Eerie music. A heartbeat. A voice! “He came back again last night and tore me like paper. He opened me like a flower of pain and it felt good.” Who knew Penelope Cruz could be so creepy? She waxes poetic about rape for a while longer to an impassive Halle Berry, her psychologist.
So apparently Penelope is always telling Halle that the devil is raping her, but Halle just wants to talk about how Penelope killed her stepfather. Penelope has this to say: “I cut his Adam’s apple in half like a piece of fruit on a summer day.” Adam’s apple… piece of fruit… I see what she did there! A single solitary tear of joy runs down her face as she talks about watching him die. This movie is dark shit, man.
Penelope is frustrated because she doesn't think Halle is listening with her heart. Somebody needs a visit to Grandmother Willow! Penelope whines that Halle doesn’t trust her. Halle says Penelope needs to trust her too. Penelope counters “You can’t trust someone who thinks you’re crazy.” Hmm… do you think that line might come back to haunt us?
The session ends and Halle walks through the dark and ominous looking looney-bin/prison. In case the cells and guards didn’t tip you off and in case the employees are morons, this sign hangs on the wall:
Produced by Susan Levin, now Susan Downey. Lucky. Unrelated, does anybody else always want to call her “Susan Downey Jr.” or is it just me?
Halle walks into an office where a bearded old British dude in a sweater worthy of Taylor Doose is looking over some paperwork. She tries to set up a meeting with him for the next day and leaves. This scene is completely pointless. Seriously.
As the credits tell us that the movie is directed by Mathieu Kassovitz, better known as Nino Quincampoix from Amelie, better known to me as “Nino Chickenpox,” Halle walks into another office. She tells the man in it, Doug, that she needs to talk about Penelope who is “embellishing her rape story again.” That’s one way of putting it. So she starts psycho-babbling about remorse and repressing feelings and shit so we know she’s a super brilliant psychologist, in case the boring hair and frumpy outfit didn’t already clue us in to that. She describes Penelope’s rants as “satanic meanderings” which in addition to being a much better description would also make a good name for an emo metal band. If such a thing exists.
Halle tries to argue that they shouldn’t pump Penelope and the other prisoners so full of pills and we get an example of some truly great screenwriting:
Doug: Chloe’s mind only runs on one track.
Halle: Well right now my mind is running on empty!
Masterful.
Doug calls her over to the mirror and tells her she has a brilliant mind. Then he says some weirdass riddle about Penelope being a distorted image and Halle being a mirror and himself being God. It’s dumb. So then he eats her face which is how we learn that they’re married.
Then Robert Downey Jr. walks in on them making out. Awkward! Doug says he and Halle were talking about repression as a survival tool. RDJ smartasses about wanting to repress the memory of a bad date. What a charming, roguish guy!
Doug starts to leave, saying he’s going to some place called Willow Creek to meet a contractor. He tells RDJ to keep an eye on his wife and gives him a cigar. OMG, phalluses and shit! Freud! Psychology! He cuts off the end of RDJ’s cigar and refers to it as “circumcising it” for him. WTF. How emasculating! He says “Smoke it tonight, while it’s fresh.” RDJ wants to smoke Halle tonight, while she’s fresh. He communicates this with his eyes because he is a great actor.
As he walks away, Doug calls out “Goodnight, kids!” which is an uber-creepy thing to say to your wife.
RDJ charmingly tries to get Halle to share a pizza with him but gets shot down. RDJ says she has to eat and she giggles and tosses her hair joyfully and sing-songs “Not with you!” It’s like the second grade. Poor RDJ closes with “Come on, we’re supposed to celebrate! I just got… circumcised.” He is the only bright light in this creepy dungeon. I will get some pizza with you, Dr. Graham!
Halle walks to the hospital part of the prison and talks with some nurse about how they upped somebody else’s meds. All right, Nino Chickenpox, we get it; the prisoners are all high as kites! Halle doesn’t approve.
