I started paying attention to this film last year, and the trailer was released in May. Watching the trailer, you thought it would be a couple watching the house, but the real estate manager was fooled and abducted into a ghost-beating villa area. Forced to adopt a child and told that as long as the child is brought up, he will be released. This is also the synopsis of the plot of the film. Pretty attractive, isn't it?
However, this is one of those movies where you don't know what's going to happen until you see the ending.
In order to keep the viewing intact and interesting, I will not give any spoilers in advance. If you want to see the analysis of the plot, you can skip directly to the dividing line, and first talk about what I saw and analyze the language of the shots.
This is a movie that is difficult to define by genre. If you say it's a romance, I believe it! If you say it's a thriller, I believe it; if you say it's a horror movie, I believe it; if you say it's a B-level torture movie, I believe it! If it is said to be an alien-themed movie, I still believe it! After watching the movie, I couldn't calm down for a while, my brain was running at a high speed, there was so much I wanted to say, and I was devastated by this movie review overnight! Obviously, you can guess that the director must have seen a lot of movies before. The imagination of this movie is really wild and magical! Combining too many elements, I saw the shadow of Hitchcock's various horror films, countless! So here comes the question. I checked the director's resume, and it can be said that there is almost no work. How could such a little-known director make such a powerful work, which is more cruel than "Gone Lover"! More scary! More brainy than Nolan movies! Let all the audience see how difficult it is for parents to raise children, especially raising a freak (freak) child who loves lion's roar at all times! Perhaps, marriage is not the grave of love, children are the grave of love!
The following is an analysis of the lens language, which involves some spoilers. You can read it at your own discretion and eat it with caution.
The first is the first shot of the movie, a typical dove occupying a magpie's nest. And it means "taking someone else's house", which also paved the way for the subsequent development of the film.
As soon as the camera turned, the couple played by Cuan Xi and Imogen Putz appeared. They were a couple working in a kindergarten. Huan Xi was in charge of building trees, and Imogen played the kindergarten teacher. They still serve as a profession of some kind of nurturing.
Volume West is raising trees, Putz is raising children.
However, when the real estate experience appears, you will feel a strange breath coming to your face. The real estate developer's facial expression is stiff and his tone is very strange, making people think that he must not be a reliable person. Even later, when taking the couple to see the house, the real estate manager asked the hostess, "Do you have children?", and the hostess's sentence "No, not yet." also attracted the strange retelling and ridicule of the real estate manager.
What's even more bizarre is that not long after these words were heard, just when the husband and wife were going to find the landlord, the person had disappeared.
After that is the plot shown in the trailer. No matter how the two drove, they drove for a day. From day to night, the car ran out of gas and went back to the house they visited - Room 9.
Why 9? instead of other numbers? 6 Wouldn't it be better? Because in the western world, 6 means bad luck.
In fact, after consulting, I can understand that in the West, 9 represents "virtue", which is the perfect form of the perfect "3". Tuolemite has nine heavens in astronomy, and there are nine angels in the Bible. "9" is also the number of the soul of a virtuous person. Donne's "Farewell: Don't Sorrow" consists of nine stanzas. Western Mingli believes that people with "9" birthdays are extremely talented, their talents have been recognized at a very young age, and at the same time they are usually philanthropic people.
At the same time, the 9 in the Tarot: Hermit, the 9th card of the Tarot Major Arcana is "The Hermit", he is carrying a lamp and leaning on a cane, representing meditation, isolation and silence, symbolizing the crystallization of wisdom and Absolute discipline. A hermit is a stern teacher who uses his conscience to lead people on the right path. When the card is upright, it means persistence, purpose, deepness and focus. Handstand is assertive, unforgiving, suspicious, and discouraged.
Perhaps seeing this, you should also understand why it must be 9. Behind the seemingly auspiciousness of the couple, Juan Xi and Putz, they are actually facing a tragic life with painstaking efforts. They endured and raised this unfortunate child regardless of hard work, trouble or noise, but this child is exactly the same as the landlord, yin and yang, wearing the same white shirt, black trousers, and the same oily head, when I think of this picture again Looks like, I actually probably guessed the ending.
My guess is that this kid is destined to become a real estate manager when he grows up, taking the place of the older real estate manager and kidnapping the next couple, and the cycle goes on and on.
As it turns out, I was right too.
There are two other strange points in the film that strike me as fantastic, but also feel like a foreshadowing.
First of all, it is the "cloud" that runs through the film.
Different from when they just drove in here, the clouds that the husband and wife saw after falling into a ghost-beating state were the warm sheep clouds that only appeared in comics. The tone of the whole film is actually dark or even perverted. Such harmonious and warm clouds can be said to be out of tune with the color of the film, with a strong sense of incongruity, which can not help but lay a hint of irony for the heavy tone of the film.
