MovieChat Forums > Strangerland (2015) Discussion > Why did Tommy go for walks at night?

Why did Tommy go for walks at night?

posted 9 years ago by cathyguy
16 replies | jump to latest

Was Lily messing with Tommy? I know the parents are both suspected, but their portrayals don't indicate this. There is an indication that Lily inherited her intense sexual desire from her mother. For sure Lily's older looking appearance at 15 and her promiscuity make for the most dangerous situation imaginable and she did not care about the carnage she left in her wake.

I believe in coincidences, I just don't trust them. - Source debatable.

[–] allush-29143 9 years ago

you know that the family condition isnt good , so that affected the child and made him uncomfortable that he can't sleep at night so he goes out to walk

[–] always_keep_fighting 9 years ago

If he's just night+walking, he may be doing so as a way to relieve stress. They need a fence. Or tag that boy with one of those GPS chips we put in show dogs. It'll just hurt for a minute. Jeeze.
If he's actually sleepwalking, they need to take some additional measures. I sleepwalk (thank you, Ambien!!) So we have those little screecher locks on all our doors, and if those don't wake me or hubby up, the 4 dogs yowling will. Also, hubby hides my car keys every night and tossrs them back in the key bowl on his way out to work. Lol The furthest I ever made it, though, was into our back yard, where I tripped and fell, which woke me up. That was a bit scary.

[–] !!!deleted!!! (58906484) 9 years ago

He is being molested by his mother. The clues are there. He is cold to her. She is the one that asks about his night walks? Mrs. Parker is dying of neglect to point of abuse.

[–] agracier-574-436194 9 years ago

He is being molested by his mother. The clues are there.

Really? I didn't see anything like that at all. People have child molestation on the brain nowadays. It's all they see even when it's not there ...

What I did see though is that the family is living in a godawful dump of a town in the middle of nowhere. If that isn't enough to trigger a mild case of the jitters that manifests itself as night walks ... living in a place like that is enough to drive anyone up the walls, no matter how young. Like, what is there for kids - or anyone else for that matter - to actually DO in a dump like that?

[–] jupnose25 9 years ago

No, the clues aren't there.

[–] !!!deleted!!! (58906484) 9 years ago

In the morning, Tom was cold toward his mother during the opening scene while she was asking about his "night walks." It think that this is clue. Latter Tom speaks to her father but not his mother during the "where is Lilly scene."

[–] agracier-574-436194 9 years ago

It seems more likely that the boy just couldn't stand the emotional atmosphere in the house: father teetering on the edge of a physical outburst, silent recriminations against his wife, rage against what happened to his daughter, their moving to the edge of the civilized world. The mother is also probably bored out of her skull with not a thing to keep her occupied in that dump of a town. No wonder she is going quietly despondent if not depressed.

Then mix in a sexually precocious sister, who his parents charge him to protect (which he obviously physically cannot, not in his wildest dreams) and it's no wonder the boy wants to get away from the emotional force fields surrounding and warping the family.

There is no need for any actual physical goings-on in the family. The family is a collection of emotional disorders on its own. Who wouldn't want to get away from all that? Going for night walks is small potatoes in such a situation ...

[–] greg-goremykin 9 years ago

The clues are absolutely there. Explain why the father didn't tell either his wife or the police officer that he *saw* the kids walking off through the kitchen window, or his nocturnal excursions desperately checking all those places he had marked off on a map. He wasn't protecting himself, he was protecting his wife, both from the police and from her own suppression of her actions.

There are dozens of clues to the reality of this scattered throughout the film that don't make any sense under any other scenario. If the father was the molester it doesn't explain some of the conversations he had with his wife, or some of his other actions, either. Watch the movie again and especially look for those brief little shots that drop clues to this.

Watch the conversation the mom had with the older aboriginal woman, and the exact words the woman says to her. The clues are most certainly there, and those clues don't "fit" into any scenario other than the molestation of Lily by either the dad or the mom, and there are too many scenes with the father and his behavior in those scenes that rule him out. Think about the words of the entry in Lily's diary, the touching in the dark, the child-like phrases Lily used, almost like a mantra she had repeated in her own head innumerable times. Think of how they haunted the mother, and how the more they haunted her, the closer she came to her psychological breakdown.

