Note: I had this on my view list about 2 weeks before Bill Paxton died. I had just read that it was underrated and planned to watch it. Anyway, it’s a coincidence the director/actor died right as I bring it up again.
I’ll leave space for open spoiler discussion about this movie.
So…was this a good movie? My primary problem with the movie is that I was screaming, “It’s him!!!” about Matthew McConaughey within 30 minutes of the movie beginning. Furthermore, my wife suggested he was the younger son about 45 minutes in, with me saying, “Ah…yeah, that might be it.”
We also didn’t know there was a twist, either. I think sometimes when people know a twist is coming, they look for it more. We knew zero about the movie and we found the movie was almost shouting its main twist at us the entire time. I don’t know how they could conceal it better, but it played like a movie with a major twist. When I saw Sixth Sense opening weekend, it played like a movie with no major twist and its twist blew us away. This movie looked sneaky the entire time.
We liked the movie, though. I don’t know what to think about the final ending, though. Uh, maybe God is telling them who is evil?
Were we alone in suspecting a twist? Did the existence of a twist surprise others? If so, how did the actual twist feel to you?
I love this movie. I think it’s one of the most intense films of the last 20 years. I thought the writing was terrific, the acting outstanding and Paxton knew exactly what he was trying to do as a director.
When I saw it I knew nothing but what the back of the DVD told me. I suspected there was a twist but I was never able to lock down exactly what it was going to be, so I kept watching to find out (and to see how all the tension was going to resolve, natch).
I liked it quite a bit when I saw it in the theater opening weekend, and I thought it held up fine when I watched it on cable last year.
My only complaint then and now is that I wish they hadn’t gone explicitly supernatural at the very end with the mysterious surveillance camera problems and whatnot. I would have rather they left it ambiguous.
Other than that, big fan.
Good. Not great, but good. The which-brother-is which-twist was somewhat telegraphed, I’ll grant, but I found it didn’t harm the tension for me. The storytelling still carried me along. And the secondary twist, that the supernatural element was real, worked for me. That’s the part I didn’t necessarily see coming.
I had free passes to see this when it premiered, and I thought it was excellent. Cut to a few years later, I’m working at a video store, and find it among the older DVDs. I watched it again and really enjoyed it.
I started recommending it when people would ask me, and I don’t recall hearing anyone saying the didn’t like it