I don’t understand this movie. I can’t tell what the vignettes of the janitor represent and I don’t fully grasp the symbolism of the following:

  • The tyre chains
  • The rapid aging of Jake’s parents
  • The main character’s name changing
  • the main character’s changing major
  • the snow (it shouldn’t be snowing in Oklahoma)
  • the father’s bandage
  • the childhood photograph that is both the main character and Jake
  • the ice cream shop Furthermore, I don’t quite grasp what is literal and what is symbolic in each segment.

To me this seems like a movie about decision paralysis and anxiety. I see the motif of change moreso than anything else in the story and am the differential outcomes. Of course, I might just be projecting my own fears unto something I don’t understand. On further thought, I think I just don’t know what’s happening and it unnerves me as a result. For some reason I found this movie scarier than most horror movies. It might just be because of the general unnerving atmosphere and confusion. Lastly, the ending makes no sense whatsoever. I have no idea what just happened. Not even a semblance of a clue.

I might just be bad at fiction.

  • Are_Euclidding_Me [e/em/eir]@hexbear.netEnglish
    3·
    1 month ago

    I watched this after I watched a YouTube video essay about it, and I really enjoyed it. My interpretation of the literal events have been completely shaped by the video essay, so I do believe I understand the literal plot, but I sure didn’t come up with it myself!

    Here's the plot as I understand it:

    The main character doesn’t exist. She’s a figment of The Janitor’s imagination as he’s dying, freezing to death in his truck in a snowstorm.

    So very little of what we see for the whole movie is real, basically all of it is the hallucinations of a dying man.

    Edit: Oh! I forgot to say! Jesse Plemons is The Janitor when he was young, and our main character lady was a person The Janitor saw at a bar recently, he doesn’t know her. But he’s taken her image and, in his mind, turned her into a fake girlfriend for a fake version of his young self so they can take a fake trip to meet his remembered parents.

    And here’s the YouTube video. Jacob Geller’s “Dark Souls 3 is Thinking of Ending Things”:

    https://youtube.com/watch?v=lnAWQz34PJs