This is a beautifully made film, with powerfully eloquent photography and an amazing central performance that together work hypnotically upon the viewer and build up a relentless mood of tension and disquiet.
As we approached the ending, I realized it was likely going to just peter out, and it did, which was a disappointment. Some kind of larger payoff, the clear result and culmination of everything that had been introduced before, would have been far more satisfying than life going back to normal and the family just eating dinner all over again.
So I'm not really at all happy with the ending, but here's what I think it's trying to say (badly):
The side story of Gloria and Lilly is set in the future: we know this because they refer back to two of the events we observe - "Charlie (the gardener) and The Spider" and "John and The Hole" - as bedtime stories to retell again and again. Either this means the events actually happened in the past or else the entire story of John we're watching is simply a fiction being told by Gloria to her daughter.
In both time periods, none of these people seem to have any great feeling: the father even says while down the hole, "I've never been hungry before", and when John gives the pile of money to his gaming friend, he cannot understand that he doesn't want to buy anything with it: that's all he knows anyone do. John is prepared to drown himself just to experience something real.
John is the forerunner of the coming generation, blank, selfish, soulless, coddled and emotionless children growing up into blank, selfish, soulless, coddled and emotionless adults, with no natural insticts remaining, who will think nothing of abandoning their 12 year old child to die on a passing whim if they can tell themselves to do so is "empowering" or "liberating". We can tell that this is the mother Gloria's primary internal narrative by the fact she makes a point of repeatedly telling her daughter "my daughter is nobody's ASSISTANT" even as she abandons her forever. She has been taught since birth that oneself is all that matters.
Right now John is increasingly becoming accepted as only mildly abnormal (hence no punishment or repercussions for his actions at the end), but in the future, EVERYONE is like John, and that's why Gloria and Lilly behave the way they do, which still seems frighteningly alien to us at present.
So yes, that's what I think it's getting at, though it could have done so much better and clearer, or else just followed a more traditional thriller storyline and given us some entertainment instead. It's still a very engrossing tale, because of the aforementioned cinematography and the fantastic young actor playing John, but its inability to wrap all its loose ends up satisfactorily leaves it feeling a little anticlimactic, amateurish and underwhelming.
As we approached the ending, I realized it was likely going to just peter out, and it did, which was a disappointment. Some kind of larger payoff, the clear result and culmination of everything that had been introduced before, would have been far more satisfying than life going back to normal and the family just eating dinner all over again.
So I'm not really at all happy with the ending, but here's what I think it's trying to say (badly):
The side story of Gloria and Lilly is set in the future: we know this because they refer back to two of the events we observe - "Charlie (the gardener) and The Spider" and "John and The Hole" - as bedtime stories to retell again and again. Either this means the events actually happened in the past or else the entire story of John we're watching is simply a fiction being told by Gloria to her daughter.
In both time periods, none of these people seem to have any great feeling: the father even says while down the hole, "I've never been hungry before", and when John gives the pile of money to his gaming friend, he cannot understand that he doesn't want to buy anything with it: that's all he knows anyone do. John is prepared to drown himself just to experience something real.
John is the forerunner of the coming generation, blank, selfish, soulless, coddled and emotionless children growing up into blank, selfish, soulless, coddled and emotionless adults, with no natural insticts remaining, who will think nothing of abandoning their 12 year old child to die on a passing whim if they can tell themselves to do so is "empowering" or "liberating". We can tell that this is the mother Gloria's primary internal narrative by the fact she makes a point of repeatedly telling her daughter "my daughter is nobody's ASSISTANT" even as she abandons her forever. She has been taught since birth that oneself is all that matters.
Right now John is increasingly becoming accepted as only mildly abnormal (hence no punishment or repercussions for his actions at the end), but in the future, EVERYONE is like John, and that's why Gloria and Lilly behave the way they do, which still seems frighteningly alien to us at present.
So yes, that's what I think it's getting at, though it could have done so much better and clearer, or else just followed a more traditional thriller storyline and given us some entertainment instead. It's still a very engrossing tale, because of the aforementioned cinematography and the fantastic young actor playing John, but its inability to wrap all its loose ends up satisfactorily leaves it feeling a little anticlimactic, amateurish and underwhelming.