A lot of people said it is one of the most brutal movies they've seen, but I guess I misunderstood what they meant. It's the attempt here that's brutal. It just doesn't really come together well.
At first it seems to start out somewhat strong, but not really, because it just kind of dumps you in, as a young girl (Lucie) escapes from captivity where she has been brutally tortured for quite some time.
She makes friends with a new pseudo-sister, Anna, and it seems that they are all the other has in the world. (It never really explains any of their family dynamics, or why Lucie has no family. I guess she was an orphan when she was kidnapped? I think they were in foster care? But Anna calls her mom on the phone later so... who really knows.. Plot hole, for sure, but we can move past that I guess.)
We jump ahead 15 years to when Lucie sees her abusers in the newspaper and tracks them down. She barges in, guns-a-blazing, and mows down the entire family with a shotgun. I understand her killing the two adults, sure, but when it gets to the kids, I guess she was just in a rage so she didn't think it through. She at first asks the son, how old he is, and he says 18, and she asks if he knew what his parents were doing.. Even though he would have been 3 when she escaped. He doesn't answer so she just kills him. Then she goes and kills the younger sister, so.. not sure why she was asking the boy's age when it clearly doesn't matter. You lose all empathy for Lucie at this point as she has become a child murderer herself. I tried to just explain it away because she's clearly mentally unwell, so of course she isn't thinking straight. Still, another minor plot hole, that we will glaze over.
Lucie for some reason decides to stay in the house with the family she just murdered, which makes absolutely no sense. Why in the hell would someone want to stay in the home of their torturers... especially surrounded by dead bodies. MAJOR plot hole there, which is too big to really explain away. The best I can see it is that she wanted to dispose of the evidence..? But she just walks around spreading her DNA everywhere so it really, really can't be that. Maybe she had nowhere else to go? But like... any shelter or even sleeping on the streets would have been a better option, without a doubt.
Anyway, I digress, she calls her BFF Anna, who may have known of her plans, but may not have, it's never really clear. She was waiting beside a payphone for Lucie to call, so my guess is that she did know? Either way, Anna comes running to her aid, and has to deal with the entire mess herself because Lucie is having hallucinations of a dead girl that she left behind when she escaped captivity, and self-harming in the process. More on that later.
Anna's way of dealing with the bodies is to first move them all into the shower in the bathroom, and then go outside and on her own digs a MASSIVE, like we're talking way too big for the amount of bodies she's disposing of, massive hole for the bodies. She weighs like 90 lbs with not an ounce of muscle on her, so I'm not sure how she managed this on her own, in the rain, in the time it took Lucie to have a nap. I swear, the hole she dug is probably that big because it's made up of all the plot holes in this film. Also, for some reason, the hole has a bunch of pipes and wheels to turn, like as if it's for the gas valve and stuff? So maybe the hole already existed? But like... won't it then need to be dug up pretty soon to get to those? Why was the only access to those inside of a 10 foot hole with no real access point?? I don't know. Nothing about that hole makes any sense to me. Moving on...
Anna discovers that the mother/wife of the family is still alive, which she hides from Lucie, and she tries to bring her to the edge of the forest to let her escape.. even though she has a huge shotgun hole through her body. So this.. just makes absolutely no sense. She went there to help her friend cover up the murders, but she's going to actively do something that will get her friend caught, by releasing a victim, who will obviously call for help if she does get free. Her motivations for coming to Lucie's aid just basically disintegrate as you keep watching. Did she go to help the friend cover it up? Clearly not since she doesn't do much to clean up and tries to release a victim. Did she go to get her friend out of there? Clearly not because they're in the house for at least a day, if not longer. Did she go to console her friend? Clearly not because they barely speak to one another and she just kind of treats her like crap. There's just no making sense of why Anna is actually there. She also calls her own mother at one point to just say hi, which is so incredibly stupid. It serves no purpose to the plot other than kind of muddying the backstories, and would obviously get her convicted if there was ever an investigation.