She goes into her office and starts working away while a thunderstorm rages outside. Eventually the power goes out and she says “Damn the generator! Not again!” I think the generator is on as many drugs as the patients because as Halle walks through the building, the lights keep flickering on and off. Last I checked that’s not what happens when the generator breaks, but whatever. It’s oh so creepy. A nurse passing by actually says “This electric system’s gonna give us some trouble!” OMG, I wonder if that’s like, foreshadowing or something. Probably not.
Halle tells the nurse she’s going to go for her swim. What kind of looney-bin/prison has a pool? And who goes swimming when the electricity is acting up? Brilliant!
As she leaves the building she has a friendly chat with the security guard about how many laps she swam. She gets outside and seems surprised that it’s pouring rain even though it has been for pretty much the entire day. Nino then tries to freak us out by having RDJ suddenly open an umbrella right behind her. She is scared, but the rest of us are just pleasantly surprised. They make small talk about some date he went on that sucked. He pointedly says something about “when you know, you know” and then offers to follow her down the hill I guess because the weather is bad or whatever. It’s cute.
She drives up to a road block and chats familiarly with some cop who tells her there’s a sinkhole and that she should take a detour to a bridge where he fishes with her husband sometimes. The bridge is predictably creepy. She calls Doug to tell her she’s almost home but loses the connection, right as a creepy blonde in a nightie appears in the middle of the road. Halle screams and crashes the car into a ditch. She climbs out of the car to see if the creepy blonde is okay. She is, but unfortunately when Halle comes up to her she bursts into flames and lunges at her.
Halle wakes up with a start and OMFGWTFWTF she’s in the very looney-bin/prison where she works! Quelle horreur! She’s wearing an extremely short hospital gown that’s falling off one shoulder and her hair is a mess. She does look hotter, though, which was probably the point.
RDJ walks by the cell and she screams at him that he better tell her why she’s in there. She’s suddenly become slightly ghetto. She kicks the wall and shouts “BRING YOUR ASS IN HERE!”
He obeys and goes into her cell. He looks bummed even though she’s now sitting on a bench with her legs open. Didn’t her mom ever teach her how to sit in a skirt? He says something about it being awkward and how he technically shouldn’t be treating her. No shit! But he just wants to help. He can barely even look at her, though. Or maybe since her junk is pretty much on display he’s just trying to be a gentleman.
He tells her she’s been there three days and that she was all kinds of crazy for a while and then catatonic for a while and it’s the first time he’s seen her lucid. She’s still all “Whytf am I in here?” but RDJ is evasive. Halle wants to talk to her husband. Where is he? Why, that’s a great question! RDJ ignores it and says she’s the most logical person he knows and then starts helping her to psychoanalyze herself or something. Her gown is really riding up now. In the immortal words of Nigel Barker, "Legs-a-million!"
RDJ wants Halle to try to remember what happened. She remembers talking to Penelope, getting her face eaten by her husband, swimming, driving home from work, etc. Then it gets hazy. RDJ says “I wonder what else happened? Try to remember” which is a really strange line which RDJ delivers as though he were a robot (but in a good way). Halle skips right over the whole flaming chick car accident thing and says she remembers getting home and seeing Doug on the couch smoking a cigar.
She tries to remember what happened next, and suddenly remembers the accident. She tells RDJ that there was a bloody girl and he’s all “Uhh… no there wasn’t” but she gets up and says there was a girl by the bridge and some sort of accident. RDJ is majorly WTFing at this point and asks her what the last thing she remembers about her husband is and whether there was any trouble in her marriage and she’s like “No, whytf are you asking me this and whytf are you using the past tense?” and RDJ is like “Dude you killed him, remember?”
She starts screaming and flipping out so he pins her down while the nurses sedate her. She keeps whimpering that she didn’t do it. As they pump her full of drugs RDJ is like “I’m on your side!” but he is clearly a bit perturbed about the whole murder thing.
Halle then has some kind of ADD acid trip flashback of the walls of her house all covered in blood and her husband writhing around and the freaky girl on the street. Then she wakes up in her cell again.
