What is gone is how, in the olden days, there was always a denouement.

I have seen movies where literally it seemed like the production ran out of film! They are in the climax of the thing when suddenly... credits!

But as you say it has become commonplace. This generations version of the ancient Greek drama tread of "Deus ex Machina" or "Message from the Gods". It usually went like this: Whenever the writer of a play found he had painted himself in a corner with no way logically out for his characters, he could write a scene where one of the God's intervened, thus getting the play moving again! Maybe it was novel when first done but soon became lazy. Now we have the "wtf ending". Open ended so much the film falls through the hole!

I wasn't bothered by the ending here so much as I have seen much much worse. I figured by the lights, the hum when they appeared, something alien was afoot. The very end meant, to me, both women were being taken to the alien ship\then home world probably to breed, hence the men were not needed.

Wasn't in the budget to show all that so...

[–] essex9999 10 years ago

*TOTALLY SPOILERY*

I agree the ending was abrupt, but events in the final third of the movie led up to it so clearly that I don't see it as a problem. What's ambiguous? Aliens have come to this rural resort area and are taking women, specifically, over. What more do you want to know? Why they're doing it? To me, that's not essential to explain - there is so much mythology about alien visitations that it's easy to make the usual assumptions about motivations. That is, that we don't really know their motivations because they're not human, but, whatever they are, they're not very nice. Probably they want to reproduce, or produce alien/human hybrids or something. The usual stuff.

It would have been interesting, I guess, to have a little more detail about what they were up to, but that would have made Honeymoon an entirely different, longer, more expensive and less intimately eerie film. It was not, I think, important to the story the filmmaker wanted to tell.

[–] LargeHardOnCollider 10 years ago

How are you sure that they are aliens ? Why not some supernatural force in the woods ? The greatest flaw in the film is that it leaves almost everything too ambiguous to have any satisfying payoff. The production value and acting is good but the writing is too lazy.

[–] essex9999 10 years ago

How are you sure that they are aliens ? Why not some supernatural force in the woods ?

Because of the alien imagery, especially the bright light probing the house, the creature living inside her and the shadowy figures at the end. I suppose it could be some earthly supernatural force, but which one? The images don't refer to any common supernatural being (although early on, the idea of vampires is a possibility, the later events do not support that); they do refer to standard alien stories that we've seen in dozens of movies. That's the most obvious solution. The fact that the filmmaker didn't explicitly show an alien spacecraft or MIB or whatever doesn't change the obvious alien references. If it quacks like a duck, etc. ...

[–] cello76-782-250410 10 years ago

yes essex9999, really well said and spot-on analysis. how it was all quite open toward the last 3rd. i gatta say i was a bit gutted with ending, i suppose i wanted to see them escape or similar but really thats not really ever gonna happen, too many movies have happy (save by the bell) endings. you outlined it really simply 'they are taking over women' of course!! for why , because they are Sh..itty! and hiding paul...so sad! oh well, next movie :)

[–] freakinflax 9 years ago

I disagree. I did not know what the creatures were and only found the word "aliens" on this message board. I get that they wanted to be ambiguous, but too much was left unsaid and too many possible directions it could be. Do the aliens bring the women back to their ship? Do they stay on Earth in the woods? Planning an attack? Studying us? All of the above? None of the above?

[–] kitteh-76 9 years ago

I'm 100% with you. Perfectly said.

[–] mokujin101 10 years ago

i fully agree. the ending sucks.. no payoff. nada.. way too many movies are doing this same crap

the acting and other stuff was good.

[–] Sweets233 10 years ago

Totally agree!! Well-said.

[–] stemal-1 10 years ago

'It was aliens' has the potential to be the new 'It was all a dream.'

[–] mobstar1967 10 years ago

OP was right on the money in general theory... However I liked this film for what its worth..

[–] yourmakerawaits 10 years ago

I guess they could've survived, but Bea would be severely deformed and Paul left her for another woman.

In the epilogue, they can mentioned that Bea died alone in an apartment fire and Paul is now happily married, had three kids and a golden retriever, and the family is now considering buying a yacht.

The spoiler is A HAPPY ENDING!

[–] LeeMcAdam 10 years ago

I liked the ending, what confused me was the memory/speech issues throughout the film, and was she completely changed from when she was in the woods or was she fighting it the whole way through the movie? The light clearly made her hide the car keys from the scene when it saw them on the rack so maybe she was trying to fight it.