What I don't understand...
If Simon was just trapped in the basement, why didn't he just call for help? Surely, Laura or Carlos would've heard him.
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"House. My room. Can't walk. My medal. My father. Father, don't!"
*Spoilers*
The house was empty for most of the time Simon was trapped yet alive. After he "disappeared", Laura broke her leg down by the cave and so spent the rest of the day and evening at Accident and Emergency with Carlos by her bedside. The police would have taken an hour or so to search the house from top to bottom(or so they thought) then extended their search to the surrounding grounds and all this time, Simon was sitting patiently waiting for Laura to discover the clues he had laid out to lead her down to the basement, unaware that he would be unable to open the door against those heavy metal posts. By time he gave up waiting, realising he was trapped he would started calling out but the house was empty. So he could have been calling out all night, trying to unblock the door to no avail and nobody was around to hear him.
By the time Carlos and Laura returned to the house, Simon was most probably asleep having worn himself to exhaustion. When he wakes again to attempt escape one last time, he is under the impression that no one can hear his calls for help- after all how was he to know that the house was empty all night while he was screaming for help? He was also most probably completely exhausted at that point and unable to regain his balance when the door knocked him backwards down the stairs.
Thanks. I'm going to need to rewatch this movie to get all the details that didn't make it past my thick skull the first time I watched.
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"House. My room. Can't walk. My medal. My father. Father, don't!"
It's impossible to get everything the first time. Especially as this is one of those rare movies that relies quite heavily on implication. I watched it a fair few times now and with each viewing I always notice something I didn't previously see.
shareI read that the loud crash she heard in the house that night after she broke her leg was when he fell off the railing and broke his neck. Remember, when she saw the body it would pan from the body to the broken staircase.
shareYes, the loud crash she heard was him falling off the railing... and when you heard the pounding on the walls, that was him beating the wall, trying to get help.
shareThat's a good explanation that I had forgotten - that both Carlos and Laura were not in the house all night when he was probably yelling for help.
The door didn't knock him backward but he must have leaned on the railing (on the open side of the stairway) which was faulty and gave way. When Laura was in the basement she looked up and saw the broken stair railing about half way up.