Later Penelope comes to talk to her in some sort of rec room. She tells Halle that she’s one of them now and Halle says she doesn’t belong there. Penelope’s not having any of it and tells her that even when you tell the truth there nobody believes you because you’re crazy.
In another example of screenwriting mastery, Penelope asks Halle if she’s scared and she says no, but Penelope says “You should be.”
For the third time in two minutes Halle wakes up all freaked out in her cell. The lights are blinking again. Damn the generator! Some invisible person breathes on the glass door and starts writing a message in the fog. Unfortunately the ghost writes it so that it’s backwards to Halle, but luckily she’s so brilliant that she can read it anyway. It says “NoT AlOnE.” How eerie! She tells herself she’s dreaming, but now might be a good time to remember that she’s probably high off her ass like all the other prisoners.
Apparently she spends the whole night crouched in the corner saying “I’m not crazy” into her hands because suddenly it’s day and a nurse is like “Rise and shine!” even though she was clearly already awake. This nurse is probably more terrifying than the flaming girl. Halle is like “I want to see RDJ” and I’m like “Me too” but she’s like “Have some breakfast first!” and gives her a bunch of pills.
Halle takes the pills and the nurse is like “Good girl!” She’s not a dog, you creepy-ass bitch.
Shower time! As Halle goes into the huge creepy communal shower the terrifying nurse whispers “Come on, honey, time to wash away your sins!” I should mention that she says everything super cheerfully. I seriously would not be surprised to learn that she’s the bad guy. Halle strips off and joins the other way less hot naked women. As she gets under the water she starts tripping again. Penelope spits some water in her direction and she hears creepy whispering voices. Then suddenly she sees the creepy blonde chick who starts slashing at her arm.
Halle gets stitched up and creepy nurse not-so-cheerfully tells RDJ that she only looked away for a second. He says it’s not her fault and that patients always find a way to hurt themselves. The doctor tells RDJ that Halle is a mess and he’s never seen someone lose it so quickly before.
RDJ comes in to talk to Halle. She asks if he thinks she did this to herself. She tells him she didn’t and he clearly doesn’t believe her. He’s all “You’re on drugs and don’t know what’s real and what’s imaginary” and she’s like “Something is really happening to me!” He says he wants to increase her medication and she says she wants a new doctor. RDJ is like “Huh? What?” She says that since she’s hallucinating and can’t remember shit, maybe he can help her out. Did they have an affair? No. Did he want to? Yes. Did he think she wanted to? Yes. Why didn’t they? She was married to the boss. But not anymore! She suspects him of fishery.
Say what you will about this movie and yes, I do believe that it mildly blows, but RDJ is awesome. He’s clearly heartbroken and is like “I’m just trying to help you! Why don’t you trust me?” And what do you think she says in response? “You can’t trust somebody when they think you’re crazy!” You could knock me down with a feather.
The prisoners are let out into the yard. It’s actually sunny outside for the first time in this entire movie. Where is this taking place anyway? Forks? Pointless British guy from the beginning of the movie (Phil, apparently) is conveniently right outside the gate and Halle flags him down. She tells him that she doesn’t want RDJ to be her doctor anymore. Phil basically says that now that Doug is dead and Halle is a nutjob, RDJ is the best doctor he has. Poor RDJ.
Halle sees RDJ creepily spying on her from a window which is such a red herring. Nino clearly wants us to think that he might be behind it but unfortunately RDJ is such a good actor that I believe that he just loves her and feels all torn up inside about the whole thing, especially now that she is suspicious of his motives.
Halle’s lawyer, Teddy, has come to visit and tells her there’s going to be a hearing in a week and she’s like “That’s hella soon, WTF?” He says that there is a shit ton of evidence against her and that she clearly did it.
Halle Berry then goes on a heinously acted rant about how it might have been one of his former patients and that maybe she was there but she was in shock etc etc and I’m sorry to make another Twilight reference, I truly am, but the last time I saw acting this bad was when Edward Cullen came to visit Bella in the hospital and told her they couldn't be together because he was too dangerous (If you know what's good for you, you will visit this URL: www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTEIwzm4ljI). I'm sure Halle Berry deserved her Oscar and everything but her acting in this movie is truly hideous.
