Unbreakable (2000)

The Deranged Elijah Price (aka Mr. Glass) Had Orchestrated Three Acts of Terrorism to Locate Dunn as a Super-Hero - His Exact Opposite

Writer/producer/director M. Night Shyamalan's suspense thriller was about superheros, their comic books and myths.

The main character was:

• David Dunn (Bruce Willis), a Philadelphia security guard, with wife Audrey (Robin Wright) and young son Joseph (Spencer Treat Clark)

In the film's opening, Dunn miraculously walked away unhurt as the only survivor of a major train wreck (on a train bound from NYC to Philadelphia) in which 131 passengers were killed.

Dunn was approached by the film's other major character:

• Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), a mysterious and fragile man, aka "Mr. Glass"; an eccentric comic-book collector/dealer at a store named "Limited Editions"; he suffered from a rare, genetic bone disorder requiring frequent hospitalizations

Dunn was told a far-fetched theory by Price, that he was, in reality, his exact opposite:

"However unreal it may seem, we are connected, you and I. We're on the same curve, just on opposite ends."

Price believed that Dunn was "unbreakable' - an incarnation of a modern-day invincible super-hero with special supernatural powers and paranormal crime-fighting abilities - on the opposite end of the spectrum from him.

Although disbelieving, Dunn began to be convinced of his superhero abilities, including his special gift of ESP and the ability to sense people who committed immoral, criminal acts (i.e., a jewel thief, a racist hate-criminal, a rapist). He saved some members of a family held hostage by a sadistic torturer wearing an orange suit. However, his main "kryptonite" weakness was water, and he nearly drowned as a youth.

In the film's surprise, a preposterous twist ending, Dunn met with Price in the back office of his comic-book store. Dunn sensed Price's evil deeds when shaking hands with him and there was a flash. He realized that the deranged mastermind genius Price was responsible for three major terrorist catastrophes, including Dunn's own train crash:

• the massive train wreck
• a plane crash
• a hotel building fire

Price/Mr. Glass had deliberately arranged for these fatal terrorist disasters (evidenced by numerous newspaper clippings displayed on his office's bulletin board) in the hopes of finding someone, a real-life superhero, who was "unbreakable" and could survive the catastrophes:

Do you know what the scariest thing is? To not know your place in this world, to not know why you're here. That's...just an awful feeling...I almost gave up hope. There were so many times I questioned myself...But I found you. So many sacrifices just to find you...Now that we know who you are, I know who I am. I'm not a mistake! It all makes sense! In a comic, you know how you can tell who the arch-villain's going to be? He's the exact opposite of the hero. And most times, they're friends, like you and me! I should've known way back when. You know why, David? Because of the kids. They called me Mr. Glass.

Although Price appeared to be vulnerable, he was instead an insane super-villain and Dunn's arch-nemesis.

The film ended with Dunn notifying police who arrested Price (revealed in a caption: "David Dunn led authorities to Limited Edition where evidence of three acts of terrorism was found"). Price was committed to an institution (revealed in a caption: "Elijah Price is now in an institution for the criminally insane").

Unfaithful (2002)

After Husband Edward Discovered His Wife Connie's "Unfaithful" Affair with a French Rare Bookdealer, He Killed the Man; Although They Contemplated Turning Themselves Into Police, Their Crime Went Unpunished

Classy soft-core film director Adrian Lyne's erotic drama dealt with the disastrous consequences of a wild extra-marital affair, with its subsequent guilt, suspicion, and tragedy, although it also made adultery look sexy and exciting. It was a reworking of director Claude Chabrol's La Femme Infidele (1969, Fr.) (aka The Unfaithful Wife).

It told about an adulterous affair, including various passionate, 'unfaithful' encounters in NYC, between:

• Constance "Connie" Sumner (Diane Lane), a wayward and straying NY suburban housewife
• Paul Martel (Olivier Martinez), a Frenchman, rare bookdealer

Their cheating threatened her marriage of eleven years to her husband Edward (Richard Gere). The repercussions of the affair, once discovered by Ed, led him to angrily kill Martel (crushing his skull with a snowglobe - a gift he had once given Connie, that she had given to Paul), and their efforts were to cover up for each other (each knowing that the other one was guilty) after police found the body wrapped in a rug at a dump.

The film ended enigmatically with the two of them in their car at an intersection (with several cycles of a changing stoplight) in the middle of the night. They were discussing what to do (while their son slept in the backseat). Ed was contemplating turning himself in ("I'll turn myself in"). Connie, however, tried to dissuade him by dreamily suggesting that they leave the country, get a beach house in Mexico, and take different names:

Connie: "We could disappear. We could raise some money, sell everything and just leave the country."
Edward: "Senorita?"
Connie: "Mexico. Why not? We could get a little house on the beach, take a different name. People do it all the time."
Edward: "What do we tell Charlie?"
Connie: "Tell him it's an adventure. We could fish all day. We could learn to play the guitar."
Edward: "And I would serenade you to sleep every night."
Connie: "We'd just live the rest of our lives on that beach and then when we die, we could just push out to sea. What do you think?"
Edward: "Sounds perfect."

Parked Outside a Police Station - What Next?

Finally, the camera then revealed that they were parked outside a police station - it was left open-ended. Did their crimes go unpunished or not?

[In one alternate ending, one of many considered, Ed definitely said his goodbyes and proceeded to enter.]

Unknown (2011)

There was No "Dr. Martin Harris" - He Was an Undercover Trained Assassin, Part of a Team of Professionals Intent on Killing an Arab Prince in a Berlin Hotel During a Biotechnology Conference, and on Stealing Valuable Computer Secrets from Professor Bressler; Once the Original Plan Went Awry After a Car Accident and Head Injury, 'Martin Harris' Decided to Thwart the Assassination Attempt

This mind-bending, twisty-turning, psychological thriller was directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, and had the tagline:

TAKE BACK YOUR LIFE

It began with a married couple arriving at the Berlin Airport in late November:

• Dr. Martin John Harris (Liam Neeson), an American botanist
• Elizabeth (January Jones), his striking cool-blonde wife

He was there to attend a biotech conference sponsored by German Professor L.P. Bressler (Sebastian Koch), who had a secret project funded by Prince Shada (Mido Hamada). (The Prince had been targeted by extremists in previous assassination attempts. Later, it was revealed that the Prince would be in attendance at the conference.)

Martin's briefcase (the McGuffin - with identification papers) was inadvertently left in a luggage cart, and he realized the oversight when they arrived at the Adlon Hotel. Without telling Elizabeth (who was registering at the desk), Martin caught another taxi, driven by Eastern European (Bosnia) illegal immigrant Gina (Diane Kruger), and on their way back to the airport on slippery roads, their car swerved and plunged into the river - a freakish accident.

