SPOILERS EVERYWHERE!
I found this movie beautiful and dark. Scary and sad. The acting was very powerful and sound was used in such a way to make up for the dark lighting throughout. You must suspend your disveirkd to watch this, not expect jump scares and just settle in for the ride. If you're expecting a horror with lots of murder/blood and guts - THIS IS NOT IT.
I was expecting it to be about some kind of entity for most of the movie, especially with the reference to the window from the old house that was put on the new, and the primordial clicking/throat noises throughout, but as time wore on it became apparent that this was more like the Babadook and cemented in the horrors of dementia.
So brilliantly done with the earlier generational aspects of the family. I think the decay/moul/rotting is a metaphor for the decay of the mind, the weird corridors making the viewer feel like the walls are closing in and gravity is shifting, we don't know which way is up or down.
What Sam experiences in there is a physical expression of what her Gran is going through, and she can likely look forward to. She'll go through this with her mother first and then it will be her.
I was most frightened during the corridor scenes, I stared feeling all Blair Witch panicky when Sam was first lost in there and then it kept getting worse, I felt so claustrophobic and sick- what about you? Brilliant of the writer/director to make me be able to experience a bit of what it feels like having dementia.
Poor Gran/Edna. I just wanted to hug her when she was asking Sam where everyone has gone.
I think the James, the neighbour with Down syndrome served 2 purposes: 1. To throw us off the trail and keep thinking it was an entity. Like when Sam asks him in the house and he acts scared and says no and 2. To help Sam's journey in realising what is going on with her Gran. The story about him being locked in the cupboard makes us, the viewers, angry at Gran, and when she calls him the name', in the same way it does to Sam. And before all of that Sam was stubbornly siding against her mother with her Gran. And poor Sam is weighed down with burdens and doesn't know what to do, but is trying her best, even with no one on her side.
The dreams that Kay was having about the old house (and the great grandpa who died the same way, that also throws us off trail) are her fears of the same, being much closer to the time. And that's why she can't leave her Mum there in the end, she shows compassion not only because she loves her mum, but she realises the weight of all of this, it's her future.
I loved the use of the window as a symbol of heritage & family.
So in the end there is no entity, despite the gory reveal of what's beneath Gran's decaying skin. I love the juxtaposition of emotion in this scene: how repulsive the skin peeling is, and how lovingly Kay pulls it away, finally accepting that this is now what her mother is.
The very end where they all lay on the bed and Sam finds the bruise on her Mum is such a great finish, the three generations of women laying there, exhausted, frightened but still wanting to care for each other.
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