This movie was really gripping to me, and super scary, but the ending seemed very lame. I figured it was just some lame metaphor like most modern fancy-schmancy horror movies, but that doesn't seem to fit. This is a movie about a pair of siblings, Louise and Michael, visiting their parents' farm, basically to keep them company and help them take care of things, because their father's near death. The mother is depressed and mentally unstable. Just writing that for anyone who may want to see it, but doesn't want spoilers.

I saw a guy say that the movie was a metaphor for grief, and this fits fairly well, but there's a few parts that don't seem to work with that. The nurse caring for the main siblings' sick father, is also affected by the demon, but this doesn't seem to be grief, because she seems to be pretty detached from the situation, like I'd imagine most nurses to be. The farm-hand or friend of the family, named Charlie iirc, was also effected by the demon. He may be grieving about the family, but the demon compels him to kill himself, by showing the sister Louise, cutting herself with a knife and saying "You did this to me..." But I don't get how that would be grief-related, considering she was alive when this happened, and there seems to be some implication that Charlie hurt Louise somehow.

It becomes clear as the movie goes on, that the demon can take the shape of those it comes in contact with, or something like that. The demon also seems capable of creating straight-up hallucinations, but more on that later. It made me think of skinwalkers or the goatman or whatever, though I'm not especially knowledgeable about either.

A priest appears at the family farm, and tells the siblings that the mother was afraid of a demon, and the priest is very spooky. But the weird thing, is that he gives them a card, if they need him again. Louise calls him, and asks him why he visited them at their Texas ranch. The priest says he's in a hotel room, that he's never been to Texas, and that he's from Chicago. He also says Louise was also the name of his daughter, who killed herself, and that the Louise who called him sounds just like her. Wtf does this mean? This and Charlie's death seem to imply there's more going on with Louise than we think, something spooky, but idk what the hell it is.

More happens, but basically it's all just the demon being scary, or compelling people to kill themselves, until there's nobody left. Interestingly, the nurse (who's a practicing Christian) comes back, and she appears to be possessed, despite her faith, whereas the main family is atheist. The demon seems to try to use her to kill the main character Louise, but fails, as it seems the nurse's faith allows her to fight back against the demon. It appears she kills herself as everyone else does, but there might be more to it. She is seen resisting the demon, and having a bit of success, and then she's seen stabbing one eye with a knitting needle, and then another. She dies. But I wonder if this was a Biblical reference. Jesus says, in the sermon on the Mount, something like, "If an eye should cause you to sin, pluck it out, and throw it away" and he says something similar about a hand. Perhaps this also relates to the mother cutting her fingers off early in the movie, maybe that was her resisting, but that seems like a stretch. So maybe the nurse doesn't kill herself due to the demon, but kills herself in her attempts to resist the demon. Not that it makes it any better lol, but I found it interesting. But the stuff with the nurse is also very weird and clashes with the rest of the movie. Normally the demon doesn't possess anyone, he just compels them to kill themselves, and then uses their appearance to make someone else kill themselves. And why did he want to use the nurse to kill Louise? Maybe it was just to knock Louise out while he killed the nurse, but it's strange. Following this, the father finally dies, and then immediately the demon kills Louise directly. The end. Why does he do this only with her? The mother thought the demon wanted the father's soul, but that mofo's already got every other soul in like a 10 mile radius. Idk what to think of it.

The consensus about the movie seems to be that it has no deep meaning, and that it's basically just a movie about some evil entity being a massive jerk. But people also pretty much universally say that the ending sucks, and it seems the last act is pretty weak as a whole. I've heard people say the demon is maybe instead a vampire, which I thought about also, but he doesn't seem like a blood-drinker. But he does seem animalistic and looks like Nosferatu. People speculate he's a standard vampire, but also may be a psychic vampire, that feeds on people's negative emotions. But then why kill at all, and why doesn't there seem to be any blood-drinking in this movie? He possesses people, takes people's shapes, does all sorts of spooky shit, and compels people to kill themselves. He also causes the brother to hallucinate his wife and children as dead, causing him to kill himself, but how was he able to do this, without coming into contact with the brother's family? The demon effecting all these people who are very far away from him, and the inconsistencies of his powers, makes it seem like he's a larger figure, like the devil himself, or that it's all a metaphor, or there's some other deeper meaning I'm not getting. Could he be a vampire or some other supernatural creature? What else could be going on?

Sorry for this overly-long post, I just was really spooked and invested in the movie, but there was no real resolution or overarching reason or meaning for everything, besides random evil. I understand this is a theme for this director's other movies, but it still seems there must be more to all of this. Though I suppose it could all just be red-herrings, and the movie's basically very spooky, but also entirely meaningless. Anyway, I'm curious what you guys think!