The child?

@ Hans-Wilhelm

God/ Jesus Christ = Iris

Lofthouse found God. A relationship with God was missing from his life, and that is what he found in his solitude. Adult Iris never knew him. The dude was too busy pursuing his scientific interests and never took his relationship with Iris' mom and Iris seriously. He was emotionally and physically-distant - a bad father.

The young girl Iris stood for the innocence or better part of his nature. She represented his connection with his true self. Young Iris ended up saving him from the bore that his life had become.

Lofthouse was connected to his work, and not God. At the end of the movie, we see that he made it to Lake Haven (read: Heaven).

So many metaphors in this movie...

Anyways, hope I helped clarify things.

Ya - he imagined it.
His sub conscious dealing with his overwhelming guilt.
A total red-herring at the beginning with the Mom losing her child. Wasn't this one.

I never believed, for a second, that the child was real. She was in perfect shape the whole time. Didn't matter if the child was exposed to freezing-cold water, snow, hunger, whatever. The child was always in perfect shape.

So, the "revelation" to me was more of a, okay just tell me what the deal is with this apparition.

I thought they did that well. She appears right after he shows signs of losing it (getting his breakfast twice). He guesses her name is Iris based on the picture she draws but it is his subconscious knowledge of his daughter. When he is looking at the roster of the Aether, he has his daughter's picture up on the screen. He knows. And it is shaping his illusion. He is trying to save Iris, both in his delusion and in real life.

That part of the story is the good thing about this film. I thought they did a good job. However, the """scientists""" on the ship are once again a bunch of people who think like the writer. A writer who isn't an astronaut nor likely at the intelligence level to have such an important ship put at his/her disposal.

The woman losing her child at the beginning sets us up for thinking this is a real child. Also, there are scenes where the two characters physically come in contact each other which again fools the audience for a time that the child is real. The green peas being flicked at each other and pinging off Clooney's hand and Clooney's character shoving the child through the broken window comes across as a bit of a lazy cheat. A better director in a better movie like The Sixth Sense trying the same twist would or could have handled these interactions better or at least in a way that wouldn't leave some movie goers with sour feelings at being tricked by the director. I'm sure many noticed something was up when the child disappeared in the blizzard scene then miraculously reappeared but I'll bet a large percentage of the audience was flabbergasted at the twist. I had started to hope a rescue attempt would be made to save the child before realizing that was something was up. I think it would have made for a better and more exciting movie to some how rescue the lone survivors from the planet before being overcome by the expanding radiation zones. Maybe I wasn't paying attention but I really don't know about the fates of the evacuated survivors at the beginning of the film and I only recall that people tried to live underground temporarily. It was another flaw in the film that repopulated the human race wasn't the biggest concern to all the characters. It should have been but I digress.