seriously, i just finished watching it, i have my criticisms which seem to fall in line with some others have made (i.e. drawn out etc.) but overall the film was great in the sense of being a film, i did not however feel great after watching it, i needed answers. its not the scariest movie ever but the implications and situation in general are very depressing and kinda stick in your head
9/10 :concerned-confusion: watch in the right headspace but also don't watch if youre squeamish about bad things happening to (very) young kids
there's several interpretations,
spoiler
i dont like dream or coma theory for overplayed reasons and i'm not sure what to think of the abuse angle as valid of a belief i consider it, it doesnt really fit for my personal interpretaion of the story itself
spoiler
I saw a pretty compelling argument against dream/coma theories and its that we spend some pretty significant bits of the movie in the perspective of the sister, who goes and sees and does things that the brother doesnt know of and that he tries to ask her about. If it was either a normal or coma dream of the brothers you would expect it to either only follow him, or for him to know what the sister experienced, cause its his dream still.
If we are going by dream logic then we need to go by all the dream logic, and you dont really dream up a world that exists outside of your experience of it, the dreamer experiences the dream.
The interpreteation I generally like the most is that it basically just is a Hansel and Gretel story, the brother was up after bedtime talking to strangers("Are you hiding?" in the start of the film before he falls) and that may or may not have attracted the creature to target him and his sister, or nothing they did or could have done influenced the creatures actions, it just decided to ruin these kids existence for as long as it wants. Technically this is a "darker" take in a way cause if its a dream he can wake up, and if hes in a coma he can wake up or die, but if its a real creature doing these things for real there are no limits, but that isnt necessarily why I like it the most, I just think its better than all of the other ones.