Have you seen "The Boy"? Its available on Amazon Prime. It's a fairly unique tale, I thought, but I don't know you may
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ashingtray — 9 years ago(October 09, 2016 11:32 AM)
This movie was never about the twist that the other boy is dead.
The Director did made it obvious at the first place only the brother could see the brother and not anyone else. It was obvious in most shots, so it's obvious the Director wasn't hiding it.
The power of the movie OR if you call it the Twist is that the dead brother appears to be a real Ghost, and not his imagination, and it is reveal at the final act dialogue that the mom was playing along at first to imagine the dead brother was still there, and that got the alive brother confused, and thus he was convinced that the mother was fake, who just had a plastic surgery, who you can tell from the plot reveal that she might have done it due to her insecurity after the divorce and as a not-so-famous tv personality. The "accident" they have been referring at the scene where the mom was talking with the police was indicating the death of the other son.
This is one of those rare movies where I hated watching it at first, because I thought the same, why was it so obvious that the brother is not real, and I surely thought that the rest of the movie was boring because I already knew the twist.
But then i changed my mind at the end, when the movie reveal that Ghost are real, with the wide shot of the mom's spirit walking out from the house, thus the dead brother was real as a "ghost" and not an imagination of the alive brother.
I thought this was unique and brilliant, a movie where I thought I hate, but then changed my mind at the very end, and thought it was a brilliant film. Very rare such feeling I have for a film, thus I think this film is pretty innovative and unique on it's own. Definitely worth more than 6.7 stars! I give it an 8 atleast! -
kinwardog — 9 years ago(October 24, 2016 11:18 PM)
Going to have to agree with you here. I see where they were going with the mother. It is easy to see why the boys might resent the real mother and would rather hold onto to their idealistic image of her instead.
The problem is that eerie mood and development gets thrown out the window when they try to do another variation of "Alice Sweet Alice" in the third act. I was kindof hoping that the mother really was a psychopathic "doppleganger". The lack of the dad and her going away for surgery like that (considering how wealthy and somewhat famous she was) really didn't make sense to me. I mean, she just lost one son; yet, she lets her obviously troubled boy roam free on his own. Even if she was a narcissistic and negligent mother, she still had the money and means to hire a nanny at least, lol.
I think the film would have also benefited by substituting the red cross folks with the kids' grandparents. The grandparents could've played along with Elias by addressing Lukas, too. And also, the filmmakers could have used this opportunity to expand more on the backstory between the mother and kids. I think it was important to humanize the characters a bit more in order for the violent ending to resonate. The ending had the potential to be a massive gut punch. It went for the shock instead, which I think hindered the ending's effectiveness. -
the_real_Doc_Justice — 9 years ago(November 06, 2016 11:30 PM)
I don't which post to reply to, I'll just write across the board.
I feel sorry for the people who compare this movie to every ghost story around. Even, yes, Ghost. It's like complaining that a zombie movie has zombies in it as it's been done so many times before.
They all focus about "the twist" "the twist" "the twist" as there is nothing else in the movie but that, as they heard and read there was "a twist" "a twist" "a twist" but hey, they're so clever, they figured it out before the opening credits came through. Sooo much time wasted they want their 100mn of their life back or some other lame, old (and funny) snap.
I understand some people must have not liked this movie, and all for their own good reasons, and that's great.
For myself I got carried all the way. Script, light, sound, sets, incredible cast, rhythm, finesse that in my eyes could give some classics like Les Diaboliques (or Alice ou La Derniere Blague) a run for its money.
I don't want to hide behind awards, but look at the prizes and nominations this movie got. You really think that those circles of critics were terribly wrong. They probably don't have seen anything you've seen before. They're just clueless, the 107 positive reviews (against 18 negative) on rt must mean that any of them has seen anything approaching this very theme.
Go downgrade any Shyamalan movie again, make yourself happy over Funny Games if you have to (or the great, unique Salsa !) and please let me enjoy this one.
(the only slight downside I felt was with that blurry poster down the 1st floor corridor. Been shown once too many. On the other side, there is this: http://imgur.com/HsyKgdU )