You can even understand that these clouds are designed like the matrix in "The Matrix", and are the necessities of the fairy tale world necessary for the creator to conceive children in a perfect world. Even later, there was a scene where the heroine and the young children were lying on the turf of their house No. 9 admiring the clouds.
The other is the door of room 9.
There is a short, long shot in the middle of the film that captures the entire living room of the house. (Note: The heroine also looked at these doors)
In this short, long shot, there are four doors. The door means this out or in. It is a tool for getting in and out, an exit, a way to escape. Watching this film, the door plays a big role, and more importantly, this shot actually wants to tell us that the whole room is connected by the door, and the connection means that this is an interactive, multi-dimensional house, there must be a door that leads to the real world of freedom. And the male protagonist, Zhuanxi, also understands from the fact that the turf can be lit by cigarettes. In fact, this is not a completely virtual world, which is why Zhuanxi has been digging tunnels. He has been telling us bluntly with body language that he wants to Looking for a way out, he knows that even if the road is not on the ground, it will be underground.
Time flies, as the saying goes, time always gives answers. As viewers, we think so too.
When the child grows up, everything should come true.
After serving the giant baby, the hostess came to Juanxi's room, and the lights turned from bright to dim.
Thin and frail, and staggeringly closing the door, Juanxi keeps telling us the tragic ending that Juanxi is about to face.
Will the couple succeed in being released? All doubts point to this question.
However, the director did not appreciate it.
The setting sun, the setting sun, accompanied by the almost identical clouds in the fairy tale world, the husband and wife snuggled at the door of their own house. At this time, Juan Xi had lost the slightest strength. Even the last remaining cigarette that was reluctant to smoke was lit by the heroine Putz.
After taking a sip, Kuan Xi left.
Putz was like a bolt from the blue, as if he had lost his soul. At this time, the giant baby standing by the side brought the cardboard box as always.
We all thought that the box contained the key to the free world.
The next scene shocked everyone.
The giant baby brought a vacuum bag for the body.
The heroine seems to have lost her soul, more helpless than helpless, crying more desperate than despair.
On the other hand, the giant baby's face was filled with ruthlessness and disdain that seemed to be a high-level civilization that was actually a low-level civilization.
After packing the body into a vacuum bag, Juan Xi was thrown into the pit he dug. This is probably fatalism.
The hostess began to rest in the car while carefully observing the giant baby's every move.
The heroine waited for the opportunity and was going to kill the giant baby with her husband's hoe. No matter what, she had to breathe a sigh of relief for her husband and make an explanation for her hard work for so many years.
And the next scene directly tells us the truth of how this world works! ! !
Do you remember? The four doors in the long shot we mentioned earlier, and in the shot of the above picture, it is also the living room that makes up the four doors.
After the crazy fall, the heroine finally arrived in the real room. It stands to reason that it is time for her to return to the real world now.
Unexpectedly, she opened the door and faced a truly tragic ending.
Finally, the causal loop.
And the giant baby, justifiably replaced the old man, and became the real estate manager who kidnapped the next couple. Soon, the camera turned to a bunch of newlyweds and couples walking into the store.
The end.
It seems that in the past two years, it is very difficult to have a movie that can make me feel so much. I believe that people who have watched this movie have mixed feelings in their hearts like me. Maybe I take back what I said at the beginning, marriage is not the grave of love, and neither is the child. It may not be the tomb of love, only those parents who are so-called in the role of the Virgin who have no principle to tolerate others and finally lead to death are the least sympathetic.
Of course, words cannot be said to be dead. Kindness must exist, and everyone should have kindness in their hearts. Perhaps in the middle of the film, Juanxi was right to put the child in the car, but the heroine Putz didn't really understand it. until the last minute.
I believe everyone has heard of the story of raising tigers, farmers and snakes. It is not that the male protagonist does not understand the female protagonist's intentions. On the contrary, when the female protagonist desperately gives birth to a child in her childhood, the male protagonist knows that they are destined not to. There is a good ending. The male protagonist would rather believe that he killed the child to be free than let the female protagonist continue to raise the child. It is worry and helplessness! There are no absolute bad people in this world, only "bad" people who are forced to do everything possible to fight bad people. Evil laws are illegal, and the same is true. This is Necessary Evil (necessary evil). And the existence of children is the existence of evil.
There are so many things I want to say, I can’t finish it all at once. I’ve been criticizing this film overnight. I don’t want to gain attention. I just want to understand or let others understand some universal truths. Good night everyone.
Trivia, you know?
This is the second collaboration between Jesse Eisenberg and Imogen Poots, who collaborated on The Art of Self-Defense in the same year in 2019, and then filmed the Eco Box. .
Strictly speaking, the real confrontation between the two was actually ten years ago, in "The Lonely Man" in 2009, although the two did not star.
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