Written by: Alejandro Amenábar
Directed by:Alejandro Amenábar
Starring: Ethan Hawke, David Thewlis, Emma Watson
Rated: R
Watch the trailer
Plot
In this psychological horror Bruce Kenner investigates a man who sexually abused his daughter, but he has no recollection of the event.
Verdict
The movie starts off with a great, creepy mood. It's unnerving and wild. You don't know what's going on, and it seems like it could be a town wide conspiracy. While the policing is simplified, it's forgivable. The third act is unforgivable, pulling the rug out from under you in a conclusion that contradicts what you've seen. The ending to this movie is not just bad, it will make you angry for wasting your time.
Skip it.
Review
I didn't know where this was going. I wondered if Ethan Hawke's character was deranged and imagining things, if it was a town wide cult committing crimes for the greater good, or if there was a supernatural element. I got none of those things. The end of the movie pulls a 'got you' out of a thin air. It 'got me' because it intentionally misled me and misrepresented events.
A father turns himself in for a crime he doesn't commit. It could be part of a cult, and a police officer is implicated in the crime.
The police work didn't feel real because everything came so easy to Bruce Kenner (Ethan Hawke). Everyone tells him exactly what he wants to hear.
Is this a dream or is he deranged? I expected Kenner to be implicated or attacked. I assumed somehow the cult would ensure his arrest. Or is it a dream, a manifestation of his obsession with the case? The movie makes you doubt what's real.
 |
| Regression - I feel like my mental capacity has regressed. |
The movie gets confusing. Are there people following him or not? This complication made me concerned for the ending. How can they wrap this up well when it's going in so many directions?
Then they drop the answer. It was mass hysteria. Everything was in everyone's imagination, BUT that doesn't explain elements we saw off screen that characters didn't see. It's a sham.
Kenner solves the case by determining the original claim of abuse was a lie. What trickery is going on here? This excuse of a resolution can't explain this movie, at least not satisfactorily. This is a cheap knock off of Primal Fear (1996). This movie lied to me and leveraged that for a twist ending. That isn't a twist ending, it's a pile of garbage.
The message is that regression therapy is bad and mass hysteria makes sane people bonkers crazy. If a movie has to break the contract between viewers and the film, it will happily add viewers to a list of casualties. It's one thing for this to happen in a movie that's terrible, but even worse when the movie wasn't that bad until the end. How did we get this ending? This ending retroactively makes the entire movie terrible.
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