Anyhow, Teddy says their only hope is an insanity plea but even that will probably not work.
The sheriff is here to talk to Halle. We remember him as the cop she talked to about the sinkhole or whatever at the beginning of the movie. He’s Doug’s fishing buddy so he’s obviously pissed. He’s also wearing something that looks suspiciously like a mountie hat. RDJ is hovering in the background watching over proceedings. Sheriff Bob starts to tell her how they reconstructed the crime but breaks down halfway through and goes “How could you do that to Doug? He loved to eat your face! You’re in some trouble!” RDJ is like “Okay, buddy, time’s up, let’s go.” He’s being very protective. It’s cute. What’s not so cute are the crime scene photos Bob whips out now. Blood galore!
Halle’s arm wounds from before start spontaneously bleeding through her bandages. It calls to mind the scene in I Know Who Killed Me where Lindsay Lohan’s finger starts spontaneously falling off. Anyhow, we see that her cuts say “NoT AlOnE.” And not only that, but one of the crime scene photos shows that she wrote “NoT AlOnE” in blood all over the walls! OMG CREEPY! But like, why didn’t the doctors find that at all curious? The nurse said she only looked away for a second, but it would have taken a while to actually cut words into your arm, I’d think. And why does nobody think it is at all curious that her wounds started bleeding again for no reason? But look at me, trying to introduce logic into this equation! Teddy makes a really great WTF face here.
Halle is in a hospital bed and starts having acid flashbacks about the murder again but this time she sees herself doing it, in reverse. Sorry, Nino, but Memento this is not. It all comes back to the freaky blonde in the road. We see now that when she set on fire, she actually proceeded to possess Halle. As she’s being possessed, Halle just looks like she’s going to vomit. It’s her hottest moment ever.
RDJ escorts Halle to Phil’s office. She says that she realizes now that she was there when Doug was killed, but she wasn’t alone. That’s what NoT AlOnE means! Phil knows that she has no family and that he and RDJ are her family now. They’re going to do everything they can to help her. She isn’t paying attention because she sees GASP a picture of freaky blonde before she got all creepy. She’s like “WHOTF IS THIS?” It’s his daughter, Rachel, naturally. Halle wants to know where she is and he’s like “Uh, she died four years ago, you dumb bitch.”
That night, damp footprints start appearing of their own accord in the hallway outside Halle’s cell. Shit’s about to go down. The lights are on the fritz again. Halle gets up and says, apropos of nothing, “I’m a rational person. I believe in science. I don’t believe in the paranormal, and I don’t believe in ghosts. But if you are the ghost of Rachel Parsons, then you would let me out of this cell.” Despite the dubiousness of that grammar, the door opens. She runs out into the hall and sees Rachel’s ghost. There are guards and janitors all around so she heads toward her office. The office has crime scene tape on the door even though no crime was committed there, but whatever. She breaks into RDJ’s office instead. Incidentally, it takes her about 1.5 seconds to pick his lock with a screwdriver. That’s likely.
She goes into his drawer to get a set of keys but stops when she sees a photo he keeps there of them together. She looks bored and he looks like he’s doing a Jedi mind trick on her, but her heart is warmed nonetheless.
Rachel is a very tech-savvy ghost and starts up RDJ’s computer which has an article about her death already pulled up. That girl googled herself at the speed of light! The article says Rachel killed herself. Suddenly, a surveillance video pops up on the screen, showing Rachel’s ghost at a rave. Well, it’s just the lights in the hall flickering like crazy again, but still. She’s by the solitary confinement cells which for some reason makes Halle forget about her own problems and decide something bad must be happening to Penelope, who we haven’t seen since she sassily spat water in Halle’s general direction mere moments before the ghost knife fight.
She gets to Penelope’s cell and SURPRISE! Penelope’s face is pushed up against the window and then we get a glimpse of a fat tattooed chest. Halle seems to have forgotten that she is trying to keep her cell escape on the DL and starts running through the halls screaming. Two male nurses come out of nowhere and take her down. She screams at them to check on Penelope since there seems to be some Satan rape happening after all.