He was pulled from the watery wreckage by the courageous taxi driver who smashed the rear window and pulled him out. [Was she also a spy or covert field agent, tailing him and working to prevent him from carrying out his task?] Four days later with a serious head injury, he awoke from a coma in a Berlin hospital - with no ID, faulty memory, selective amnesia, no wife, only a little money, and an unknown identity. [This was not a plot twist involving his last-minute death hallucinations.]

At the hotel, where security officials warily questioned him (and an Internet search brought up someone else's picture on the University website), Martin approached his wife, who coldly rebuked him. She presented another Martin Harris (Aidan Quinn) - with name tag. Martin realized that for some reason, no one agreed that he was Martin Harris. He wondered to himself:

• Was his wife being coerced and held captive, or was she in on the deception?
• Was the head injury causing the disorientation or dementia?
• Was his identity stolen?

Soon, clues began to pile up after Martin contacted ex-Stasi private investigator Ernst Jurgen (Bruno Ganz) to sort out what had happened. Jurgen told him:

"Ask enough questions and a man who is lying will eventually change his story, but a man who tells the truth cannot change his however unlikely his story sounds."

The film stretched credibility to the limit and there were implausibilities, but it was stylishly told, with these elements coming to the forefront:

• During his search for the truth, Martin was being pursued by a hired killer (an individual named Smith (Olivier Schneider)), who first trailed him in a subway tunnel, and then almost killed him during a second return visit to the hospital after he fell unconscious. Hitman Smith broke the neck of the attendant nurse Gretchen (Eva Lobau), and was joined by another ominous hitman named Jones (Stipe Erceg).
• Martin was being sought - and targeted for elimination by his own assassination team - because of the unexpected turn of events when he left his briefcase at the airport and went into a coma. (Because of his head injury and disorientation, Martin mistakenly believed that his fake Martin Harris persona was his own real identity.) His series of missteps threatened to endanger the planned mission, and caused his team of assassins to change their existing plans and invoke a backup plan with a second "Martin"; technically, Martin didn't really exist at all.
• Martin soon recalled that he had been in Berlin the previous August (three months earlier), staying at the same Hotel Adlon with his brunette accomplice, when he had planted explosives in their suite's wall, to be detonated in November during the conference, to kill the Prince. It would be made to look like Shada, staying in the suite, was killed by terrorist extremists - with Bressler as collateral damage.

From here on, both Gina (now a diner waitress) and Martin became targets - and he was determined to save the two of them - now that his plan was to thwart a perceived assassination plot on Prince Shada. (His original mission was the exact opposite.)

• During an attack on them in her apartment, Gina helped Martin kill Smith with a deadly syringe applied to his neck.
• The main goal of the assassination team was not to kill the Prince, however, but to actually steal computer secrets from Bressler - the real target. Bressler's secret project contained valuable information (groundbreaking formulas to harvest corn anywhere in the world). These formulas would provide the Prince with additional income after Sauda Arabian oil reserves were depleted.
• The passwords to Bressler's protected computer files with the formulas were deduced from a series of numbers in Martin's Botany book. The numbers correlated to code words found in the book - the Latin names for two flowers (Lily and Laurel) which were the names of Bressler's two daughters.
• Martin's long-time trusted American associate Rodney Cole (Frank Langella) was actually one of the leaders of the team. He had taken pictures of Martin with his "wife", helped compose a back history for Martin (to be memorized), and arranged for everything to take place, including Plan B, etc. Cole was also present when Jurgen (to protect Martin) suicidally took cyanide before he could be coerced into talking. Now that the assassination plot had been waylaid, Cole was revealed to be a determined mercenary killer who was planning to kill Martin and make his death look like a nameless junkie overdose.
• With Gina's help, hitman Jones was squashed between two vehicles, and Cole was killed in a black van which tumbled off the top level of an abandoned parking garage and exploded. At the hotel, Martin fought hand-to-hand against his own colleague, the second "Martin," and sliced his throat with broken glass. After copying Bressler's files, Elizabeth was blown up when she tried to disarm the bomb in the hotel room, while other hotel guests were safely evacuated.
• The film ended with Prof. Bressler at a press conference announcing that his research on a new strain of fast-growing, drought-tolerant and pest-resistant corn would be made freely available worldwide (as a gift from the Prince) to wipe out hunger. Agribusiness company shares dropped 14% at Bressler's announcement. (It appeared that representatives of a large food company had hired Section 15 to kill Bressler and the Prince, and steal Bressler's secrets before they could be revealed.)
• Martin and Gina, with new identities and fake names (Claudia and Henry Taylor), caught a train departing from Berlin - concluding the film as it began with two individuals with fake identities on a journey.

Urban Legend (1998)

The Killer Was Brenda, Seeking Revenge for the Death of Her Boyfriend/Fiancee; Although She Should Have Died, She Survived at Another School

This teen horror-slasher film was directed by Jamie Blanks. Its tagline referred to various grisly 'urban legends' - brutal murders:

It Happened To Someone Who Knows Someone You Know... You're Next.

'Urban legends' were defined as "contemporary folklore passed on as a true story" -- for example, death by a killer in a car's back seat, death from saying "Bloody Mary" five times, death to a baby-sitter from a phone-caller from an upstairs bedroom, death from a lethal combination of pop rocks and soda pop, etc.

The setting of the film was on the Maine campus of fictional Pendleton University. It was notorious for an event that happened almost 25 years earlier in 1973 - a horrific legendary (or covered-up?) mass murder in Stanley Hall, with only one survivor. Six students with slit throats from a hunting knife were allegedly killed by a beserk Abnormal Psychology professor who then committed suicide by stabbing himself through the heart.

[Note: The historical massacre was first described by current student Parker Riley (Michael Rosenbaum), but disbelieved by another student, aspiring journalist Paul Gardner (Jared Leto) as a "bulls--t story".]

The film's opening scene was the first victim's killing - the decapitation of current 20 year-old Pendleton U. student Michelle Mancini (Natasha Gregson Wagner) with an axe wielded by someone in the back seat of her car, although she might have avoided dying - but fled before heeding the warning of creepy, stuttering gas-station attendant Michael McDonald (Brad Dourif) ("Someone's in the back seat!").

FIRST VICTIM: Warning to Michelle: "Someone's In the Back Seat!"

Smart, red-haired coed Natalie Simon (Alicia Witt) was a high-school friend of Michelle's - they had been team captains of their cheerleading squad. Natalie and her friends had recently learned about the phenomenon of urban legends in a class on folklore taught by expert Professor Wexler (Robert Englund) (who was later considered a major suspect since he was the sole 1973 survivor).

It was possible that the killer was re-enacting various deadly legends ("Someone out there is taking all these stories and making them reality"). Natalie feared that a "lunatic" serial killer was on the loose on-campus, although others thought the murders were not real, were suicidal, or only a coincidence.

