Mananering av dockan i pojken

Stacey Menear (The Boy Writer) "förklarade" Twist Ending Cosmopolitan-intervju

So you had multiple endings in mind at one point.

I did. The doll was going to come alive. That was the initial thing, was the doll was going to come to life and chase them around in a scary way. It just never felt right to me. I played around with the doll breaking and a spirit comes out. I think the reason I chose [the ending I did] was going back to the '70s films that I loved so much. There's this one called The Baby and another called Bad Ronald, and they're sort of these strange horror movies more than straight-up scary [ones]. I think horror movies now are mainstream. They never get really weird; they'll get really violent, but they'll never get strange.

Half the fun of watching a horror movie like this is trying to guess the ending. What's the secret to artfully planting clues?

It's a balancing act. I did the draft, got to the ending, discovered the ending just like the audience would, and then it was a matter of being like, "OK, there's a guy in the wall — how could he live there?" I don't know how much this plays to the audience, but when she's putting his food in the freezer, that's supposed to be the place where [real Brahms] gets his food. So, stuff like that. It's just reverse engineering, essentially.

Were there any pushbacks on the script? Was there a thing you had to fight to keep in the movie?

They talked about getting rid of her losing a child; they didn't think that was necessary at one point. And that was so important to me, because it makes her staying there make sense. It's still not an easy buy that she would stay there. But I think it's better if you understand that she lost a child, she's going through something, and she sees something in this doll, in this existence in this house that can fill that void that she's feeling.

Why do you think Brahms's parents needed to kill themselves? Out of guilt?

Yeah. They wanted to find him a match. I don't totally know if this is supposed to be his girlfriend or his mom — I think it's a messed up in-between. But, yeah, I think they felt like they had fulfilled their missions and they couldn't stay there any longer. This was never planned. They hid this kid to keep him away from the police, and this sort of happened over time, and then it got to this point that they're horrified at what has happened and what they've become. At one point in the script, Mr. Heelshire says, "It happened little by little, then all at once."

Varför var det en docka och varför var hans föräldrar (i min tolkning) tvungna att leva med det och behandlade det som sin riktiga son?

Jag kom ifrån filmen med ett mycket specifikt intryck på varför dockan och föreställningen. Det var ett sätt att försona sitt barn för att dölja honom borta från världen. Det verkade mig som om de bestämde sig för att det var en bra sak att dölja honom, det var ett dåligt val, antingen var han irreparably förvirrad från att döda tjejen eller gömma den lilla bastarden i väggarna gjorde det värre . Oavsett att de befann sig i denna mardröm för att låtsas som om deras barn var död och i hemlighet interagerar med honom i denna frusna tankegång. Han kunde inte komma ut i den verkliga världen, hans föräldrar skulle möta många juridiska problem, och han kunde inte lämnas på grund av hans psykotiska tendenser / ålder / oförmåga att klara sig själv. När de konfronterades med deras svaghet och insikten att de inte kunde längre och sannolikt var trötta på charade, bestämde de sig för att bara gå in i sjön. Problem De älskade sitt barn för mycket och kände sig alltför skyldiga att lämna honom att dö men inte för skyldig för fess upp. Så nu är han andras problem.