I think it’s possible that if Penelope just straight up said “Hey guys, some tattooed asshole is raping me in my cell at night” instead of “The devil opened me like a flower of pain and it felt good” somebody might actually look into it. Again with the logic!
RDJ comes to have another chat with Halle. She’s all “Hey, did you find out whotf was raping Penelope?’ and RDJ is like “Nobody raped anybody, dumbass.” She describes the dude’s tattoo to him and for some reason he actually immediately knows that she’s talking about the “anima sola.” He’s all “Oh yes, it’s an archetypal image… a woman in chains” and she’s like “Bitch, please. I’m not talking about archetypal images. I’m talking about an image tattooed across a set of man-boobs.”
He thinks her crazy mind is just inventing all of this nonsense, but he wants to know what she was doing googling dead teenagers in his office. She says that she’s been seeing Rachel’s ghost and that she didn’t kill herself. Understandably, RDJ is getting tired of this shit. She keeps yelling at him about murder and ghosts and he starts yelling diagnoses of mental illness at her and then he leaves in a huff. But not before transferring her to the psych ward with a threat of solitary confinement, AKA a trip to the Rape Shack. To his credit, he looks pretty broken up about things as he’s walking away.
Back in the yard, Halle goes to talk to Penelope. She’s like “My bad; you weren’t crazy after all! Sorry about all the rape! BTW, whotf has been raping you?” and Penelope says it was the devil. They hug. It’s all very touching until Penelope whispers “He said you’re next!”
At night, Halle hears footsteps outside of her new cell and the lights start blinking. Rachel’s ghost pops out of nowhere and starts throwing Halle around the cell so that she’s literally flying through the air and smashing into cabinets. I really don’t know what she hopes to accomplish by this since it’s only going to make her look even more nuts to everybody else if they come in her cell and she’s covered in bruises and all of her shit is broken.
Two security guards are dicking around watching sci-fi movies but eventually notice that some crazy shit is happening in one of the cells. The screen shows Halle flying around the room of her own accord and one of them deduces that she’s trying to kill herself. Brilliant! They bust into the cell and are like “What a mess!” Halle seems to be unconscious but then she kicks their asses and runs out of the cell with the nurse’s keys. Guards start chasing her through the hospital but she is a hide and seek champion. Also, the electric system is giving them some trouble. Damn the generator! They have to search for her by flashlight.
She eventually makes it to the pool where she finds herself cornered. Even though she has the keys, she’s stumped by a locked door for the second time so instead she slowly lowers herself into the pool. A couple of dumb guards shine lights into the pool but for some reason don’t see her. We hear bits and pieces of the guards’ conversation like “There’s no way she can escape!” and, weirdly, “Professors always nail their pretty students.” I guess they could be talking about her marrying the boss, but it’s really weird and random.
Halle’s gotten to the front desk and the security guard from the beginning is there. The lights come back on and he sees her crouching by the desk and really loudly says “Oh, shit!” even though there are several other guards in the room. They’re like “Did you see something?” and he’s like “Uh…” Halle shakes her head at him and he decides to cover for her by saying that he saw something flash in front of the camera in one of the hallways. He’s obviously out of his damn mind because he gives her his car keys and tells her to go.
She drives off in the loudest, screechiest way possible and starts speeding like crazy. She’s really good at the incognito escape tactics, I must say. She sees Rachel’s reflection in the rearview mirror and tries to brake but the car just keeps speeding up. Rachel is such a backseat driver. Finally, after nearly being smashed by a semi-truck and crashing into some roadwork signs Halle is like “WTF DO YOU WANT FROM ME YOU DEAD BITCH?!?!?”
Halle pulls up to her house, surely the last place the police would look for her. The lights all turn on in the house so she knows that Rachel wants her to explore. Halle calls out “Doug?” which is one of the more retarded things she’s done so far in this movie. She follows bloody handprints up the stairs and has a vision of a bloody Doug screaming and begging and then herself coolly walking up with a bloody axe. Axe-wielding Halle says “I love you,” screams and then starts chopping him up.