The murders (including the opening murder) that composed most of the film's running time were:

The key to the motivation of the murderer was that Natalie had a hidden secret - she and past friend/victim Michelle had reenacted a modified version of an urban legend (the "Gang High-Beam Initiation" - driving with headlights off and lethally targeting the first driver who flashed their lights). They caused the senseless and tragic death of another motorist who lost control - although the two only received probation for "reckless endangerment."

As it turned out in the big reveal, the dead motorist (David Evans) was the boyfriend ("the love of my life") of vengeful and deranged curly-haired student Brenda Bates (Rebecca Gayheart) - the film's revealed killer. Brenda was seeking revenge and blaming Natalie Simon and her friends for the accidental death, a year earlier, of her husband-to-be David Evans.

After a number of killings, Brenda had assembled many of the dead corpses on the top floor of dilapidated Stanley Hall, where she had lit candles, and told a captured Natalie: "Gotcha!" She threatened: "Don't you want to be an urban legend? All your friends are now." Brenda's plan was to kill Natalie, and acquire her friend Paul as her new boyfriend. After failing to perform a deadly "Kidney Heist" operation on Natalie, Brenda was shot twice by both black, Foxy Brown-wannabe campus guard Reese Wilson (Loretta Devine) and Natalie, and then crashed backwards through the third floor window.

She reappeared wielding an axe in the backseat of Paul's vehicle, and was propelled into a river through the windshield when it crashed on a bridge - but the film's brief epilogue showed her still alive!

Brenda was in a group of students in another school, embellishing the "urban legend" story just seen. She proposed to tell them exactly what had happened in the film's final line: "I believe you... but you didn't tell it right...Not at all. OK, listen up, guys, 'cause this is how the story really goes." The entire film (and its events) became an urban legend of its own ("This'll become a legend too, you know").

The Usual Suspects (1995)

"Verbal" Kint Was Keyser Soze; Kint's Tale Was Entirely Fabricated and Made Up From Elements of the Interrogation Room's Bulletin Board

Director Bryan Singer's clever, and hip, plot-twisting, film-noirish, mystery heist thriller (with a sharp script by Christopher McQuarrie) was (and continues to be) a popular cult favorite. Its tagline was: "In a world where nothing is what it seems you've got to look beyond...(THE USUAL SUSPECTS)."

Much of the film was set in a police interrogation room, where a lengthy questioning was held between two men regarding a central mystery surrounding the enigmatic, greatly-feared, legendary existence and character of Hungarian mobster and kingpin known as Keyser Soze - a semi-mythical, cold-blooded "devil", and almost supernatural Hungarian crime lord and mastermind:

• Dave Kujan (Chazz Palminteri), a tough US Customs Agent and federal investigator, flown from NYC to Los Angeles for the questioning
• Roger "Verbal" Kint (Kevin Spacey), a manipulative, crippled (disabled, 'club-footed', or suffering from cerebral palsy), small-time, two-bit con-man

Kint told a convoluted story (in flashback) about criminal misconduct that stretched back to six weeks earlier. Much of Kint's story spoke about the mysterious, devilish crime lord Keyser Soze, his early life, and a description of the first time he ever heard of Soze, and his coldbloodness with Hungarian rivals followed by his disappearance: ("The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist...and like that, he's gone. Underground....Nobody's ever seen him since. He becomes a myth, a spook story that criminals tell their kids at night").

According to Kint, a group of tough and savvy criminals were hauled in by the NYPD after a Queens, NY truck hijacking and gun parts shipment robbery. The five misfit criminals ("the usual suspects" who appeared in all of the film's posters in a line-up) were:

• Dean Keaton (Gabriel Byrne), a crooked ex-cop, now reformed and in the restaurant business
• Michael McManus (Stephen Baldwin), a professional thief, a hot-headed entry man and sniper
• Fred Fenster (Benicio del Toro), a flashy-dressing Latino who spoke in mangled English, also McManus' partner
• Todd Hockney (Kevin Pollak), an explosives specialist and thuggish hijacker
• and Kint himself

As revenge for being 'falsely accused', they also pulled off a robbery of a protective escort service (New York's "finest taxi service" run by corrupt NYPD officers) that was escorting a jewel smuggler and they pulled off a $3 million robbery of emeralds. Following the lucrative heist, they traveled to Los Angeles to sell the loot through McManus' fence REDFOOT, and then failed a second jewel heist attempt (when the jewels turned out to be heroin).

Afterwards, to compensate for his loss and pay him back, Turkish crime lord Soze (and his lawyer Kobayashi (Pete Postlethwaite)) coerced the five thieves to go on a suicide mission to San Pedro Bay (LA) harbor to commit a huge $91 million cocaine heist (and destruction) of a drug shipment on a docked ship -- an act of sabotage against Keyser Soze's own Argentinian drug-dealing competitors in the drug trade.

The weaselly, limping Kint, one of only two survivors of the fiery explosion and fire-fight massacre at the harbor (the other survivor was badly-burned Hungarian mobster Arkosh Kovash) that resulted in 27 deaths, confessed truths, half-truths, double-crosses, and lies in his convoluted tale. He claimed that he had witnessed the botched raid (due to the fact that no cocaine was found on the ship, or it was mysteriously missing); Kujan deduced: "Keaton was Keyser Soze" - the mastermind of everything, who had faked his death and deliberately left Verbal as a witness. However, Kint disagreed: "This is all bulls--t."

In the clever twist ending, the secret identity of Kint was revealed and resolved after he refused to testify in court, and was released on bail. As the crippled Kint limped away from the police station (after receiving 'Keyser Soze's' gold watch and gold lighter -- another clue!), his hand deformity and his limp suddenly disappeared from his stride.

Kujan simultaneously realized - upon breaking his coffee mug (with the logo for Kobayashi Porcelain) and other trivial clues - that Kint was, in fact, the greatly-feared, legendary criminal mastermind and kingpin Keyser Soze of Kint's own extraordinarily-fabricated story. A police sketch artist's rending of Soze's face confirmed that Soze was Kint.

To his stunned amazement, Kujan scanned the office's bulletin board and noticed that many of the elements of Kint's preposterous swindler story (about Kobayashi-Keyser Soze-Dean Keaton) were improvised from items behind Sgt. Rabin's desk in the borrowed office:

• the coffee mug logo for Kobayashi was the same name as the blackmailing lawyer in Kint's account
• the bulletin board was made by Quartet, a company in Skokie, Illinois, referred to in Kint's story as a "barbershop quartet"
• there was a picture of a wanted lady who was "orca fat" - with a list of her alias names on a wanted sheet - one of which was the name "REDFOOT" - one of Kint's fabricated characters ("Some guy in California, his name is Redfoot")
• there was a vacation flyer for traveling to "Guatemala" ("A Winning Combination - Guatemala - The best buy for your client's vacation dollars") - Kint had said: "Back when I was pickin' beans in Guatemala, we used to make fresh coffee."

Kobayashi (Pete Postlethwaite) Picking Up Kint

Dave Kujan: Tricked!

Kint: "The greatest trick..."

