I watched this movie today and I can't help but think that the film is more complicated than it might seem. I feel that this movie is more about mental illness than it is about spirits in the Aokigahara. Let's start with the facts, we have our main character, Sara, and her identical twin, Jess. The story behind these sisters is that, when they were small, they were going down a set of stairs with their grandmother. When they are approaching the bottom of the staircase, the grandmother yells "cover your eyes". What had happened was their father had killed their mother and then proceeded to kill himself. Sara covered her eyes and never saw what had happened, but Jess did not and saw everything. Now here is what I think this whole movie is about, there is no twin sister. There is no Jess.
Bear with me here. I think that due to this traumatic experience in the childhood of Sara, she dissociated her personality into two different people, Jess and Sara, so that she wouldn't have to deal with the fact that she saw both her parents dead. She claims throughout the movie that she never helped Jess "carry the burden" of what she saw that day, indication I believe that it is simply a place inside her head that she locked away very deeply in order to escape the truth. Now, this theory makes a lot of sense if you pay attention to certain details I believe the director left there on purpose. Here are my top 5:
1. Early during the movie, we see a scene where Sara is going down a set of stairs to a basement. In the basement, she sees a yellow tent. From the outside, we can see two distinct shadows sitting inside it, but when she opens it, there is only one girl.
2. When she tells her boyfriend, Rob (Eoin Macken), that she needs to go to Japan, he has on his face a very concerned look. He looks somewhat tired and not shocked by the announcement. I saw this as someone who knows that she is mentally ill and thus tries to calm her down in order to make her not go, without actually trying to reason with her.
3. When Sara stays the night in the forest, she runs out at night and finds this Japanese lady who tells her to not trust Aiden. This makes her paranoid the rest of the movie whenever he's around. Now here is the deal breaker for me. When she asks him for his cellphone to see if he had any pictures of Jess, she yells at him that there are pictures of her sister in his phone. Aiden denies that he had ever met her sister and just looks at her clueless not knowing what the hell was going on. I think, the picture she saw was one he had taken of her (Sara). She thinks Jess is another person but she's not.
4. Near the end, when she is in the cabin with Aiden, she loses it because she puts her ear to a door and she swears that she can hear Jess from the other side. Jess slides a note from under the door asking if Aiden was there, Sara answers yes, Jess tells her to kill him (I think). Bottom line is, if you look closely, the handwriting on both "sides" of the conversation is the same. Anyways, Sara grabs a knife and goes to Aiden and is all "Open the closet and let Jess out". Again, Aiden is just completely clueless and tells her that the key is in his boot in order to distract her and try to take the knife from her. In the end, she stabs him, he dies. What's interesting is that the "closet" door opens by itself, yet all she can see when she opens it is that traumatic experience that she lived as a child. There is no Jess. At this moment, she walks down the stairs towards the little girl, and "sees" her parents lying dead on the ground. She yells at the girl that was there to run upstairs as her dad comes back from the dead and "convinces her" to slit her wrists. Again, only one girl there. So it begs the question, who wrote her the note then? It was herself. This further supports the theory because where "Jess" is supposed to be, we only see the event that traumatized her.
5. After she runs away from the shack, her sister manages to somehow run in the exact same direction at the exact same time. The way the scene is recorded, we can see some sort of parallelism going on between the two. When Jess comes out, Rob looks at her and asks "Sara?" Now, given that the two supposedly have different hair color, I'm not entirely sure he would confuse the two. When she doesn't answer, he asks "Jess?" to which she responds. He then proceeds to walk her out of the forest. I don't think he would have left that forest without Sara...my theory is that he did leave with her; he left with Sara/Jess. The reason why "Jess" was the only one that came out of the forest was because Sara faced her reality back at the shack and accepted that she was the one that saw her parents lying dead on the floor. Thus, two different personalities finally came together into one single person and Sara was forever lost in the forest that was supposedly one that makes people "face their sadness" and "find themselves". That's why Jess says "I can't hear it inside me anymore. The noise where Sara was, it's gone".
If a sequel comes out, then I guess my theory isn't valid which makes the movie not that good... So I'll stick to my theory. I enjoy it more that way.
Bear with me here. I think that due to this traumatic experience in the childhood of Sara, she dissociated her personality into two different people, Jess and Sara, so that she wouldn't have to deal with the fact that she saw both her parents dead. She claims throughout the movie that she never helped Jess "carry the burden" of what she saw that day, indication I believe that it is simply a place inside her head that she locked away very deeply in order to escape the truth. Now, this theory makes a lot of sense if you pay attention to certain details I believe the director left there on purpose. Here are my top 5:
1. Early during the movie, we see a scene where Sara is going down a set of stairs to a basement. In the basement, she sees a yellow tent. From the outside, we can see two distinct shadows sitting inside it, but when she opens it, there is only one girl.
2. When she tells her boyfriend, Rob (Eoin Macken), that she needs to go to Japan, he has on his face a very concerned look. He looks somewhat tired and not shocked by the announcement. I saw this as someone who knows that she is mentally ill and thus tries to calm her down in order to make her not go, without actually trying to reason with her.
3. When Sara stays the night in the forest, she runs out at night and finds this Japanese lady who tells her to not trust Aiden. This makes her paranoid the rest of the movie whenever he's around. Now here is the deal breaker for me. When she asks him for his cellphone to see if he had any pictures of Jess, she yells at him that there are pictures of her sister in his phone. Aiden denies that he had ever met her sister and just looks at her clueless not knowing what the hell was going on. I think, the picture she saw was one he had taken of her (Sara). She thinks Jess is another person but she's not.
4. Near the end, when she is in the cabin with Aiden, she loses it because she puts her ear to a door and she swears that she can hear Jess from the other side. Jess slides a note from under the door asking if Aiden was there, Sara answers yes, Jess tells her to kill him (I think). Bottom line is, if you look closely, the handwriting on both "sides" of the conversation is the same. Anyways, Sara grabs a knife and goes to Aiden and is all "Open the closet and let Jess out". Again, Aiden is just completely clueless and tells her that the key is in his boot in order to distract her and try to take the knife from her. In the end, she stabs him, he dies. What's interesting is that the "closet" door opens by itself, yet all she can see when she opens it is that traumatic experience that she lived as a child. There is no Jess. At this moment, she walks down the stairs towards the little girl, and "sees" her parents lying dead on the ground. She yells at the girl that was there to run upstairs as her dad comes back from the dead and "convinces her" to slit her wrists. Again, only one girl there. So it begs the question, who wrote her the note then? It was herself. This further supports the theory because where "Jess" is supposed to be, we only see the event that traumatized her.
5. After she runs away from the shack, her sister manages to somehow run in the exact same direction at the exact same time. The way the scene is recorded, we can see some sort of parallelism going on between the two. When Jess comes out, Rob looks at her and asks "Sara?" Now, given that the two supposedly have different hair color, I'm not entirely sure he would confuse the two. When she doesn't answer, he asks "Jess?" to which she responds. He then proceeds to walk her out of the forest. I don't think he would have left that forest without Sara...my theory is that he did leave with her; he left with Sara/Jess. The reason why "Jess" was the only one that came out of the forest was because Sara faced her reality back at the shack and accepted that she was the one that saw her parents lying dead on the floor. Thus, two different personalities finally came together into one single person and Sara was forever lost in the forest that was supposedly one that makes people "face their sadness" and "find themselves". That's why Jess says "I can't hear it inside me anymore. The noise where Sara was, it's gone".
If a sequel comes out, then I guess my theory isn't valid which makes the movie not that good... So I'll stick to my theory. I enjoy it more that way.