MovieChat Forums > Southbound (2016) Discussion > Can't understand why "accident" confuses...

Can't understand why "accident" confuses everyone (SPOILERS)

posted 9 years ago by tv2-194-495681
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I freaking loved this film, I've watched it through a couple of times now. One thing that has struck me the whole time was all the confusion and questions around the ACCIDENT segment.

To me, the segment was very, very clear. The guy was a serial killer. He saw a girl on a dark deserted road, ran her over, picked her up and had his fun via his "operation". The voices on the phone were simply the voices in his head telling him what to do with her to entertain himself, and eventually, how to flee the scene. If you watch carefully, even when he has removed his headset towards the end he can still hear the laughter.

When he drives away in his new wheels, he passes a diner with a clear sign that says "TRAP" right in the middle. The whole film is about characters being trapped by their misdeeds.

[–] sliphazard 8 years ago

Daaaammnn OP just got SHOT DOWN big time lol :)

The serial killer idea while fun and imaginative is 100% wrong. That theory in relation to the rest of the movie just makes no sense what so ever. He's the only main character to make it out alive, whereas everyone else dies. Why was he in "Purgatory" or this "Bermuda Triangle" type place to begin with? Who knows, took the wrong exit off the freeway maybe?

But of all the main characters he's shown making the morally right decisions. The "Demons" or whatever you wish to call them give him several outs during his phone call with them.

When asked to pick her up and take her to the city, he could've just hung up in fear and drove off leaving her to die but he didn't. In the hospital he's give even more tests/outs. Putting the tube down her throat and then operating on her. Furthermore the male "demon" asks him flat out "Do you want to save her life". No matter what they throw at him or ask him to do, he does it, wanting to save her, believing he's actually helping her.

And that's where the laughing comes into place. My view on it is, the "demons" knew she was going to die and there was nothing he could actually do to save her. So not only were they testing him possibly thinking they could get 2 souls for the price of one but also tormenting him, because hey why not they're "demons", they're *beep*

JustMyOpinion

[–] tv2-194-495681 8 years ago

Hehe. OK, I watched it again the other day and I'm sticking to my story. I don't mind being shot down, so fire away. I only objected to the toxic dribble and insults :)

[–] sliphazard 8 years ago

lol fair enough :)

And hey, that's what makes it an interesting film and precisely what the film makers where going for. They left it open ended so there could be different interpretations. Who knows, maybe they'll do a sequel (hopefully) and make it so the first one was just a dream lol :)

JustMyOpinion

[–] Stovepipe99 8 years ago

I was actually pleasantly surprised by the moment in that segment where he decides to call 911 and try to help her.

It's really fitting because the "crime" of the girl that he hit with his car was . . . "you left me there." The girl is condemned because she left a girl behind to die. The fact that the driver does the right thing (after a little hesitation) separates him from the other characters in the film. The girl is (ironically) tortured by someone who doesn't leave someone behind.

I think that because of both his negligence (earphones in, he's doing sudoku in the car, eyes not on the road) and his hesitation in calling for help, the demons decide to have a little fun with him.

I know that it seems like he's being selfish in the end when he agrees to drive away, but at that point (1) the girl has died and is beyond help and (2) it's obvious that something very creepy, wrong, and supernatural is happening. If he left her there while she was still suffering I'd feel differently. In his shoes I also would have fled. If you're in a strange town and dialing 911 doesn't get you help, what else are you supposed to do?

My main argument against the serial killer theory is that he'd have no reason to call 911 if he'd hit her on purpose. And what killer takes his victim to a hospital? (Remember--he doesn't know it is abandoned until after he is inside).

One tangential question I would have is what exactly you all think the girl did. From the dialogue it sounds like she left her friend/bandmate behind at a club and then the bandmate was presumably murdered. But that seems . . . not quite at the level of maliciousness to deserve what that character gets. The other people who are punished seem to be intentional predators.

[–] tomholland2016 8 years ago

One tangential question I would have is what exactly you all think the girl did. From the dialogue it sounds like she left her friend/bandmate behind at a club and then the bandmate was presumably murdered. But that seems . . . not quite at the level of maliciousness to deserve what that character gets. The other people who are punished seem to be intentional predators.

Yes, she left her to have a one-night-stand with someone. That's a very selfish act as you know that members of bandmates always stick together no matter what as long as the group still exists. We can say they're best friends. They travel a lot and the one that each of them will always get in touch with is the members of the band.

Also, she did say *beep* a lot of times.

[–] Stovepipe99 8 years ago

Yes, she left her to have a one-night-stand with someone. That's a very selfish act as you know that members of bandmates always stick together no matter what as long as the group still exists. We can say they're best friends. They travel a lot and the one that each of them will always get in touch with is the members of the band.

I'm all for sisterhood. But it still seems like a relatively tame crime for such a severe punishment.

EDIT: I guess it mostly bothers me because the man in the car is also guilty of hurting someone through negligence (not malice) and it seems like he is allowed to go free in the end.

Also, she did say *beep* a lot of times.

LOL. If this were enough for a trip to purgatory, that would be a VERY crowded highway.

[–] tomholland2016 8 years ago

I guess it mostly bothers me because of the man in the car is also guilty of hurting someone through negligence (not malice) and it seems like he is allowed to go free in the end.