[–] jupnose25 9 years ago

No the clues absolutely are not there.

There is a dilute subtext that the fathers behavior may be rooted in a pedophilic attraction to his daughter but there is absolutely nothing to suggest or even support the idea that the mother was molesting her son, that's so off the reservation that it doesn't deserve refuting.

[–] BlackDog123 9 years ago

I didn't take it as an attraction for his daughter, it looked to me like he was sexually repressive and HIGHLY uncomfortable both with the fact that she was growing into a lovely young woman, but also how she was acting out sexually. My dad was sort of uncomfortable with me for a little while when I started developing and he stopped liking the little tops and bathing suits I usually wore (not like this dad, but, like, letting my mom handle taking me clothes shopping or for tampons or whatever. he got over it though).

They're coming to get you, Barbara!

[–] greg-goremykin 9 years ago

Bang on, and I think the mother had *also* been molesting Lily, at least up until the time of the exposure of Lily's affair with the teacher, and possibly even after that.

[–] !!!deleted!!! (58906484) 9 years ago

The whole movie is molestation mystery. We have a crime but we are unable to clearly figure out who the perpetrator is. Using your hypothesis we can begin to grasp the fathers behavior in a new light. Mrs. Parker molested Lilly from a young age 6 and then to Mr. Parker's horror Lilly begins to act out sexually. This continues and Mr. Parker begins to see wife in clearer light. It was her all along. Mr. Parker becomes the night watchman but fails sometimes.

[–] federovsky 9 years ago

The film is too subtle for its own good when nobody understands what on earth it was about.

Not surprisingly perhaps, when it's about that improbable thing: incestuous-nymphomania-lesbian-paedophilia, with a large slice of mumbo-jumbo thrown in.
At least, that's my reading.

Modern society has become hysterical about paedophilia, and this kind of film is the result.

[–] !!!deleted!!! (58906484) 9 years ago

The director is aiming for uncertainty. She states in an interview. She wants the audience to experience some of the uncertainty that parent of missing children go through. However, she gets a lot of ingredients mixed in like "incestuous-nymphomania-lesbian-paedophilia, with a large slice of mumbo-jumbo thrown in" with a dash of rape sprinkled in for measure.

[–] BlackDog123 9 years ago

It was explicitly stated that he was sleepwalking at times.

On the night when he and Lily disappeared, I would imagine he was worried she'd run away again (as she'd done in their last town), and went to follow her. They were very close. He knew she was angry about not having permission to go to that concert. You can sort of pick your own ending after that - I think she got into a car with a stranger, and, knowing it was a dangerous situation somewhere in the back of her head, told her little brother to go home. Then the dust storm hit, and he got lost.

They're coming to get you, Barbara!

[–] always_keep_fighting 9 years ago

I have to say that this whole "molestation" aspect of this movie seems pretty far-fetched to me as well. (Not to mention the thought of ANYONE, much less a parent, seeing a child as a sexual object makes me throw up in my mouth a little) Take a bunch of bored teenagers, throw them all together in a town with one red light, and pretty soon they're going to be on Maury en massé trying to find out which baby belongs to which daddy. Good God. I think that the only one who got molested was Lily, and by her teacher. I think Lily was just skanky. Some girls just are. Especially when Mom and Dad are going at it like animals right there in the kitchen.
My last comment would be that the old Aboriginal woman told the mother that she she couldn't help her because she knew that Lily was gone, and not coming back.
Very depressing story, full of trashy people, kids having sex in a filthy sea-can (sp?), and a child lost, probably forever. I will not be revisiting this one, and would not recommend it to anyone.
Thank you guys, though, for the VERY well-thought-out, respectful, polite responses to each other! That is not always the case on IMBd. Sending y'all all a Karmic cookie to use when needed. ?