SPOILER DISCUSSION

1.I just can’t understand what the two kids thought was going to happen when they stole a CULT SURVIVOR’s medicine, made her think she was dead, and then faked a hanging while chanting lines from a video of her entire cult committing suicide. Like if you don’t want her to date your dad, I feel like there are other ways to go about getting your point across. This doesn’t feel like two kids grieving. It feels like two psychopaths pretending to be kids didn’t expect their “prank” to be taken as seriously as it was.

I think the angle the movie wanted to take was the kids blamed Grace for Laura’s (Alicia Silverstone) suicide. Since she survived her cult also committing suicide , she’s a harbinger of it in some sense, so the kids have to punish her for symbolically (and in their mind basically) killing their mom. I just feel like if that’s the case, the story should have been more thorough in how they thought this was the case. Like really show the hate they feel before they get into their twisted shit or it feels like some weird miscalculation on their parts. I felt like the seed of hatred was barely planted before the kids went full Home Alone: Psychopath Edition. Like, there are just multiple points where it feels like they should’ve come clean about what was happening and I don’t know why they would want to hurt her to the point they do.

2. The dollhouse planning got me so hyped that we’d get some cool determinism/fate stuff (a la Hereditary) or maybe something about how we treat people like playthings, but it only feels like a creepy transition piece. Maybe I missed something, but I did like how the aesthetic of the lodge and the dollhouse both exude the same kind of inhumane alienated feeling, like people shouldn’t be in them.