The "cripple" Kint was picked up in a black car by Kobayashi. The film's last line was Kint's voice-over, words that he had spoken earlier - (he blew on his fingers, as if to say 'Poof!')., he's gone" - "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist. And like that, he's gone."

U-Turn (1997)

The Double Crosses and Twists Led to the Deaths of Everyone Involved; During the Bloody Encounters, It was Revealed that Grace was the Illegitimate Child of Her Father Jake, and She Had Been Having Consensual Incest with Him after Marrying Him

Director Oliver Stone's western-styled film noir, similar to Blood Simple (1984) and Red Rock West (1993), was filled with so many unpredictable double-crossing twists and turns that it was difficult to know from moment to moment who would survive and who would perish in the short 24 hour time span of the film. The taglines succinctly described its unpredictability:

• Expect the Unexpected
• Sex. Murder. Betrayal. Everything that makes life worth living.

The bloody, violence-filled black comedy about deception, jealousy and greed was also complete with quick editing, jerky camera movements, odd angled shots, deep saturated colors, brights flashs, etc.

The fatalistic film opened with an ironic song, "It's a Good Day" (by Peggy Lee) and symbols of death - roadkill on a desert highway, buzzards circling in the air, a carcass' entrails being picked at, and a scorpion on a waterfaucet. One of the first lines about the hot weather foreshadowed death: "Day like today, you'd be dead in no time."

Grace McKenna (Jennifer Lopez)

Jake McKenna (Nick Nolte)

Disreputable, pill-popping lout/gambler Bobby Cooper (Sean Penn) was driving along in his red 1964 1/2 Ford Mustang convertible when it suffered a busted radiator hose, and he pulled off the highway into the small desolate town of Superior, Arizona. While his car was being 'repaired' at Harlin's Garage by greasy, grinning satanic mechanic Darrell (Billy Bob Thornton) ("an ignorant, inbred, tumbleweed hick"), he walked to town where he caught a glimpse of the film's gorgeous femme fatale temptress in a tight orange dress - Grace McKenna (Jennifer Lopez), a married, "half-breed" Apache.

She flirtatiously invited him to her house, where they were caught kissing when her grizzly, insanely-jealous older husband Jake McKenna (Nick Nolte), a wealthy realtor, unexpectedly arrived home. He screamed at her: "I got a mind to put you over my knee and paddle your ass raw," although later he told Bobby: "I'll bet you she just had you hard as a rock, just wiggling her ass in your face. I bet you just wanted to pull her pants down and hog her out."

In flashbacks, it was revealed that Bobby, a former tennis teacher, owed $30,000 to Russian mobsters in Las Vegas, Nevada, and was tortured with two fingers cut off one hand with garden shears for an overdue debt. His hand was still bandaged. His desire to get on the road and deliver the cash in a satchel backfired during a violent grocery store robbery (a shotgun blast shredded the bills), and the beleaguered Bobby was trapped in the hellish town with no money to pay for his expensive car repair. The plot intensified when there were various tempting proposals offered to solve his dilemma.

Grace's despicable husband proposed killing his younger wife ("Women, can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em"), because he claimed: "I'm just sick and tired of her goddamn little games," and he suggested splitting her $50,000 life insurance policy money. Jake was jealous of her, tormented by her, and accusatory, calling her masochistic: "Like f--king half this town behind my back and laughing at me. The bitch! She wants me to hit her, and then when I hit her, she likes it." But then he said softly: "She's my family. She's my little girl. My baby."

However, when Bobby had the opportunity to kill Grace (in the same manner that Jake had probably killed Grace's mother), he resisted pushing Grace off a desert cliff to make it look like an accident (after she sighed and wished to fly away to escape: "I wish I was a bird...If I was a bird, I'd fly to Florida, Disney World"). When he was holding her back from falling, she quipped: "I bet right now, you don't know if you want to kill me or f--k me."

Afterwards, they did make love outdoors on a blanket, but it was coitus interruptus and Bobby had to finish himself off behind a tree. He was frustrated with her: "You're becoming the queen of hot and cold" (a significant clue about her personality).

She also revealed sordid 'messy' stories of an unfaithful Jake keeping Grace's mother on the side: "Jake was with my mom. After my real father died. He used to call me his 'little half- breed'. He kept my mom on the side, you know, 'cause. he had a wife someplace else. He'd control me." Jake had also been raping Grace for many years: ("He was raping me the whole time, for years"). She described how her mother was affected: "It tore her up 'cause she couldn't do nothin' about it. She become alcoholic. They found my mama right down here. At the bottom of Apache Leap." Supposedly, Jake killed Grace's alcoholic mother (he pushed her off the cliff at Apache Leap, although it was ruled accidental by the Sheriff - drunken insanity). Afterwards, Jake forced Grace to marry him.

Grace, desperate for revenge, proposed killing her abusive husband, who was hoarding money ($100,000?) in a locked safe under the floorboards in their bedroom - annoyingly, he kept the safe's key on a chain around his neck ("He keeps it on him all the time. So it's slapping up against me when we do it"). Bobby chose to help Grace eliminate Jake.

At night, Bobby entered the McKenna home through a back door left unlocked by Grace. As Grace made love on the bed with Jake entering her from behind, he abusively blamed her, as she asked for forgiveness: "You've been a bad girl, haven't you, Grace!...Oh, f--k it away, f--k it away! But it ain't ever gonna go away, 'cause your mama she won't go away, she won't leave you alone. Broke your mama's heart when you stole me. You been a bad girl, Grace, you bitch! Broke her heart."

[There was a momentary flash in which Grace was replaced by her mother during sex - in a disturbing flashback. And then Jake apologized to Grace - for murdering her mother, and sobbed: "Baby, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to hit you so hard. It just got away. Forgive me."]

They were interrupted when Jake heard a noise (Bobby entering the house) and grabbed his gun. During a struggle in the living room with Jake holding a gun to Bobby's head, Bobby claimed that killing Jake was Grace's idea: ("She wants you dead. She wants your money...You know what kind of woman Grace is, Jake") and that he would kill her for Jake for only $200. Bobby raced to the bedroom to kill Grace - and played dead on the floor.

Jake McKenna Murdered by Grace and Bobby

When Jake arrived in the room, Bobby struck him over the head with a golf club, and Grace (and Bobby) gruesomely and vengefully murdered Jake with a tomahawk embedded first in his back and then twice in his chest. Immediately, Grace grabbed the key from Jake's chain and opened the floorboard safe filled with possibly $200,000 in cash. Afterwards, Grace and Bobby made love next to the dead body: "Let him watch. I want him to know what he's missing."

