Just saw this and loved it. I’m choosing this thread (of the three I found in a search) because it has a question I can answer.
I think it would have been a better movie if they went for mental illness instead of supernatural. Throwing the book in the fire and the husband bursting into flames could have been the psychotic wife dousing him in paint thinner and lighting him on fire. (And oh man, what a horrifying sleepwalking story she told to Joan. Yikes.)
Even still, I loved it. I do like supernatural horror movies; one of my favorites is the Paranormal Activity franchise, and this was head and shoulders above that. But this was so much better precisely because it went for psychological terror instead of supernatural horror, so I think leaning fully into the former would have been more effective.
We see him come home, and then hear (thanks to BluRay subtitles) both parents say “Good, they’re home.” from their bedroom but they don’t come out. He goes to his room, lays in bed, and it’s heavily implied that he just lay there unable to sleep all night long.
In the morning (the light is different) we hear the parents discuss regular morning stuff (again thanks to subtitles) while the camera stays on his face. The mom says she’s going to the store or whatever and then we hear her leave, open the car door, and then start screaming.
She told that story in group: Her brother hanged himself in her mother’s bedroom as a teenager because her mother was “trying to put voices in his head.”
And from one of the other threads…
I haven’t seen Handmaid’s Tale yet, but if you like Ann Dowd in monstrous roles, check out The Leftovers.