manurebros NO lamebrain slice and dice here......No blood & guts for desensitised morons who have no idea what SciFi/horror is. Just a very stylish, well acted, beautifully photographed & directed film. Not a 'thriller' or 'action' film --- Those who have actual active brain cells will relish this gem as a return to the 'slow burn' that carries you comfortably along with it till the end. An enjoyable watch.

batmanbatka The movie is a symbolical representation of Narcissist-Empath relationship. Sebastian Gutierrez describes a typical abuse dynamics between a Narcissist (the husband) and an Empath (the wife). The Narcissist is brilliant and cruel; the Empath is naive and sensitive. The names of the main characters are not randomly chosen - Henry 8th Tudor executed many of his wives, and Elizabeth is the name of his daughter, who survived his abuse and even thrived as a Queen. The abuse cycle has two phases - an idealization phase, represented as a honeymoon; and a devaluation phase - symbolized by the killing of Elizabeth. The typical Narcissistic abuse cycle repeats six or seven times, thus there are six copies (clones) of Elizabeth, all of them created by Henry. In the sick mind of the Narcissist he virtually "creates" and "destroys" his partner. By saying to Elizabeth not to enter the forbidden room, Henry set a trap for her. He knows that she will "disappoint" him at some point of the "relationship" by disobeying him. So he plans her devaluation and annihilation in advance. The Narcissist even creates his new false ego - Oliver. He has a lover (a secondary source of supply) - Claire and a friend - a tertiary source of narcissistic fuel. The Narcissist harvests energy (positive or negative) from the emotional reactions of other people. The drained emotional energy boosts his ego. He needs constant validation and attention. "You can either torture or be tortured." The most important thing for the Narcissist is to be in control because he feels superior this way. In order to break free from the abuse the Empath has to acquire new knowledge about herself - she has to face her childhood traumas which brought her to this kind of "relationship". Elizabeth educates herself - symbolically represented by the picture of the owl. This is the only thing that she takes when she finally escapes her prison. In the movie there are several references to Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece - "The Shining" - 1980: the road, the tunnel, the villa/Overlook hotel, the secret harvesting room/room 237, naked woman in a bathtub...etc. Brilliant movie! 10/10 Enjoy and educate yourselves!

deeeee-35914 To be honest it got very boring very quick and predictable, I watched it to the end just to see what happened... then thought ... is that it . When someone tells you not to open a door what are you going to do .. surprise surprise.

Gizmo So this is something of a mixed bag: the girl playing Elizabeth herself is a model not an actress and this is noticeable right from the beginning: she looks pleasant enough standing still but she moves at all times like she's on a catwalk and tends to blow the illusion of whatever scene she's in whenever she starts to talk. As the movie progresses though, and the first reveal occurs, this starts to seem like it might actually work to the story's advantage. There was another well-known film three years back which I won't mention for fear of spoiling, but it covers some of the same ground and takes one to a similar place but this one doesn't raise any of the same questions or emotional responses, which makes it a much less worthwhile experience.Ciarán Hinds is good as always, along with Carla Gugino, but Matthew Beard is noticably weakest of all. On top of this there is some odd, clumsy editing, with too many scenes just awkwardly fading to black and slowing down the momentum.So the film really has one foot in compelling sci-fi and another in bad B-movie drama/ TV soap opera. It's a good premise, though not really original or examined enough to feel groundbreaking, revelatory or even particularly memorable, and after the first twist there's no real point to the story and no interesting place for it to go. It's definitely watchable but largely pointless, and you'll never choose to watch it again.