As they escaped from town, they were pulled over by suspicious Sheriff Virgil Potter (Powers Booth), another of Grace's lovers whom she had 'played' like Bobby. Manipulatively, Grace turned on Bobby, blaming him for Jake's death: ("He killed Jake and he said he'd kill me if I didn't come with him. All he wants is the money"). Bobby exclaimed: "You're f--kin' him too? Is everybody f--king everybody in this crazy goddamn town?" When Potter felt betrayed, he was enraged: "I watched you f--k that pervert for years. All the time, you was telling me you loved me...Just you and me, Grace...I want you to be my wife. What do you say, Grace?" When she told him to go back to his family, Potter revealed Grace's darkest secret - Grace was illegitimate, and engaged in consensual father-daughter incest:

You see, old crazy Jake is really her Papa. And she liked f--kin' her Papa. Now she's killed that son of a bitch just like she's gonna kill you.

Sheriff Virgil Potter (Powers Booth) Assaulting Bobby - Blamed For Jake's Death

Sheriff Potter Shot and Killed by Double-Crossing Grace

Incensed by the revelation, Grace shot and killed the Sheriff with three bullets. Now, two bodies were stashed in the trunk. As they drove away, there were flashbacks of Grace having sex with her father as she confessed:

Don't you really want to know? Was Jake my father? Was I f--king my -- ?...Yes, I was! I was f--king my daddy! And I married him! I married him, okay? I just wanted to be a kid and he took that from me. They treated me like, like meat. A piece of meat. F--k them! F--k the whole town! They deserved to die!

In the absurdist ending at a cliffside (one of many false endings), untrusting Bobby proposed that they split the money and then go their separate ways ("I think you're a lying, backstabbing, psycho bitch and one day you'll kill me"). The two dead bodies (Jake and Sheriff Potter) were tossed off the edge, and then Grace pushed Bobby over the side, breaking his leg. But she didn't realize that he had the keys to the car in his pocket. When she scrambled down to his side for the keys, after handing them to her, he strangled her after he again told her:

"I don't know whether to love you - or kill you."

After struggling to get back to the car on the ridge, he thought he had made it with the money, but then the radiator hose busted again (he cried out: "Oh, s--t. Arizona"). Laughing maniacally, he expired in the hot desert sun.

Valmont (1989, Fr./UK)

Valmont Died in A Duel of Honor Against Danceny; Cecile Was Pregnant with Valmont's Child; Marquise de Merteuil Was Secretly Seducing Cecile's Young Music Teacher Danceny; and Cecile Had an Arranged Marriage with the Older Gercourt (Although She Was Pregnant with Valmont's Child)

Director Milos Forman's romantic drama was based on Pierre Choderlos de Laclos' classic 1782 novel about seduction - a boudoir soap opera set in the baroque period. Its tagline was:

As unpredictable as love itself.

It told about scheming and devious wealthy widow Marquise de Merteuil (Annette Bening). She made a two-part bet with Vicomte de Valmont (Colin Firth) - a womanizing playboy and philanderer - and one of her former lovers.

Valmont was challenged to use his wily sexuality to:

• seduce the married, honorable, and virtuous Mme. de Tourvel (Meg Tilly)
• deflower virginal 15 year-old convent-educated Cecile (Fairuza Balk) before her arranged marriage to the Marquise's own unfaithful lover, the older Gercourt (Jeffrey Jones), in order to cuckold him

As part of the prize bargain for the wager, if Valmont succeeded, the Marquise agreed to give her body to him ("Anything you want"...he had suggested: "your body").

• Valmont seduced ingenue Cecile while he helped her write a love-note to her young crush: her 17 year-old harp music teacher Chevalier Danceny (Henry Thomas). He pulled up her skirt and raped her from behind (off-screen).
• Valmont also inflamed the love-suppressed desires of Mme. de Tourvel who allowed herself to be seduced and abandoned (but returned for one more night of love-making).

When Valmont came to claim the Marquise's body as payment, she reneged in a scene during her bath, and refused to honor her bargain, claiming it was "just a joke."

Marquise: "And am I something that one wins as a wager?..."
Valmont: "What are you going on about? I won, and I have the right to collect my prize!"

However, she later appeared to acquiesce to him ("Isn't it lonely when there's no one to share your secrets with?...Would you like to share my latest secret?"), but cunningly revealed that she was sleeping with Danceny, and had vengefully told him that Valmont had taken his love's virginity ("Cecile lost her virginity in your arms").

This set up the final scene of a one-sided, futile fencing duel of honor between Danceny and an inebriated Valmont, leading to the latter's quick death (off-screen) and burial.

All of Valmont's female conquests paid their respects at his open coffin and grave. Before her marriage to Gercourt, Cecile also whispered to Valmont's elderly aunt Madame de Rosemonde (Fabia Drake) her secret -- that she was pregnant with Valmont's child, and she received a subdued but overjoyed reply:

"My angel, my sweet angel."

Vanilla Sky (2001)

After a Disfiguring Accident, David Had A Contract With A Cyrogenics Company (Life Extension) For Their Services; Everything After He Fell Down In the Street (and Awakened with "Open Your Eyes") Was a Lucid VR Dream; He Suicidally Killed Himself With a Drug Overdose, But Everything in His Life Turned Into A Torturous Nightmare Due to His Memories; To End the Virtual Dream, He Jumped Off a Building to Wake Up

Writer/director Cameron Crowe's film was a remake of Open Your Eyes/Abre los Ojos (1997, Sp.) by director Alejandro Amenabar. It opened with soaring birds-eye views of New York City.

The first spoken words were from Sofia Serrano (Penelope Cruz): "Open your eyes. Open your eyes" - a recording on the alarm clock CD of wealthy, good-looking, and privileged David Aames (Tom Cruise), heir to his family's publishing empire. He awoke and then drove into a vacant Times Square area in a black Jaguar. He then awakened from the dream to another "Open your eyes" spoken this time by accompanying blonde girlfriend - or "f--k buddy" Julie Gianni (Cameron Diaz).

The 32 year-old David Aames, charged with the crime of murder and wearing a latex facial mask to cover a facial disfigurement, was relating his dreams and his life story (told in flashbacks) to psychologist McCabe (Kurt Russell). After stalking David outside Sofia's apartment, the jilted Julie deliberately crashed her car, killing herself and seriously injuring him as a passenger - causing him to enter a coma for almost a month with serious facial and body injuries. But he told new friend Sofia upon their next meeting in the park about his horrible dream of the accident: "But I survived with my arm and my face reconstructed. And what's worse - I can't wake up," although in voice-over (speaking to the psychologist), he revealed it was a dream:

My dreams are a cruel joke. They taunt me. Even in my dreams, I'm an idiot who knows he's about to wake up to reality. If I could only avoid sleep. But I can't. I try to tell myself what to dream.

Placed in a cell, he wore a facial prosthetic-mask to hide his deformity. With his disfigured and scarred face, he met Sofia at her dance studio and later called, saying: "I'm back in your life," while his best friend Brian Shelby (Jason Lee) recognized a difference in him: "The new guy is s--t." After a night on the town at a discotheque with Sofia and Brian, David drunkenly told Brian: "Tomorrow, I'll wish I was dead" -- prophetic words. He fell asleep drunk in the street - and was awakened with the phrase whispered by Sofia: "Open your eyes."

