It was really creepy and interesting for most of the movie and then all of the sudden it started to suck. I don’t know how it would have ended better but I left not that satisfied. Throughout most of it, I thought “How the hell am I going to be able to sleep tonight?” but now I’m over it already. I do give it credit for being the only movie that doesn’t make me annoyed with Penelope Cruz.
And I don’t even know if I understand it.
Did Rachel (the dead burning girl) give her a vision that told he that her husband was the rapist and so she realy did kill him. And “NOT ALONE” meant that there were more victims and that there was the other killer? And the end? Just another vision?
A friend of mine saw it yesterday and said the same thing—started out great, then really lost it. I don’t, however, have the answers to your spoiler questions.
Rachel posessed Miranda and she killed Miranda’s husband. This explains why Miranda’s memories end when she sees Rachel’s flames engulfing her–that’s meant to represent Rachel taking over Miranda’s body.
Miranda thought at first that it meant that there were other victims, then changed her interpretation in the county jail. I think it’s supposed to mean both.
Miranda is a psychic sensitive, like Cole in The Sixth Sense. The little boy in the missing poster had been murdered and was coming to her for help, just as Rachel did earlier.[/spoiler]
There’s no way Miranda is walking around free after what’s happened. She killed her husband. Nothing we find out later on disputes this, at least from a law enforcement POV. In fact, the later revelations would only serve to offer up evidence of a motive for her to kill her husband. So she’s either insane, and belongs in an asylum, or she’s a murderer, and would be in jail. I don’t think anyone is going to accept the “possessed by an avenging spirit” defense.
If the ghost-girl could possess Miranda and have her drive from the bridge to her home, go in and kill her husband, why didn’t she have Miranda go back outside, get back in her car and go and kill the sheriff?
When the ghost girl was throwing Miranda back and forth in her cell, two of the desk guards noticed it on the video monitors. How was the sheriff raping Chloe without anyone seeing it?
What was the deal with the sink hole? I thought it was going to play a much larger part. The sheriff was there and directed Miranda away from it while she was driving home. When Miranda was driving her get away car, the ghost took control of the car and drove her to the very edge of the sink hole, but…nada. I thought maybe the husband/sheriff were disposing of bodies there or something.
The sheriff and Miranda completely alone in the police station. Even if the town is tiny, does the police station CLOSE at night?
So, Miranda worked with the guy whose daughter had committed suicide and had a big article in the paper and she had never seen a picture of the dead girl? The girl did die several years ago and Miranda had possibly joined the staff later, but still, that seemed really weird.
Still, I wasn’t hugely unhappy with the movie, there were a couple of good “jump” moments.
The car was in the ditch. After Rachel posessed Miranda, she walked home and killed Miranda’s husband. The Sheriff was at the sinkhole surrounded by deputies. It would have been difficult to kill him then and there.
Miranda was in one of the new cells with the glass walls in front. Chloe was in an older cell with a steel door that had a small window in it.
The sinkhole was a plot device to divert Miranda to the bridge, which was where Rachel was thrown into the river, which was why Rachel’s ghost was there. I don’t get the second one, though. I think it was just another thrill that didn’t contribute to the main plot.
The Sheriff clearly intended to kill Miranda. I assume he would have wanted to be alone when he did this, so he probably arranged for everyone else to be out of the station for a couple of hours. And yes, some smaller county Sheriff sub-stations shut down at night. My problem here is that once again, Hollywood seems to equate a Sheriff with a small town police force, when they are entirely different things.[/spoiler]
Enough of the spoiler boxes…it says “spoilers” right there on the title.
2. When Miranda was “trying to kill herself” she had been put in the older cells due to the electrical problems. She was in a much smaller darker cell then.
My beef: What’s up with the gas explosion only confining itself to one room? Seems like it would travel back to the source of the leak and blow up the entire station. Blew my mind that Miranda would just sit there waiting her turn to kill Drew Carey’s cross-dressing brother.
Why did the security guard give his keys to her? But the thing that really bothered me was why did his old-ass car have a keyless entry system? Why didn’t they just have her know which car his was like a normal person instead of having her shoot around with the key remote thing?
