Well, it's not that I didn't understand it - in my opinion, it was just lazy writing and bad editing. And a good cast wasted on the mediocre movie ((
However... I might be mistaken, so please could anyone outline the movie for me?
[spoiler] Did their father really visited them? Did he kill the children? What happened after, did the father stay in the attic? Who do we see coming out of the forest in the ending scene? Etc.[/spoiler]
Thanks.
These seemed pretty obvious to me, but anyways:
>>Did their father really visited them?
Yes.
>>Did he kill the children?
Yes.
>>What happened after, did the father stay in the attic?
Yes. He was real since Allie could see him too.
>>Who do we see coming out of the forest?
Hallucinations of Jack's family. He was still dependant on drugs to keep him sane.
Thanks!
Also, there was this photograph in the movie depicting Jack's family. And it seemed like there were fewer people - someone was missing, but I didn't manage to understand who it was. Was it someone who was actually a hallucination/different personality? Or maybe it was someone who took the picture?
SPOILERS
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The family studio photo? it was Sam missing as we learned that the Father abused his own daughter, Jane, so Sam is Jane's son and I imagine this photo was like when they were still a "normal" family. Sam probably was born right after that and in between Jack testifying, I mean Sam looked like a 4y old. so I don't think the whole family had a photo together anymore with Sam on it.
wow, never thought of that!.... sounds plausible
shareI thought it was odd that the family photo didn't have Sam, and then it's like oh...that's the insinuation. One of the advantages this movie has is that a lot of the details it's setting up for the twist are all very "normal". It's like oh okay, he has a scar, oh okay the photo was taken before sam was born, oh okay the youngest child is afraid of mirrors, etc.
It's not like The Machinist where you're like...wtf is happening here. This is all very weird and surreal. Different sort of movie. Different sort of payoff.
I didn't understand what the mirrors had to do with anything, btw? Why did they need to be covered up?
Jack got rid of the mirrors/covered the big ones because it would dispel the illusion that he created for himself. He'd see that he was alone, or that he was talking to himself, etc.
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Right, I noticed that his was the only reflection when he came up to cover it up for the first time. In that moment I wasn't sure yet if his siblings were still alive.
Another question: why age 21? Why was it significant in this context? Also, I didn't entirely get the legal side of what was happening - didn't the house belong to their mother in the first place?
And btw, did their father eat his children's flesh after killing them? It wasn't made clear (to me, anyway) what Jack did with their bodies. And that scene where "Billy" went down the chimney to get the money was so dark, it was like basically five minutes of black screen, I had to *guess* what was happening. I couldn't even make out what he saw in the attic (what Allie later covered up with sackcloth?).
Oo, I didn't catch that at the time about the reflection.
I think if he had been younger than 21, without a parent, all the kids would have been entered into the system, and they would lose the house.
Regarding the legal situation, I wasn't really sure either. I thought there'd be more to it...maybe related with the father. But from what I can tell, the mother didn't actually own the house.
It was her old family home. I think she had other, distant family that could have lay claim to the estate. The attorney was the one handling those affairs, and ultimately, I think no one else deigned to claim the house.
A possible plot hole though is how they could have resolved the situation of the attic while still allowing Jack to retain the house. Because certainly now, the authorities must have been informed as to what happened to the rest of his family.
edit: oh wait, his 21st birthday was already at hand. And presumably no one contested the mother for the estate. So legal authorities probably just went ahead and placed the estate with him instead of applying some sort of retroactive ruling.
Yeah the attic scene was super dark and later when the lawyer found the bodies, it was pretty hard to make out what he (and Allie) was looking at. But it's the bodies that Allie was covering. They're above the stain on the ceiling that they painted over.
At any rate, I don't think we know for sure that the father ate his children to survive. Movie kinda insinuates it. But I think the bodies still have their clothes on, I guess that's up to you.
Oh, and Jack didn't do anything to the bodies. When Jack returned to the attic in the flashback, he'd realized that the father had already killed them all. I don't think he even went in. He just locked and closed up the attic.
So at the film's climax, I think he was gazing at them and where they died for the first time.
It's wild when someone claims "lazy writing" and "bad editing" because they refuse to acknowledge the possibility that they failed to understand basic plot points in a movie.
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