In spite of the horrible coats, there are many hints in the movie's grass snake gray line:
(1) From the clues of the story, the young couple Jessie and Mark's son died unexpectedly, so they adopted a man named Cody. Eight year old boy. The main line of the story is originally an adoption story, but there are some more moths besides this adoption: Cody has the strange ability to make his dreams become reality.
(2) From the perspective of the characters in the story, Jessie and Mark’s attitude towards adopting children is actually a metaphor for the two distinct waves of barriers in reality.
In the first wave, represented by Jessie, they hope to find the comfort of their past children in their adopted children, rather than truly devoting themselves to the new family life.
In the movie, at the beginning when Mark was cleaning up the pictures on the wall, he wanted to take away all the pictures of Jon (the kid who was born by the two who accidentally drowned in the bathtub). But Jiexi was unwilling. She said: "Just keep it", which is actually the same as "Just keep it" as we Chinese like to say. This implies that Jessie is unwilling to say goodbye to the past, and it also fully explains that she "deliberately" let Cody watch Jon's photos and videos in order to "use" Cody's dream-making ability to see Jon's vision again.
For adopters like Jiexi, the adopted children are just a form of sustenance in the past, and they do not regard the adopted children as "real" family members. This is by no means a minority in reality, but the film magnifies the "selfishness" of adopters through the design of Cody's superpowers. Their adoption is just to fill the vacancy-style healing wounds.
In the second wave, represented by Mark, he regarded Cody as a different child from Jon. He read the butterfly book with Cody to understand his hobbies; asked Cody what kind of pizza he likes, Cody said pineapple, and then Mark said he would eat pineapple-flavored pizza tonight.
He has achieved true respect for Cody, this kind of adopters "can be clear", each child is an independent individual: the past has passed away, it is better to embrace the future.
(3) The butterfly in the movie is undoubtedly the image of needles and needles. In addition to Cody's biological mother, who sewed him a cloth butterfly before she died, there was another important plot when Mark asked Cody:
"Is this a butterfly cocoon? What is it used for?" "They are used to protect the butterfly from growing safely" "So the cocoon is equivalent to a butterfly bed?"
For Cody, every new adoption The reason why the family can't sleep at ease is that he doesn't treat this family as a real "cocoon" (bed) psychologically. He had to frighten himself with the "demonized" ulcer monster, unable to sleep peacefully.
And when all the truth came out, Cody and Jessie took it as a spiritual understanding, and Cody turned into a beautiful butterfly at the end of the movie. Adults naturally need to break out of the cocoon and become a butterfly, while for the displaced adopted children, they only need to sleep peacefully in the cocoon.
(4) The ulcer is also an important image. She kept appearing in Cody's dream, and said to him "I will be by your side." But the truth was so sweet that people shed tears:
Cody's biological mother had cancer, and he didn't understand what cancer was when he was young, so he misunderstood and became an ulcer monster. (From cancer to canker). The ulcer monster can be said to be a subconscious visualization of the adopted children's fear of a new family. Entering a new family, they have a lot of discomforts. And this kind of maladaptation has become a kind of horrible swallowing.
In the end, the ulcer monster disappeared because Cody had truly integrated into his new home. The cocoon shell has been obtained, and the monster disappeared. As for the "Cody" who looks the same as Cody but is extremely ugly, it can be understood as the dark side of Cody.
For adopted children, most of them use a "sensible" shell to cover up the "demon" in their hearts. At an age when normal children should be alive and kicking, Cody has the knowledge and knowledge of the young and old. It looks pitiful, but it is really bitter and helpless:
before entering the door, he will take off his shoes, muttering "shoes will stain the floor"; he obviously didn't dare to fall asleep, but had to eat secretly after Mark and Jessie left. Stimulants; he is cautious, for fear that a careless one will upset the new parents.
Adopters, adoptees, past families, original memories, fusion of hearts... all of these are well wrapped in scary coats by the movie. Some people think that this kind of warm ending seems too hasty and blunt, but it is actually a misunderstanding of the film, because people did not think about being afraid of horror films from the beginning.
Horror is sugar coating, and sandwich is adoption. Because of Cody's fantastic dream-making ability and flying butterflies, this sandwich still has a flowing heart.
View more about Before I Wake reviews