Again, I digress. None of that matters really, because the surviving victim is killed anyway, and it's never going to be investigated. More on that later. I'm only mentioning these points because it's just more glaring plot holes that totally ruin the viewing experience.
So then, Lucie is hallucinating the girl she left behind again and ends up slashing her wrists all the way up the arms, which barely bleeds?? Then she walks herself out to the mass grave and slits her throat there and falls in. Oooooook? So stupid, but I guess she served her purpose in the plot so they figured they'd kill her off.
Anna is just left there like ok wtf? Then she realizes there's a secret entrance to a hidden basement. But it's not so secret, because it's very obvious it's there. It's backlit and everything. Meaning the children obviously knew what their parents were doing, so I guess it makes sense now that they were killed in Lucie's massacre. God, this movie is so stupid.
Anna, being the clever girl we have grown to love (I say that dripping in sarcasm), decides the best course of action here is not only to stay in the house at the murder-suicide scene, but to actually go down into this dungeon on her own to investigate. Going in, there's a shower, then coat hooks with work clothes, and a conveniently placed ring of keys on one of the hooks. The key is to the trap door in the middle of this room. Let's pause here to think about how unbelievably stupid it would be to leave the keys to a trap-door right beside the trap-door, so that anyone who finds it can go down and find their abductees. You're telling me that this group of people who have dedicated decades to holding people hostage and spent millions on building this underground lair, and they just leave the keys right next to the lock. -_- I can't... ffs
Anyway, she still goes down there for some reason even though she walked through a hallway with photos of tortured and mutilated bodies on the way in. Inside she finds the girl that Lucie had left behind all those years ago. She's in much worse shape. She has a metal chastity belt on, and a metal blindfold that's stapled directly into her skull. She's chained by both wrists to the wall with comically long chains. All that's in the room is a plastic mattress, and a chair with a hole in the bottom with a bucket underneath. One thing that bothered me through this movie is that every time it shows someone held in one of these dungeons, they're sitting on the toilet.. even though there's a mattress in the room. That part makes no sense, so I think that's just for us as viewers to add to the shock value. It's dumb.
Anna takes this battered girl up through to the main house and tries to clean her up by putting her in the bathtub even though she is covered in open wounds. At no point does she think maybe it's time to finally call emergency services. Nope, she thinks the best course of action is to pull out the metal from this girls skull and try to nurse her back to health on her own in the very house where she's been held captive. I don't know about you, but I would still feel like I was being held captive, just by someone else now, in a different part of the same building. The nameless girl eventually freaks out because, as we learn later, she hallucinates cockroaches crawling on her all the time. So she tries to skin her own flesh off, and rub herself on the walls to make them get off. During this episode a group of people barge into the house and shoot her down.
Moving into the second half of the film, the plot just rapidly continues to decline. We get a half-baked explanation by this old lady who apparently runs this secret society who believe strongly that 'martyrs' hold the key to the afterlife. They've seen photos of folks that are within a few minutes of death who are dissociating, and thought, hmm.. that look in their eyes must mean they are seeing the afterlife. Let's just roll with that delusional and idiotic way of thinking, even though it has a very clear scientific explanation. They also have decided that only waify, conventionally attractive young women work well for this. I'm not joking, she actually says that young women make better martyrs. Anyway, there's apparently at least 20 people in this secret society that are all just as stupid as this old broad, and believe they can learn about the afterlife this way. I guess none of them ever picked up a biology book or really learned anything about torture, because none of them see how stupid this whole idea is. They even say at one point, we know it isn't a hallucination or near-death, out of body experience. It's really them seeing another world. We can tell by their eyes. No Karen, you just failed science class and decided to be as loud about it as possible. I could honestly go on for hours about how stupid this whole plot line is, but let's just accept it for what it is, an uneducated persons attempt to explain away the torture porn.