From here on, the film was a virtual reality dream with Sofia and others ("We created our own world together"), while David suffered unsettling disjunctions, dreamy wish fulfillments, and bewildering reality flips (e.g., his face changed from being deformed to being completely healed after his doctors performed a restorative facial reconstruction surgical procedure, Sofia became his girlfriend and they made love in a nude scene, but Sofia was sometimes transformed into his obsessive ex-lover Julie, etc.). During love-making with Sofia, she also asked, tellingly: "Is this a dream?" and he answered: "Absolutely" as they kissed.

Later, he became crazed and out of control when his own face turned back into its hideous form and when Sofia 'changed into' Julie (although she claimed she was Sofia). After being booked, although David thought he had only beaten up Julie, he was accused of her murder - the reason for his imprisonment in a psychiatric penitentiary (for the criminally insane awaiting trial). The true nature of his 'reality' or 'dream' world was first brought into play when he was advised by a 'technical support' representative of L.E. (or Life Extension) at a bar: "You must overcome your fears and regain control" and then reminded that he had signed a contract with L.E.: "You and I signed a contract, David."

A continual thread throughout the film was the remarkable story of Benny the dog who was frozen for three months and thawed out to live a normal life -- this miraculous recovery was advertised by a cryogenics company called Life Extension (or L.E.), claiming it could do the same for humans. David's psychologist also asked: "Can you tell the difference between dreams and reality?" David recalled that he had repressed his killing of Sofia when she wouldn't 'turn back' into the 'other' Sofia. Becoming deranged, he smothered her with a pillow while making love to her (crying out: "I don't wanna see your face"). His psychologist reasoned that his guilt about the way he treated Julie led Sofia to turn into Julie ("Your feelings of responsibility or guilt over Julie might have easily turned Sofia into Julie") - and he would be tried for murder, and would plead his innocence in the trial as "temporary derangement."

At the end of the film, David was permitted to visit the high-rise offices of the L.E. company with his psychologist, realizing: "I think I've been here before." The company advertised "a journey of reawakening after the preservation of the human body at extremely low temperatures." LE representative Rebecca Dearborn (Tilda Swinton) explained how the company offered after-death immortality:

Your anguish, your discontent, even your death is no longer necessary in a traditional sense. Whatever malady hides behind that mask is temporary. Within an hour of your passing, LE will transfer your body to a vessel where you will be sealed and frozen at 196 degrees below zero.

David had also signed up for an optional component called Lucid Dream: "the cryonic union of science and entertainment" --

"Upon resurrection [after death], you will continue in an ageless state, preserved but living in the present with a future of your choosing. Your death will be wiped from your memory. Your life will continue as a realistic work of art painted by you, minute to minute...a living dream, Life: Part Two."

He also learned that his subconscious might play "tricks" on him, but the risk was worth it: "This is a revolution of the mind."

Abruptly, David ran from the office screaming: "I want to wake up!...It's a nightmare...Tech support!" - and Edmund Ventura (Noah Taylor) from the Oasis Project (formerly Life Extension L.E.), whom David had earlier seen at the bar, appeared and formally introduced himself: "We first met 150 years ago...Everything is your creation" and David was soon to face a "true moment of choice" -- David was told about when the "Lucid Dream" began - when he fell down drunk on the pavement after being at the discotheque:

That was the moment you chose for the splice. The end of your real life and the beginning of LE's Lucid Dream.

In the Lucid Dream state, he was frozen and dreaming. He was also told: "You sculpted your Lucid Dream out of the iconography of your youth - an album cover that once moved you..." and other pop cultural artifacts (fatherhood in To Kill a Mockingbird, the love triangle in Jules et Jim, etc). What really happened was erased or replaced from his memory:

"You never saw Sofia again...You longed for Sofia. You shut yourself away for months. You were alone. You couldn't stand the pain anymore, the headaches..."

Then David took a drug overdose and killed himself (on 12/26/2001 at the age of 33) after signing the contract with L.E.

On the rooftop (with the sky a vanilla color - his mother's favorite time of day), Edmund further explained: "Your subconscious did create problems. Your dream turned into a nightmare." David was then given the choice of returning to his Lucid Dream or entering into "the world out there...just like Benny the dog" although in the future, he was cautioned: "the sweet is never as sweet without the sour." Before facing his last fear - of heights - before leaving the dream world forever by jumping off the building, David first conjured up best friend Brian and then Sofia, and kissed her farewell ("I'm frozen and you're dead. And I love you") and then said: "I'll see you in another life when we are both cats." He turned back while perched on the edge of the building, and then jumped.

An instant before he hit the ground, the film projected more pop-cultural images of his life and then a strange woman's voice (a nurse?) soothed him with: "Relax, David. Open your eyes..." as his eye opened, in close-up.

See earlier write-up for Open Your Eyes/Abre los Ojos (1997, Sp.)

The Vanishing (1988, Neth./Fr.) (aka Spoorloos, or Untraceable)

Both Saskia Wagter and Rex Hofman Shared the Same Fate - They Were Buried Alive Three Years Apart

This original film masterpiece, a psychological chiller from director George Sluizer, was based upon the novella The Golden Egg.

In this unnerving tale, a Dutch couple were vacationing in France:

• Saskia Wagter (Johanna Ter Steege), red-haired
• Rex Hofman (Gene Bervoets), her lover-boyfriend

At a rural French roadside gas station, Saska suddenly and mysteriously vanished - about 15 minutes into the film.

Later, shown in flashback, middle-class chemistry teacher, and sociopathic kidnapper Raymond Lemorne (Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu) was at a vending machine to buy drinks inside the truck-rest stop. He lured her to his car - she sat in the front seat after seeing a picture of his family (believing that he was respectable and harmless). He poured chloroform into a handkerchief, and applied it to her face. She struggled against him, but then passed out.

Haunted by the curious, obsessive need to find his missing girlfriend, Rex spent three years on a frantic search for her. He eventually came face-to-face with her abductor, who had devised a similar hideous fate for him. Rex was also targeted by Lemorne, who realized that he could commit an ultimately more evil crime. Raymond promised Rex that after he drank some spiked coffee, he would experience what happened to his girlfriend.

In the shocking, heart-stopping ending, Rex woke up in pitch darkness. He found himself buried alive in a cramped coffin under the earth, with only a cigarette lighter for brief light. He discovered that he was claustrophobically entombed alive. He cried out: "Help! Help! Help!...Saskia!" He dug with his fingers at the few seams he could find in his coffin, before realizing that his lighter was about to go out forever.

Rex's Last Vision of Saskia

Newspaper Headlines

The dwindling light of the flame became a tunnel through which he saw Saskia. Newspaper headlines in the back seat of Raymond's car told about a Mysterious Double Disappearance - of both Saskia and Rex.