Well as you can clearly see, from all of the stories, only the man who suppresses his purgatory without him knowing it. Yes, he accidentally hits the girl with his car but even he hesitates at first for trying to help the injured girl, he apparently attempts to save the girl. The people that are talking with him on his earphones may be the demons impersonating humans. He's willing to sacrifice his time and not performing hit-and-run. That's why in the end, even the girl dies, he is free from the test the demons put him into.

[–] Stovepipe99 8 years ago

Right, but the girl from the band never gets a chance to redeem herself for what she did. I suppose you could argue that she "leaves" her friends behind, but that's not at all the same. The friends are possessed and she is wildly outnumbered by the cult members.

I get what you're saying about how we see the man make more of an effort, but somehow it still feels like a bit of a double-standard to me. I guess maybe I wish they'd given more details about the nature of what the girl did. Like, did she know that there had been other girls murdered in that area? Did the friend beg her to stay and she left anyway? Did she know that the friend was super-intoxicated?

Just adding a little more detail could have made her leaving the friend feel like a more punishable offense.

I also think that leaving someone behind in a club (presumably unharmed at that point) is way different than hitting someone with your car and leaving them there. In one case you basically know the person is going to die; in the other case you might know you are putting your friend in some danger, but you don't know for certain they will be harmed in any way.

It's just a little criticism I have, but it did bother me on watching the movie. I like my hellish purgatories to have clear boundaries and rules.

[–] ilon 8 years ago

His mistake has nothing to do with the girl in the first place. Her mistake is directly connected to her friend.
That's how I 'read' it.

[–] Stovepipe99 8 years ago

His mistake has nothing to do with the girl in the first place.

I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean by this.

His "sin" as I understand it was basically his negligent driving (and possibly also his initial hesitation before calling 911).

Her "sin", from what we gather, was leaving a friend behind at a club where she was later killed.

In both cases, I feel like the character was negligent. In fact, driving so recklessly seems to me to be more likely to hurt someone than leaving them in a nightclub. And yet the man in the car is ultimately allowed to go free while the girl from the band suffers a protracted and painful death.

Then again, the other girls in the band are also punished, so maybe I'm expecting too much consistency from the world of Southbound.

[–] ilon 8 years ago

I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean by this.

That he had a negligent accident involving her, but he did not had any connection to the girl. He could've been negligent in the same way and not cause any harm at all.

She failed her friend. There's no sin if there's no friend.

Now... keep in mind that I have not been deeply thinking about this. 

[–] Stovepipe99 8 years ago

So you're saying that you think that her "sin" is worse because she is betraying someone she knows, while what he does is bad but does not involve a personal betrayal?

I sort of get that. You are supposed to take care of your friends/family, and she fails to do that.

I just wish we'd gotten more detail about the circumstances of her leaving the friend behind. Like, even if they told us that the friend was dangerously drunk, or that a creepy guy had been hanging around her, it would make leaving her behind actually feel like something truly wrong.

I mean . . . I've given it a bit of thought (obviously), but my overall sense is that the writer(s) of the movie didn't work that hard to make the universe consistent or even tie things in thematically.

When you think about it, the punishment that the girl gets is almost as bad (or worse) than what the guy at the end gets--and he was supposedly a rapist/murderer.

[–] ilon 8 years ago

Yep, that's basically what I'm saying.

And I agree, we are probably thinking about it more than the screenwriters did, but it's consistent enough for me, entertaining and a little bit clever. It's all I need.

[–] Stovepipe99 8 years ago

Yeah--I found it to be passable. I thought it was a shame that it only had one standout episode ("The Accident"), and that the wrap-around story ended up being kind of lame. I had high hopes with the neat design of the floating skeletons--and I liked the little jolt of emotion when the man in the mask lets the girl go at the end. But I felt like it didn't wrap up very well, ultimately.

I thought it was going to turn out that the guy who was killed at the end was going to turn out to have killed the band member girl--and that it was going to tie together the stories. Nope.

As to the "rules" of the purgatory, I'm just a goody-goody rule follower, and if there are consequences for something I want them to be clear and consistent, darn it!

[–] natewei 8 years ago

One weird thing I noticed about "the accident" segment. If I remember correctly, the driver never says 'I'm sorry' or 'it was an accident' the entire time. I thought for sure the voices were pulling him along to get this confession out of him, but nope it never came. He only cared about his own @ss. Then they let him go

Can anyone confirm? If I'm wrong then feel free to flame/ignore

[–] DeAd_MiKe_187 8 years ago

Well he did call 911 and say he hit someone with his car in the middle of nowhere. That kind of implies he didn't do it on purpose, no?

[–] JudgeX 8 years ago

I don't buy the serial killer theory.

I think it's like this:

1) She is being punished for abandoning a friend in need for selfish reasons (to have sex with the older guy), and her friends are being punished for being weak-minded.

2) His punishment is for accidental negligence, so his face is rubbed in his mistake as much as possible, and his punishment is also her punishment for leaving her friend.

3) He is released at the end because he did the right things to atone.

4) Possibly, he is not really released, and will repeat the process of running over the girl over and over the same way the guys in the truck at the beginning repeatedly roll up on the service station... but either way, he is not the recipient of physical torture because he plays the correct moves.