I'm out of characters to finish my review so sorry. Just know the ending sucks and there's no real conclusion.
At first it seems to start out somewhat strong, but not really, because it just kind of dumps you in, as a young girl (Lucie) escapes from captivity where she has been brutally tortured for quite some time.
She makes friends with a new pseudo-sister, Anna, and it seems that they are all the other has in the world. (It never really explains any of their family dynamics, or why Lucie has no family. I guess she was an orphan when she was kidnapped? I think they were in foster care? But Anna calls her mom on the phone later so... who really knows.. Plot hole, for sure, but we can move past that I guess.)
We jump ahead 15 years to when Lucie sees her abusers in the newspaper and tracks them down. She barges in, guns-a-blazing, and mows down the entire family with a shotgun. I understand her killing the two adults, sure, but when it gets to the kids, I guess she was just in a rage so she didn't think it through. She at first asks the son, how old he is, and he says 18, and she asks if he knew what his parents were doing.. Even though he would have been 3 when she escaped. He doesn't answer so she just kills him. Then she goes and kills the younger sister, so.. not sure why she was asking the boy's age when it clearly doesn't matter. You lose all empathy for Lucie at this point as she has become a child murderer herself. I tried to just explain it away because she's clearly mentally unwell, so of course she isn't thinking straight. Still, another minor plot hole, that we will glaze over.
Lucie for some reason decides to stay in the house with the family she just murdered, which makes absolutely no sense. Why in the hell would someone want to stay in the home of their torturers... especially surrounded by dead bodies. MAJOR plot hole there, which is too big to really explain away. The best I can see it is that she wanted to dispose of the evidence..? But she just walks around spreading her DNA everywhere so it really, really can't be that. Maybe she had nowhere else to go? But like... any shelter or even sleeping on the streets would have been a better option, without a doubt.
Anyway, I digress, she calls her BFF Anna, who may have known of her plans, but may not have, it's never really clear. She was waiting beside a payphone for Lucie to call, so my guess is that she did know? Either way, Anna comes running to her aid, and has to deal with the entire mess herself because Lucie is having hallucinations of a dead girl that she left behind when she escaped captivity, and self-harming in the process. More on that later.
Anna's way of dealing with the bodies is to first move them all into the shower in the bathroom, and then go outside and on her own digs a MASSIVE, like we're talking way too big for the amount of bodies she's disposing of, massive hole for the bodies. She weighs like 90 lbs with not an ounce of muscle on her, so I'm not sure how she managed this on her own, in the rain, in the time it took Lucie to have a nap. I swear, the hole she dug is probably that big because it's made up of all the plot holes in this film. Also, for some reason, the hole has a bunch of pipes and wheels to turn, like as if it's for the gas valve and stuff? So maybe the hole already existed? But like... won't it then need to be dug up pretty soon to get to those? Why was the only access to those inside of a 10 foot hole with no real access point?? I don't know. Nothing about that hole makes any sense to me. Moving on...
Anna discovers that the mother/wife of the family is still alive, which she hides from Lucie, and she tries to bring her to the edge of the forest to let her escape.. even though she has a huge shotgun hole through her body. So this.. just makes absolutely no sense. She went there to help her friend cover up the murders, but she's going to actively do something that will get her friend caught, by releasing a victim, who will obviously call for help if she does get free. Her motivations for coming to Lucie's aid just basically disintegrate as you keep watching. Did she go to help the friend cover it up? Clearly not since she doesn't do much to clean up and tries to release a victim. Did she go to get her friend out of there? Clearly not because they're in the house for at least a day, if not longer. Did she go to console her friend? Clearly not because they barely speak to one another and she just kind of treats her like crap. There's just no making sense of why Anna is actually there. She also calls her own mother at one point to just say hi, which is so incredibly stupid. It serves no purpose to the plot other than kind of muddying the backstories, and would obviously get her convicted if there was ever an investigation.
