Spoiler Alert – This will ruin the film if you haven’t seen it.
This film started great, a teacher tangled in red tape, falls into depression and alcohol etc etc. But then these supernatural hooded psychos spring into the film and start killing everyone. If that is all the film is then, well, let’s just say it’s not my kind of film.
However, I didn’t think that was what the story was about. I googled around to see if others had come to the same conclusion as me, but no-one had so I figured I’d post my interpretation here.
I thought at the end you were supposed to realise that the main protagonist, Robert, was the one who had killed everyone. There never were any crazed ASBO ninjas.
My reasons:
- The hoodies have no motivation for their killing spree.
- The start of the film is all about his crumbling mental state. His paranoia about unstoppable violent youths. He hits his daughter, he’s losing it.
- People get killed just after he leaves (like the librarian).
- When he was with the security guard and they see a hoody, I assume Robert was going mental, schizophrenic style. The guard says something like “leave us alone” which could have referred to him and the daughter, not him and Robert. The guard then locks the door against him. Robert isn’t killed at this point even though he’s looking through the door for ages and they’re uber-fast freaking ninjas.
- At the end I assumed Robert thinks he’s stabbing a hoody, but actually went a bit nuts again and stabbed his daughter.
- At the very end, and his daughter sees her mum’s car, she wants to get out and find her mum. Perhaps she meant that they should stop her seeing the bodies, or that she wanted her mum to take her to the hospital.
Obviously I’m probably completely wrong since no-one else has come to this conclusion and I’m rubbish at understanding films. Heck, when I saw the 6th sense I was practically in the cinema car park before I twigged what it was about. Anyway, I don’t really care. That’s what I think it was about and that helps make the film better for me!