I am confused as to why so many people are confused about this movie. First of all it is a thriller and NOT a horror movie, although it employs horror elements to tell this woman's harrowing and sad story. American audiences want so many things spelled out to them that with a little critical thinking should be evident.
SERIOUS SPOILER ALERT: The mother was having a psychotic break with reality after the death of her father and her daughter turning the same age as her sister was when she killed her. They didn't BOTH draw pictures of the rabbit, only the mother was drawing pictures of the rabbit on the back of her daughter's homework. Her daughter wasn't actually having nosebleeds and head injuries. She only hallucinated seeing them on her daughter as they were the identical wounds she had inflicted on her sister herself. At some level, the mother obviously knew she was coming undone and that she couldn't fully trust her own perception of reality, which is why she didn't take her daughter to the doctor for these hallucinated injuries. It also isn't difficult to read between the lines that Sarah's mother most likely favored her little sister or so Sarah perceived, and that she acted meanly toward her little sister due to jealousy.
All of these "unanswered" questions and confusion a lot of people are complaining about can be answered by taking into account we are only seeing "reality" from the point of view of the person who is having a psychotic break. That is why the movie works as a thriller. It is unsettling to be in the seat of the villain desperately trying to maintain a coherent and honorable sense of themselves in the wake of the repressed trauma they are responsible for creating in the firstt place. I love that things aren't neatly spelled out and that we have to imagine what really happened at the end given the fact that we have such an unreliable narrator in Sarah. It I much more disturbing that way.
SERIOUS SPOILER ALERT: The mother was having a psychotic break with reality after the death of her father and her daughter turning the same age as her sister was when she killed her. They didn't BOTH draw pictures of the rabbit, only the mother was drawing pictures of the rabbit on the back of her daughter's homework. Her daughter wasn't actually having nosebleeds and head injuries. She only hallucinated seeing them on her daughter as they were the identical wounds she had inflicted on her sister herself. At some level, the mother obviously knew she was coming undone and that she couldn't fully trust her own perception of reality, which is why she didn't take her daughter to the doctor for these hallucinated injuries. It also isn't difficult to read between the lines that Sarah's mother most likely favored her little sister or so Sarah perceived, and that she acted meanly toward her little sister due to jealousy.
All of these "unanswered" questions and confusion a lot of people are complaining about can be answered by taking into account we are only seeing "reality" from the point of view of the person who is having a psychotic break. That is why the movie works as a thriller. It is unsettling to be in the seat of the villain desperately trying to maintain a coherent and honorable sense of themselves in the wake of the repressed trauma they are responsible for creating in the firstt place. I love that things aren't neatly spelled out and that we have to imagine what really happened at the end given the fact that we have such an unreliable narrator in Sarah. It I much more disturbing that way.