Again, I digress. None of that matters really, because the surviving victim is killed anyway, and it's never going to be investigated. More on that later. I'm only mentioning these points because it's just more glaring plot holes that totally ruin the viewing experience.
So then, Lucie is hallucinating the girl she left behind again and ends up slashing her wrists all the way up the arms, which barely bleeds?? Then she walks herself out to the mass grave and slits her throat there and falls in. Oooooook? So stupid, but I guess she served her purpose in the plot so they figured they'd kill her off.
Anna is just left there like ok wtf? Then she realizes there's a secret entrance to a hidden basement. But it's not so secret, because it's very obvious it's there. It's backlit and everything. Meaning the children obviously knew what their parents were doing, so I guess it makes sense now that they were killed in Lucie's massacre. God, this movie is so stupid.
Anna, being the clever girl we have grown to love (I say that dripping in sarcasm), decides the best course of action here is not only to stay in the house at the murder-suicide scene, but to actually go down into this dungeon on her own to investigate. Going in, there's a shower, then coat hooks with work clothes, and a conveniently placed ring of keys on one of the hooks. The key is to the trap door in the middle of this room. Let's pause here to think about how unbelievably stupid it would be to leave the keys to a trap-door right beside the trap-door, so that anyone who finds it can go down and find their abductees. You're telling me that this group of people who have dedicated decades to holding people hostage and spent millions on building this underground lair, and they just leave the keys right next to the lock. -_- I can't... ffs
Anyway, she still goes down there for some reason even though she walked through a hallway with photos of tortured and mutilated bodies on the way in. Inside she finds the girl that Lucie had left behind all those years ago. She's in much worse shape. She has a metal chastity belt on, and a metal blindfold that's stapled directly into her skull. She's chained by both wrists to the wall with comically long chains. All that's in the room is a plastic mattress, and a chair with a hole in the bottom with a bucket underneath. One thing that bothered me through this movie is that every time it shows someone held in one of these dungeons, they're sitting on the toilet.. even though there's a mattress in the room. That part makes no sense, so I think that's just for us as viewers to add to the shock value. It's dumb.
Anna takes this battered girl up through to the main house and tries to clean her up by putting her in the bathtub even though she is covered in open wounds. At no point does she think maybe it's time to finally call emergency services. Nope, she thinks the best course of action is to pull out the metal from this girls skull and try to nurse her back to health on her own in the very house where she's been held captive. I don't know about you, but I would still feel like I was being held captive, just by someone else now, in a different part of the same building. The nameless girl eventually freaks out because, as we learn later, she hallucinates cockroaches crawling on her all the time. So she tries to skin her own flesh off, and rub herself on the walls to make them get off. During this episode a group of people barge into the house and shoot her down.
Moving into the second half of the film, the plot just rapidly continues to decline. We get a half-baked explanation by this old lady who apparently runs this secret society who believe strongly that 'martyrs' hold the key to the afterlife. They've seen photos of folks that are within a few minutes of death who are dissociating, and thought, hmm.. that look in their eyes must mean they are seeing the afterlife. Let's just roll with that delusional and idiotic way of thinking, even though it has a very clear scientific explanation. They also have decided that only waify, conventionally attractive young women work well for this. I'm not joking, she actually says that young women make better martyrs. Anyway, there's apparently at least 20 people in this secret society that are all just as stupid as this old broad, and believe they can learn about the afterlife this way. I guess none of them ever picked up a biology book or really learned anything about torture, because none of them see how stupid this whole idea is. They even say at one point, we know it isn't a hallucination or near-death, out of body experience. It's really them seeing another world. We can tell by their eyes. No Karen, you just failed science class and decided to be as loud about it as possible. I could honestly go on for hours about how stupid this whole plot line is, but let's just accept it for what it is, an uneducated persons attempt to explain away the torture porn.
I'm out of characters to finish my review so sorry. Just know the ending sucks and there's no real conclusion.