Vertigo (1958)

Madeleine Elster's Death/Murder Was Staged, Using Look-Alike Judy Barton to Make It Appear As a Suicide; Judy Tragically Met the Same Fate as Madeleine

Hitchcock's film was a romantic suspense/thriller about a macabre, doomed romance - a desperate love for an illusion.

It followed a troubled man's obsessive search to end his vertigo (and the deaths that resulted from his 'falling in love' affliction). The thriller became a masterful study of romantic longing, identity, voyeurism, treachery and death, female victimization and degrading manipulation, the feminine "ideal," and fatal sexual obsession for a cool-blonde heroine.

The dizzying trick camerawork (a reverse zoom, dolly-out) visualized the vortex of vertigo and acrophobia (fear of heights) in the film's opening shots and in the bell tower scenes.

Acrophobic obsessed and retired SF police detective John "Scotty" Ferguson (James Stewart) slipped into a surrealistic world of obsession, confused by the real and the imaginary. In one of filmdom's best 'identity-switch' plot twists ever invented (although revealed to the audience before the main protagonist), Scotty fell in love with the blonde, ethereal Madeleine Elster (Kim Novak), the suicidal wife of his old school friend Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore). As it turned out, Elster had hired a red-headed shop-girl named Judy Barton (also Kim Novak) to impersonate his blonde wife, and act suicidally "haunted" in front of Scotty. It was a ruse that worked, especially after Scotty pulled Madeleine from drowning in San Francisco Bay, and fell in love with her.

When 'Madeleine' climbed a high Spanish mission bell tower to jump to her death, Scotty's vertigo prevented him from following closely behind. This was when Elster pulled the switch - after already murdering his 'real' wife (whom Scotty had never met), Elster dumped her corpse from the tower and made Scotty the perfect witness to her "suicide." Conveniently, Scotty never took a close look at the body.

The film cycled back on itself when Scotty ran across Judy - who bore an uncanny resemblance to the now-dead "Madeleine." After forcing her to look like his lost love, he realized that Judy was not Elster's wife but his mistress and they had meticulously planned his wife's murder. The key to solving her identity was a necklace.

In the film's second terrifying sequence, Scottie dragged Judy Barton / Madeleine up the stairs to the top of the mission's bell tower to recreate the suicide.

She suffered a 'second' (and fatal) fall after she recoiled from the shadowy sight of a nun (thought to be a ghost) and stepped backwards through an opening in the tower. She plunged off the tower -- and this time, her death was real! The last shot in the tragic ending showed a stunned, open-mouthed Scottie standing on the belfry tower ledge as he stared down at Judy's dead body.

The Village (2004)

The Village Was Part of a Modern-Day Nature Reserve, Not in the Year 1897; It Was Created 30 Years Earlier by Elder Walker as An Escape/Refuge From Tragedy in the Outside World; The Red-Cloaked Creatures Were Elders in Disguise, To Keep the People in Line; The Village's Secret Remained Intact After Blind Ivy's Trip to Procure Medicine

M. Night Shyamalan's film (with another of the director's trademark twist endings) was criticized at the time of its release for its unbelievable, contrived and illogical premise. The feature film was similar to an expanded version of a Twilight Zone half-hour episode. One of the film's posters illustrated a page from a book with a listing of three unusual tenets:

I: Let the bad color not be seen. It attracts them.
II: Never enter the woods. That is where they wait.
III: Heed the warning bell, for they are coming.

The small village of Covington (its name meant a forest of witches) was an insulated valley town and utopian community in rural Pennsylvania located in the center of a densely-wooded area. It appeared that the isolated, plain-dressing village dwellers were living in the year 1897 (seen in a gravestone marker), surrounded by mysterious woods inhabited by elusive and fearsome creatures (called inaccurately "Those We Do Not Speak of") that often left skinned animals in the area.

Every now and then, the creatures would visit the village, ominously dressed in cloaks that were red ("the bad color"), and leave red-blood markings on doors. To keep a truce with the creatures and guard their boundaries, the village had established watch-fires, guard towers, warning bells, and everyone scrupulously avoided anything that bore the creatures' favorite color, red. To be safe and ward off the creatures, villagers could wear a hooded robe with the "safe color" - yellow.

Late in the film, the village's head Elder, Edward Walker (William Hurt), a former American History Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, revealed to his blind red-haired, spirited daughter Ivy (Bryce Dallas Howard), with the gift of a kind of second sight (psychic powers allowed her to see people's auras), that the creatures were fabrications - to prevent younger members from venturing out. Red woodland-creature cloaks were stored in a nearby shed. The village's head and other elders were using the village as an escape/refuge from life-damaging, traumatic societal tragedies in the real world (evidence and memorials of the losses were kept in secretive locked chests in their households).

In a voice-over narrated montage, Walker opened his box that contained mementos from his past life in the outside world. He looked at a picture of a group of a dozen or so fellow therapy patients standing in front of a grief Counseling Center, who had each experienced a life-changing event. His was the violent murder of his billionaire father by his business partner - although he was enabled by his dead father's inheritance to purchase the land for "the village."

All of the other elders had suffered similar tragedies - usually a violent loss of a loved one (gang rape and murder, for example, or gun violence), and they had sworn to keep the code of never establishing contact with the outside world. About 30 years earlier, he had established the vast acreage, surrounded by a high fence and patrolled by security guards, as the Walker Wildlife Preserve, with government officials paid off so that it was designated as a 'no-fly' zone.

[Note: The evidence of depravity in the outside world was reinforced in the preserve's security office, where 'Jay' - the guard (director Shyamalan himself) read the daily news in a July, 2004 Philadelphia Journal newspaper at his desk - about the discovery of the body of a missing child after three days, a multiple slaying case, and war combat deaths, and listened simultaneously to radio reports of the same news.]

A completely new generation of young people had grown up in the village, believing that they were in the late 19th century when it was really 2004 in modern times.

An improbable and perilous excursion taken by Ivy, to procure medicines from an outside town to help cure her boyfriend Lucius Hunt (Joaquin Phoenix) brought about most of the revelations. Wounded and dying Lucius had been repeatedly stabbed by one of the inhabitants, mentally-disabled village idiot Noah Percy (post-Oscar winning Adrien Brody). During Ivy's journey, Noah - wearing one of the hulking red creature cloaks - also stalked after Ivy in the woods. She cleverly tricked him into falling into a deep pit and dying. She successfuly brought back the antibiotics for Lucius and reunited with her bed-ridden lover, and the Elders continued to remain in solidarity to keep the villagers in ignorance:

Your son has made our stories real. Noah has given us a chance to continue this place [pause] if that is something we still wish for.

The death of Noah in the woods both saved Lucius and reinvigorated the myth that held the village together. Ivy affirmed: "I'm back, Lucius" - the film's final line of dialogue. Would Lucius live, and would Ivy tell him of her experience?

