I know the spain section of the film is Clive Owen as a child. But is that the big surprise. How does that tie into what's going on?
shareI guess he is hollowman similar to the Hide and seek movie where Robert de niro was the bad guy all the time,who developed two personalities.
Acting both as her father and her "imaginary" friend.
But its just a guess of mine seem to be similarties between the two.
I'm sorry but, Henkm, did you even watch the movie?
shareThe connection is the twist.
sharethey are all dead or it was all a dream.When there's no more room in hell, The dead will walk the earth...
The "twist" in the sense that you're implying is that the kid in Spain is Clive Owen as a child. However from this "twist" you find out the origin of Hollowface, which could also be seen as a kind of twist..
(obvious spoilers if you want to know)
..Hollowface is Clive Owen's father, who upon being released from prison, tried to abduct him. In a struggle with his mother he fell to his death, and she let the kid believe was just a nightmare. He writes the story of Hollowface that his daughter finds in the beginning and she starts seeing him as well. The story can be seen in both ways: either Hollowface is just a shared psychosis between father and daughter, or he really is some kind of ghost, though I'm leaning heavily on the former.
Thank you for explaining that o0night. I just saw it and could not figure out what the heck just happened.... now I get it! I believe both yor versions are correct because when he was in the church as a child with the priest, although the priest could not see him, his mother could see him; so maybe it's a family ghost thing.
shareIt's not definite that the mother could see him. Even if she did, she was also traumatised by the whole abduction event and what happened after, so could well be just seeing things too.
It was obvious the story that the boy wrote was read by the girl and then she started believing it herself and that's why she starting seeing hollowface.
Her dad wrote the story so they had a strong connection and she obviously dug it. What the psychiatrist told Owen about the two sharing a hallucination is what was actually happening, the boy had started seeing hollowface as he was traumatised. He made up hollowface after seeing his dad in a hood.
Anyone that doesn't realise that needs to rewatch the film, or not watch films as it was a very straightforward concept to grasp.
Can you explaing the role of the priest in this movie? Why did he keep going back and trying to help. I understand why she initially went to him, but in terms of purpose/plot why did he keep trying to help and then all of a sudden he is no longer in the story? Maybe I missed something because I rented it and kept pausing it while answering phone, reading emails and also not getting totally engaged from the beginning. Also, how did he go from living in Spain, speaking Spanish to talking in an English accent? Thanks in advance. I don't want to rewatch the movie because I just didn't enjoy it that much.
"That Barney Rubble, what an actor!!" -Night Shift
Shared halucination just doesn't make sense all the way, to me anyway. The daughter saw the exact same things without any knowledge of them. The story did not reveal such details that she saw, and I don't recall her father ever talking to her about anything related to his father or the accident at his working place. Even if two psyches can form some sort of connection, I think it would need more trigger than just a vague story she didn't even know was written by him. I mean, there wasn't just the hooded man walking around the story might paint, there was also that dripping roof thing or whatever and all that the story didn't describe but both of them saw.
To me it makes much more sense that there was Juan's father's ghost.
That would explain those exact same visions they had in such details, and the storyline would make sense as well:
Juan and his mother both saw him, the priest could've helped them if they didn't want to cover the father's death. But they did want to which is why the mother told the priest that he can't help them.
Juan started to write the truth down into a story and I think the ghost was trapped into the unfinished story, trapped by Juan's tears that we saw falling on the paper. (That MUST have some essential significanse because event and the moment is shown in great detail and close-up.) Juan felt this which is why he never finished the story and hid it in a place he thought no one would ever find it.
Decades later his own daughter unfortunately does find it, and by reading it she "called his name" and thus after many, many years Hollowface was free. I guess he still wanted a child or somrhing which is why he came after his grandaughter instead of continuing to try and get to his son. At the end Juan/John realized the only way to stop the ghost is to come up with an ending to the story. The ghost gave up and moved on when Juan/John finally finished the story, because with that Juan/John made the ghost realize that just like with Juan and the mother all those decadesa ago, he would never win because parents are always willing to do anything to protect their children. After that he had nothing to go after, so he moved on, as in after many, many years, he was free.
As for Juan/Jon's wife claiming she hadn't seen anything...Maybe she lied? It's not like it would've been a wise choice to make it seem like the whole family is delusional. Or maybe she was too much a realistic and didn't want to believe what she'd seen, especially after the video footage showed no one there which supported her prefered idea.
I don't know, I guess both supernatural and simply psychological thoeries both work for the story. To me, right now, the supernatural just leaves less plot holes.
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^ this
Usually in films I lean towards the supernatural but this film was a clear psychosis thing. I thought they did a fantastic job.
All of what you said is clearly correct as to what the film was trying to do. The thing I find implausible is that the daughter had the hallucinations of her version of hallowface at all.
There was a reason the father as a child did. It was part of how his child brain dealt with the trauma of the attack. It was just how he happened to cope, and it stuck with him until he was able to "lock" it away in the tree.
There was zero reason that reading the story (which mysteriously was in english rather than spanish) should have induced such hallucinations in his daughter.
The "shared" hallucination just doesn't seem realist at all. If she had experienced her father having a hallucination BEFORE she had her own, it would have made MUCH more sense, because she would ahve already had the fears, then his reactions to HIS hallucinations could possibly have triggered similar hallucination in her, though it would still be a reach. But she didn't, it was merely the effect of having read the story, which makes no sense.
Her father created the hallucination in her mind when they burned the effigy on the lawn. He built a dummy of a hooded monster (no doubt inspired by subconscious memories of Hollowface from his childhood) and thus cemented the same image in his daughter's head.
Before that, when Mia first had a nightmare about Hollowface, she imagined herself with no face, drawing on a mouth with lipstick. She only sees the "hooded intruder" version after they burned the effigy.