Various viewers have expressed some disappointment in the ending of this film, but I'd like to point out that it would have been difficult if not impossible to end a visual presentation without disappointing some majority of the audience. Perhaps more importantly, I'd like to point out that the ending of this movie is widely misunderstood.
Until its ending, this movie is plainly very much a "psychological" thriller. The monster that we can *see* is a *map*, and its little black pins.
Only one character (prior to the ending) was actually seen dying, most of that character's body is out-of-frame or obscured by objects in the foreground, and we cannot infer much about the cause of his death from that scene.
Likewise, when graves begin to empty or be emptied, most of this is out-of-frame. Critics should attend to the effect of those emptied graves and of the way in which they are empty. If the undead were seen clawing their way out of the grave, the image would have been coarse and hence less effective. Had they clawed their way out, they would have had to have either broken the lid of a fairly new coffin or lifted it against the weight of a considerable amount of earth. Once out of the coffin, they would have had to tunnel through that earth. As they tunneled, the earth would have caved-in behind them. Instead of neat holes with squared sides, Robert would have seen churned mounds and depressions of earth. At that point, the film wouldn't have been a "psychological" thriller any more; it would have been an Attack of the Unsanitary.
(And if the victims returned incorporeally, then there would have been no cause for the graves to be physically emptied.) X.
Indeed, it would have been very hard to hold onto the elements that that make the movie work *until* its end and have the victims return at all. If the victims return at all, then the map is so displaced in the role of monster that we have to ask why waste it in a ghost or zombie flick.
I grant that a surface reading of the ending of the movie is *also* disappointing, but I submit that the surface reading is quite mistaken.
That surface reading would have the story be rife with coincidence and convoluted scheming. Walk through it. The first two deaths would have to be pure coincidence. The third death would be in implausible anticipation of what sort of experimentation would follow. And the ostensible villain, demonstrably prepared to kill others directly and ultimately to shoot his final target, would have to think it better to dig up seven graves, in the hopes that the final target would wander out, discover the emptied graves, and then react by killing himself. No wonder so many viewers think that the resolution is a mess. But it's *not* the resolution. It's just the mess that all but one of the characters accepts as the resolution.
The simpler explanation is given by Robert, whom no one else believes.
Until its ending, this movie is plainly very much a "psychological" thriller. The monster that we can *see* is a *map*, and its little black pins.
Only one character (prior to the ending) was actually seen dying, most of that character's body is out-of-frame or obscured by objects in the foreground, and we cannot infer much about the cause of his death from that scene.
Likewise, when graves begin to empty or be emptied, most of this is out-of-frame. Critics should attend to the effect of those emptied graves and of the way in which they are empty. If the undead were seen clawing their way out of the grave, the image would have been coarse and hence less effective. Had they clawed their way out, they would have had to have either broken the lid of a fairly new coffin or lifted it against the weight of a considerable amount of earth. Once out of the coffin, they would have had to tunnel through that earth. As they tunneled, the earth would have caved-in behind them. Instead of neat holes with squared sides, Robert would have seen churned mounds and depressions of earth. At that point, the film wouldn't have been a "psychological" thriller any more; it would have been an Attack of the Unsanitary.
(And if the victims returned incorporeally, then there would have been no cause for the graves to be physically emptied.) X.
Indeed, it would have been very hard to hold onto the elements that that make the movie work *until* its end and have the victims return at all. If the victims return at all, then the map is so displaced in the role of monster that we have to ask why waste it in a ghost or zombie flick.
I grant that a surface reading of the ending of the movie is *also* disappointing, but I submit that the surface reading is quite mistaken.
That surface reading would have the story be rife with coincidence and convoluted scheming. Walk through it. The first two deaths would have to be pure coincidence. The third death would be in implausible anticipation of what sort of experimentation would follow. And the ostensible villain, demonstrably prepared to kill others directly and ultimately to shoot his final target, would have to think it better to dig up seven graves, in the hopes that the final target would wander out, discover the emptied graves, and then react by killing himself. No wonder so many viewers think that the resolution is a mess. But it's *not* the resolution. It's just the mess that all but one of the characters accepts as the resolution.
The simpler explanation is given by Robert, whom no one else believes.