The Virgin Suicides (1999)

Lux Stalled, Allowing Her Three Sisters to Commit Suicide, After Which She Also Succumbed As Part of Their Suicide Pact

Sofia Coppola's dramatic tale, her feature directing-debut film, was identified by its tagline:

LOVE, SEX, DEATH, PASSION, FEAR, OBSESSION - Just like life

Five blond teenaged sisters (aged 13-17) ultimately took their own lives, due to a repressive and restrictive upbringing in an idealized mid-1970s Michigan suburb of Grosse Pointe by their strict Roman Catholic parents:

• Ronald Lisbon (James Woods), a math teacher
• Mrs. Lisbon (Kathleen Turner), homemaker/housewife

The first to commit suicide on her second try (after a wrist-slitting attempt) was Cecilia (Hanna Hall), by throwing herself out a second-story bedroom window and impaling herself on an iron fence.

Beautiful Lux Lisbon (Kirsten Dunst) invited over four male friends, presumably to help the girls escape. She stalled the boys by smoking alone in her living room, so that her other three older sisters could all commit suicide:

• Bonnie (Chelse Swain) - hanged herself in the basement from rafters
• Therese (Leslie Hayman) - overdosed on sleeping pills
• Mary (A.J. Cook) - gassed herself in the oven

Lux was the last to succumb - by carbon monoxide fumes from the car in the closed garage. The girls had apparently agreed to a simultaneous suicidal pact.

The film ended with the four male admirers of the girls standing across the street from the vacated Lisbon house, while the Narrator (voice of Giovanni Ribisi), one of the unnamed neighborhood boys, recalled and wondered why the girls had taken their lives (in the film's final lines):

So much has been said about the girls over the years, but we have never found an answer. It didn't matter in the end how old they had been, or that they were girls, but only that we had loved them, and that they hadn't heard us calling - still do not hear us calling them from out of those rooms, where they went to be alone for all time, and where we will never find the pieces to put them back together.

The Visit (2015)

The Two Grandparents were Criminally-Insane Escaped Mental Patients, Imposters Who Had Murdered the Real Grandparents

M. Night Shyamalan's long-awaited thriller was a modern day version of the Hansel and Gretel fairy tale-story, with a twist. One of its taglines was: "No one loves you like your grandparents." Another was a listing of rules - in the style of a quilted welcome sign:

Grandma's Rules:
1. Have a great time.
2. Eat as much as you want.
3. Don't ever leave your room after 9:30 pm.

The setup was about a week-long 'visit' by grandkids to 'Grandma's house':

• Rebecca or "Becca" (Olivia DeJonge), 15 years old, a precocious aspiring film-maker
• Tyler (Ed Oxenbould), younger, 13 years old, in junior-high, with hip-hop aspirations (with stage nom de plume as rapper "T-Diamond Stylus")

Meanwhile, their recently-divorced mother Loretta Jamison (Kathryn Hahn), a Walmart sales associate, was planning to be on a Royal Caribbean cruise vacation with her new boyfriend, Miguel Diego Torres.

The horror/comedy was a "found footage" type of horror-comedy, in which the two grandkids shot a documentary of their visit, to their seemingly-nice, estranged grandparents living in a remote farmhouse in Masonville, Pennsylvania - whom Loretta had not seen or communicated with for 15 years:

• "Pop Pop" (Peter McRobbie), a farmer -- "Fredrick Spencer Jamison"
• "Nana" (Deanna Dunagan), a "good cook" -- "Maria Bella Jamison"

Loretta had run away from home when she was 19, when her parents disapproved of her boyfriend and they had a physical altercation.

There were a number of clues that something was disturbing about the quirky older couple:

• The basement cellar was off-limits, supposedly due to toxic mold
• An enforced curfew after 9:30 pm, when Becca and Tyler were confined to their rooms
• Strange behavior of both Nana and Pop Pop, and evidence such as:
  - Nana's late-night projectile vomiting and butt-naked wall-scratching, explained away by Pop Pop as "sundowning" (a mid-stage Alzheimer's symptom or sign of dementia-aging)
  - Nana's ghastly appearance in the nude
  - Incontinent Pop Pop's soiled adult diapers piled up in the shed
  - Pop Pop's costume-party tuxedo attire
  - Nana's knife-wielding
  - Her invitation for Becca to clean the oven - from the inside
  - Her voracious and frantic cookie-munching and then her crazed yelling of "Yahtzee!" (with her mouth full of unchewed cookies) during family game night

When the two teens contacted their mother via Skype just before their visit was to end, she screamed out when she saw footage of the 'grandparents': "THOSE ARE NOT YOUR GRANDPARENTS." She attempted to phone the police, and promised to drive out and get them as soon as possible.

In one of the film's more tense scenes, Becca excused herself from the table during the playing of "Yahtzee" and snuck into the cellar - there she found a picture of her real grandparents, blue and white uniforms from the state mental hospital (Maple Shade) where they worked as volunteers, and a bloody hammer. Then, she came upon their bludgeoned, decayed corpses.

Becca's Gruesome Discoveries in the Cellar
The Real Grandparents	"Maple Shade" Uniform	Their Two Corpses

Pop Pop discovered her and ranted before grabbing her:

My name is Mitchell. They kept tellin' us you were so great, how you're gonna visit, how you're gonna be a family. That was a bad thing they did. They knew Claire had put her two children in those suitcases in the pond. She deserved this week as a grandma. Claire's kids are on Sinmorfitellia. You're gonna join them...The only way to Sinmorfitellia from here is through the well...Wasn't it a perfect week? I promised her it would be. The white thing with yellow eyes is real. It waits for us. I saw it out in the field. It was laughing at us.

This confirmed that the two grandparents in the house were imposters - actually criminally-insane, homicidal escaped mental patients. Their real names were Mitchell and Claire, and Claire had previously murdered her two children. Sinmorfitellia referred to a fictional planet that Mitchell had created. As Becca was dragged to Nana's upstairs bedroom, she shouted out to her brother: "They're murderers, Tyler."

Although locked in the bedroom with a terrifying Nana, Rebecca struggled with her and was almost strangled before she was able to stab Nana to death with a glass shard from a broken mirror. Tyler was also terrorized by Pop Pop in the kitchen who shoved his removed adult diaper in germaphobe Tyler's face ("You have a problem with germs, don't you?"). He then continued his crazy dialogue:

You are blind. I am the exposer. I am a seer. I see the veiny, deformed face of the world. We can all be saved tonight. Your magic spell will be lifted.

Becca fled from the bedroom after breaking off the door-lock, and jumped onto Pop Pop's back to subdue him. She encouraged Tyler to retaliate - and he repeatedly slammed Pop Pop's head with the refrigerator door and killed him (mostly off-screen). Afterwards, Tyler ferociously called out: "Any other crazy bitch-ass f--king people here? Come on. Come on out!"

As the two raced outside, they were hugged by their mother who was accompanied by police officers.