Let me back up a second and ask why there’s crime scene tape on Halle’s office but not on the house where the murder actually took place? Logic! Agh!
Halle goes into the bedroom and hears dripping water, so she goes in the bathroom and sees her axe-murderer self in the tub washing off the blood. Bathing Halle starts screaming and her face changes between herself and Rachel and then finally Rachel’s ghost leaves her body. Then the hallucinations stop again. Halle sobs since she now realizes that she actually did kill her husband. She comically goes “Why???? WHY???????” while gazing at old photos of them together.
She gets a one second long nosebleed that drips on a picture of them standing in front of a cabin. Suddenly she’s all “Willow Creek! A clue!” Because remember, at the beginning of the movie Doug said he was going to go talk to some contractors there. Clearly the blood droplet is a sign! It’s dubious logic at best, but Halle drives out there in the early morning anyhow.
She breaks one of the cardinal horror movie rules and goes into the dilapidated barn by herself. The barn looks as though it was previously occupied by Leatherface. She looks around for a minute and then starts to leave, but then she sees the box for a video camera and stops. Out of all of the junk in that barn, the video camera box is what catches her attention? I’m so sure.
Halle goes downstairs and pulls back a tarp to reveal a video camera and some big lights set up around a bed. Kinky! Rachel turns the camera on and Halle watches the tape that’s inside. She sees her beloved husband attacking a chained girl on the bed. He goes up to the camera and says “It’s good to be God! I love you.” This is possibly the dumbest line in the entire movie. Doug would have to be assuming that Halle would eventually watch this video to say that and clearly this is a habit he would not want her to find out about. Nino just wants to make a callback to their weird mirror conversation at the beginning of the movie but it really doesn’t make any sense.
Halle hears creaky footsteps and grabs a knife. It’s a cop. He yells “Drop the knife!” and she yells “Drop the gun!” and they would probably keep going on like that forever but then some bloody arms reach through the stairs Halle’s standing on and grab her head. It’s the naked girl from the video. She wants help. Duh.
Cut to the police station where Sheriff Bob is talking to reporters. RDJ and Phil are at the station and RDJ tells Bob that he needs to take Halle back to the hospital and Bob is like “Bitch, please.” Teddy is also there and says that in light of the discovery of Doug’s sadistic douchebaggery, maybe they should put Halle under temporary house arrest instead of jail. It’s sweet how they’re all trying to help Halle and don’t give a fuck about the random barn-rape victim. There is so much rape in this movie; it’s insane.
Bob is like “You do realize this lady just attacked a nurse, escaped from a mental institution, stole a car and-” RDJ interrupts here to say “And saved a girl’s life!” Bob points out that this was probably by accident since how could she have known the girl was there. Teddy’s like “Who gives a fuck?” Bob wants answers because once the press gets ahold of this it’s going to get ugly.
Phil goes to talk to Halle. He’s all “It’s hard to believe Doug was such a rapey douchebag” and Halle is like “I know, right?” Phil gets to the point and asks if she thinks Rachel might have been one of Doug’s victims. Yes. She thinks that that is what “NoT AlOnE” means: that she was not his only victim. Phil tells her that after Rachel died he had a recurring dream about her where she was on fire. Halle’s like “I saw her on fire too! What does it mean?” Phil thinks it’s just a delusion. One that they both share, Halle points out.
Halle calls RDJ and tells him that she’s been wrong about everything. She really does sound like a crazy person, the way she’s talking. Her voice is all high pitched and she’s talking really fast. Things are clear to her now. She tells him that the man who’s been raping Penelope is connected to Doug’s rape circus and it all comes back to the tattoo she saw. He’s not having any of it. Every time people start taking her seriously she starts busting out the crazy delusions again. They then have this exchange:
Halle: I’m not deluded, Pete, I’m possessed!
RDJ: I don’t believe in ghosts.
Halle: Neither do I, but they believe in me.
Best original screenplay, guys!
RDJ hangs up on her and a cop puts her back in a cell. She says she needs to talk to Bob and that it’s important.