Wow…you have nailed all of the things that bugged me about this movie.
When Miranda is escaping and using the guard’s key fob to find out which car is his I thought “Not a bad idea when you’re panicked and it’s a dark stormy night”. Until she actually GOT to his car…a clapped-out mid-80s Caprice Classic…what the hell?
And if the dead girl’s spirit can take control of cars (as she did when she drove the guard’s car back to Miranda’s house) why didn’t she take control of the sheriff’s car at some point and drive him off a bridge?
I had two thoughts on the last scene. First was “What the hell?” How are these two women walking around on the street by themselves? Miranda actually DID chop up her husband with an axe - the fact that he was raping girls doesn’t change the fact that she committed murder.
And second, “Man, the rest of her life is going to suck.” She’s sensitive to ghosts, so now she’s off to solve the murder of the little boy in the street. If he treats her the same way Rachel did (i.e. cutting her arms, beating her up, scaring the bejeezus out of her on a regular basis) then forget it - solve your own damn mystery!
With the exception of the already mentioned film flubs, I thought it was a pretty good movie overall. I figured out the ending about 2/3 way through the movie, but other than that, I always enjoy watching Halle Berry on screen. She definitely made the movie.
I noticed most of the things mentioned above while I was watching the movie. It was an okay movie, but I would have rather seen Cat in the Hat, but no, we had to change plans, dammit!
Anyway, what bugged me the most was this: The ghost of the girl that was killed was trying to make Miranda see who the killers were, no? Then WHY THE HELL was she trying to kill Miranda in the jail cell?
I think the intention was to cause enough ruckus to get the guards to come open the door (which did happen). Of course, I thought later, what if the ghost had knocked Miranda out so she couldn’t take advantage of the open door and escape.
Also, if you’re a ghost who can create fog on glass and write “Not Alone” you’d think you’d write something a little more like:
Your husband and his best friend the sherriff are raping and murdering young girls at that deserted farm house.
Oh, and I counted the “strokes” in the words “Not Alone.” According to the nurse, Miranda “cut herself” 35 times. It only takes 25 “cuts” to write NOT ALONE. That just struck me as really sloppy screenwriting.
I have a habit of providing reasonable explanations of things not explained in the film. If I can think of some sort of plausable explanation that doesn’t contradict the other facts presented in the movie, then I attribute it to “that scene just ended up on the cutting room floor” or some such, and it doesn’t bother me (much).
In this case, the “posession” defense would certainly be good enough to aquit by reason of temporary insanity. My understanding is that once so convicted, you do have to go to the appropriate asylum, until the doctors there certify that you are no longer insane. Most killer types there will never get out, as the doctors will never certify they are sane, no matter how sane they may be. In this case, however, the doctors and staff of the asylum are very familiar with the circumstances, etc. and probably now believe the possesion story, etc. Even if they couldn’t testify to any such stuff in court, once Halle Berry is assigned there, it is easy to believe that after a short time they would declare she was now sane and set her free. Same with Penelope Cruz, who they now know was really getting raped. I think.
Ditto the “Why is she walking free?” plot hole. I can only attribute it to the unreal Hollywood convention of : “The authorities will overlook some minor indiscretions on your part if you helped solve a much bigger case”.
Ditto “Why the hell did the door guard help her escape?” Sure he might of known her, but she was accused of going psycho and chopping up someone with an axe.
I always feel a little bit cheated by films that import the supernatural into a murder mystery. If ghosts can manifest real physical effects, then that throws everything into a cocked hat.
Until it became apparent that the ghost was not just in Miranda’s head, I had an alternate theory which IMHO would have made a better plot:
The young psychiatrist got frustrated by his inability to get into Miranda’s pants. So he murdered her husband, drugged Miranda so that she would have no memory of it, planted the evidence incriminating her, and then played games with her head to try to convince her that she had done it; so that as her doctor he could control her.
Oh, one other thing: With all respect to Charles S. Dutton, casting him as Halle Berry’s husband is a supreme example of Hollywood improbably pairing young gorgeous women with unattractive men. I nearly puked when they kissed.
