Lazy Endings (Spoilers)

I blame the Blair Witch project.

Thank you for expressing this so perfectly, I whole heartedly agree, and it is so frustrating. The way this movie ended basically said to me - "we were too lazy to finish the story and/or couldn't come up with anything good, so you'll have to make up your own ending". It isn't artistic in the least, it's a cop-out. For sure there are some movies where the ambiguous endings really work, but that's because they were done in a thoughtful way, and wasn't because the writers got lazy.
It really leaves a sour taste in my mouth. If I wanted to make up my own story, I'd be doing that, not sitting here watching the film.

I agree with the OP. The basic rule of storytelling (everybody should know this because is thought in school) is introduction - problem - climax - resolution or solution of problem.

The scriptwriters nowdays seem to have forgotten this.


"Imagination is more important than knowledge" ALBERT EINSTEIN

You and everyone who agrees with you are wrong and dumb.

https://werewolfvsunicorns.wordpress.com/

you didn't understand the film at all, then you knock it?

Okay, I will spell it out for you:

Aliens are experimenting on two women. The alterations are slowly eating their minds away. Ultimately "they" will be gone and replaced ala BODY SNATCHERS. Their husbands cannot understand what is happening until it is too late, and die as a result.

The film can be taken literally, whereupon it is a classic alien abduction story. The end is not ambiguous, as it is obvious that the husband is dead and the wife is being abducted by the aliens.

The film can be taken as an allegory for someone close slowly succumbing to mental illness, or as another poster put it, how pregnancy can change a relationship. The aliens are a macguffin, in that it is really about the breakdown of a relationship (ie what would you do if your wife was slowly losing her mind?).

This is not to say that you have to like the movie (I thought it was well made and alright.. it just needed a few more creepy/scary scenes), but it really isn't that hard to comprehend.

Mate... the sanctity of their relationship was traumatically violated and the film deals with the affects this has on them both as a couple and as individuals. Don't get hung up on the plot device of ET rape (if that is indeed what "happens" in the film).

"Find out what to think next!"
-Chris Morris, "Brasseye"

I'm certainly not commenting on how you had to perceive the film, or how you're supposed to feel about it, but I'm totally missing how the movie is even a little ambiguous.

The director gave you a big, giant clue 20 minutes in as to what was going on, and I thought the story flowed naturally from there. Nothing felt odd or out of place, and I think it told the story it set out to tell, including its resolution. We've seen and heard so many alien abduction stories over the years, it's not hard to imagine where it went once it was finished telling its core story.

But what happened next really wasn't the point. This was a closed story about two people, and the individual effects this one encounter had on the both of them as a couple, and individually as people. In fact, I'd argue the story was really more about Paul, and that the ending felt so abrupt because Paul's story had reached its conclusion (also abruptly, but appropriately).

I really loved the movie. You could make a case that it was an allegory about multiple things, but I think the film was literal. They wanted the women, it was clear why they wanted the women, and the men were dealt with. The end.