RDJ goes to his office and is like “Fuck it, I’ll do some googling.” He searches “anima sola tattoo” and finds a web gallery of freaks with anima sola tattoos. That’s surprising. I would have thought it would take him to youtube videos of talking cats!
Back in prison, Bob comes to talk to Halle. She tells him that “NoT AlOnE” means that Doug wasn’t acting alone in his rapetivities. Didn’t she just say it meant something else like five minutes ago? Make up your mind! Halle’s like “Phil and I both saw a burning chick and then some guy was raping chicks at the jail and he had a tattoo of a burning chick. GET IT?” She says that RDJ told her it was crazy and he’s like “YOU TOLD RDJ???” Suspicious! He doesn’t think she’s crazy and doesn’t understand why anybody else would. I guess he didn’t hear her say that she’s not deluded, she’s possessed!
Bob is like, let’s find out who this other guy is! Build me a psychological profile, Halle! She says that he probably grew up with no father, got obsessed with his mom, got off torturing small animals as a kid and now is really sexually confused. He’s like “Well that’s messed up.” He warns her that if there is a second killer she might be in trouble because he’s trying to cover his trail. She wonders why the guy didn’t go finish the job at Willow Creek after she killed Doug. Bob says returning to the crime scene is a good way to get caught. But now the guy must be desperate. Halle’s like “Desperate enough to talk to me?” Uh oh. Bob says he fits the profile except for the part about torturing animals. Then he attacks her. In the prison. Really smart.
Just in case his outright confession wasn’t enough, she rips open his shirt to see his stupid-ass tattoo. She’s like “You can’t kill me!” and he’s like “I’m not going to kill you. I’m just going to drug and rape you.” The lights start going crazy which distracts Bob enough that Halle can inject him with his own liquid roofie and run away. He tries to shoot her but accidentally shoots a pipe that starts leaking gas. Oops.
Halle tries to escape but the door is locked. Bob chases after her, now randomly shirtless. He says that Doug killed a girl when he was 15 and he helped him bury the body. BFF! After I typed that he seriously actually said “What are best friends for?” At this point he’s just shooting random stuff in his office hoping to accidentally hit Halle. She’s hiding under the desk. He’s getting all creepy about the taste for young girls never going away and “sweet Rachel” being too hard to resist but meanwhile Halle has noticed a gun conveniently taped right above her head. He’s like “We had the time of our lives at Willow Creek, and we would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for you meddling kids!”
He thinks he sees her pass by the door and chases after her. But then he sees Rachel’s ghost and thinks it’s Halle because her face is reflected in the glass door in exactly the right spot. I guess he didn’t notice the blonde hair? He shoots at the ghost and now the roofie starts kicking in and he yells “This isn’t logical!” and tries to shoot her again. He blows up a computer instead and it ignites all the leaked gas in the air so he catches on fire. Oops. Then Halle shoots him in the head and the fire randomly goes away. Halle says “Logic is overrated.”
RDJ runs up to the door of the station to try to belatedly rescue her.
One year later, Halle and Penelope are out of jail and strolling along the street together. Penelope is taking a train somewhere that leaves in a half hour so Halle calls her a cab. She wishes her luck with her job and Penelope thanks her for her help. Halle’s like “No, thank you! You taught me to listen with my heart!” Penelope gets in the cab and as Halle walks down the street she sees a child in the middle of the road. He’s a ghost! He was pointing at a missing child poster. Poor Halle, I guess she’s the ghost lady now! Some emo sounding Limp Bizkit song starts playing and the credits roll. But what about RDJ? Even though you said crazy nonsensical shit to him, he still came to save you! Whatever.
I have bigger problems with the ending, though. Namely, how did these two women get out of jail? I can kind of see a jury letting Halle off since Doug was a rapey murderer, but she still killed the guy. And yeah, Penelope was getting raped in her cell after all, but she still killed her stepfather and cut his Adam’s apple in half like a piece of fruit on a summer day. Logically, she should probably still be locked up. But I guess logic is overrated.