I saw this the other day because the movie I really wanted to see was sold out. The friend I went to see it with looked at me at the end and said, “I see dead people,” just like the kid inthe Sixth Sense (similar to Iamb Fake above). I also had a more interesting plot line that looked almost exactly like Lumpy’s above.
However, when I got out of the movie, I told my friend, "I would be pretty pissed off too being stuck in an insane asylum for an indefinite period of time stuck in a small cell, without a sink or a toilet(!!!). Poor thing, none of the cells the girls were in had toilets. I can’t imagine that is healthy.
Lumpy! That’s so cool, that was almost exactly the plot line I came up with about 1/4 of the way into the movie and it would have been a lot better.
That said, I hated it and it sucked wet donkey farts. I’m really sorry I didn’t just go see Matrix or Cat in the Hat instead, since I spent actual money on this garbage.
No one else saw the microphone constantly the way we did? The entire theater was laughing hysterically every time it came back down into the picture, so much so that I could barely hear some of the scenes, especially when the entire microphone would swoop down into full view.
Here is an assessment and some nitpicks sent to me by a woman I saw it with.
"It was indeed stupid that she was free at the end, I also assumed it was because she “solved” the much “bigger” case. That doesn’t take away from the other problems.
Why was Penelope Cruz’s character also free? Presumably she did something wrong to get put into the prison for head cases, so just because it turned out she was being attacked by the sheriff that means she’s off the hook?
How did her speech at the end make sense? She says something to the effect of “They thought we were crazy when really we knew the truth.” Sorry, Penny, but they thought you were crazy way before you started in on the rape thing, as evidenced by the fact that you were incarcerated in this mental prison. They thought it because presumably you committed some type of crime and were diagnosed as having severe mental problems. They should also still think you are crazy because you didn’t just say you were raped, you believed it was the devil doing it. Why did finding out what really happened make her suddenly “all right”?
What was the deal with that pool? Why was it full to the brim like that? Did it rain in the prison that day? Do they keep huge overfilled pools in prisons for the mentally insane? Why do people in stupid movies always go swimming completely alone and in the dark? For that matter why the hell was it so dark everywhere in that prison? I know they kept on about the power outages but this was beyond that. The solitary ward strobe light show was ridiculous too. I thought we were in Prison 54.
Why did the guard give her his keys? Cheap plot device. Bordering on deus ex machina.
Why was her spare key still in place at the crime scene? Why wasn’t it even a crime scene anymore? Do they really leave scenes of grisly murders uncordoned, unattended, and not even boarded up only days or weeks after the murder? They couldn’t have been done gathering evidence or building the case. If they didn’t find the key or change the locks they did a shitty job. I have a feeling if someone having any expertise on the realities of crime investigation sees this movie they will have a lot more critique to offer of this aspect.
In three or four scenes we saw the Xes of tape on the floor where the actors were supposed to go to/stand on. There is no more excuse for this than there is for the dancing microphone.
If the spirit was benevolent and wanted help, why did it try to kill her in the cell? Very bad attempt at misdirection.
When she got sliced up in the shower. They are talking about it later and saying they didn’t take her for a cutter, and they “think” the instrument was probably a scalpel. So she was laying in the open shower floor area, in a prison, naked and bleeding, alone, and they DIDN’T FIND A WEAPON but they don’t CARE that they didn’t find a weapon? And they decide that she must have done it to herself anyway? It doesn’t concern them that someone still has the f’ing scalpel in this crazy prison? If it was her, where did she hide it, up her ass? These are doctors and guards? Bull! I want to hear from someone, anyone who works in a prison about that scene. I found it absolutely ridiculous.
These are just a few of the things that stick out in my mind, I could probably sit here and write a few dozen more but then I realized who cares? It sucked, it isn’t worth analyzing."
Saw it on a date Sunday night and yeah, it really wasn’t all that. A moderately good ghost story, pretty lousy thriller and crime movie.
From Max Carnage:
I thought that guy looked familiar!
From Lumpy:
Oh hell yeah. I thought Dutton was gonna swallow Halle’s face when he first moved in for the smooch. And I completely agree with your alternative plot. That’s where it seemed like it was heading for the first half of the film, and probably should have - even though it’s not an original plot by any stretch of the imagination.