OK, yes, this movie has some continuity and other errors. I agree that pushing the wrecked car uphill through dense forest from the crash site to this remote farmhouse would be a completely impossible task, so yes, at that point of the movie it bothered me. *Major spoiler alerts!* *Please stop reading until you've watched!* But once the full story is revealed, I realized why that event is irrelevant: it's not happening in real life...in the living world. Throughout the movie, Stanley, the farmhouse's apparently lone inhabitant - but is he? - is digging a well. Ian, the young man from the car wreck, asks Stanley, is he sure he'll find water? "There's water everywhere" Stanley cryptically replies. Does he say that because rain is pouring down? Or is it because water IS everywhere, in real life, in the living world? "whatithinkis" was bothered that Sarah has repetitive drowning dreams, yet the car wrecks into a shallow river. Ridiculous, right? No, because the shallow river doesn't exist, it is not real, it's not in real life, not in the living world. "whatithinkis" can't figure out how nice meals show up when there are just a few chickens around, and a couple of rabbits are all that is caught for food. Again, not real. When we eat while we're dreaming, is the food real? No. And since none of us knows for sure, the next question is: can we eat, or think we're eating, after we die? Hopefully you're catching my drift here. The story as we watch it play out is not happening in real life. The car crash brings the young couple to another realm, but reality continually intrudes: near-constant rain yet sunbeams filter through, the ground is never dry but always soaked, we never hear birds, the only animals we see are dead or dying. The curtains look clean but debris and moist dust is everywhere. Stanley is digging a well and the faucets produce rusty spurts, yet there is water for washing, bathing, in toilets everywhere. Why? Because "water is everywhere" in the real world. What we see is both real and unreal because one of the characters has not completely entered this unreal world, and at the very end we find out what this person decides to do. And from this we can now understand why the drowning dreams have nothing to do with a shallow river.
The young couple from the car wreck have a very dark, disturbing secret. I'm not convinced it's a plot device needed for this story but it certainly helps explain some of their dysfunctional interactions & Ian's cruelty towards Stanley. He's like most bullies: the more they self-loathe the more they lash out against others, especially those they perceive as weaker. Stanley's story comes out slowly with hints and glimpses.
I thought this was a beautifully filmed movie. The constant rain really comes out as a character itself. The music is truly lovely, subtle and stays humbly in the background. The acting is excellent. Mark Lewis, a physically large, robust man who's played strong male characters in his career, is utterly convincing as a "slow" adult, a lonely soul in a man's body with adult desires but a child's level of comprehension of the strange sexuality of the two young people who suddenly invade his valley. The pacing is s-l-o-w. The story for the most part creeps along. The "horror", as it were, is also very subtle, but the hints are there to see, if you look. This film is in Welsh with English subtitles, so I'm afraid for these reasons many viewers will be turned off and this may get relegated to the "art film" department. I don't try to figure out movies as I watch, so I didn't think the ending was obvious. As soon as it played out, however, I completely understood the entire film, and so in the end found it satisfactory.
The young couple from the car wreck have a very dark, disturbing secret. I'm not convinced it's a plot device needed for this story but it certainly helps explain some of their dysfunctional interactions & Ian's cruelty towards Stanley. He's like most bullies: the more they self-loathe the more they lash out against others, especially those they perceive as weaker. Stanley's story comes out slowly with hints and glimpses.
I thought this was a beautifully filmed movie. The constant rain really comes out as a character itself. The music is truly lovely, subtle and stays humbly in the background. The acting is excellent. Mark Lewis, a physically large, robust man who's played strong male characters in his career, is utterly convincing as a "slow" adult, a lonely soul in a man's body with adult desires but a child's level of comprehension of the strange sexuality of the two young people who suddenly invade his valley. The pacing is s-l-o-w. The story for the most part creeps along. The "horror", as it were, is also very subtle, but the hints are there to see, if you look. This film is in Welsh with English subtitles, so I'm afraid for these reasons many viewers will be turned off and this may get relegated to the "art film" department. I don't try to figure out movies as I watch, so I didn't think the ending was obvious. As soon as it played out, however, I completely understood the entire film, and so in the end found it satisfactory.
