Escape From Tomorrow - Discussion (with Spoilers)

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by lashbear

..given that we later see 'him' (or a very good AA of him) arriving as a guest again.

That's the part that closes the door on the "all in his head" angle. It made whatever the inside-spaceship-earth nonsense was talking about concrete - explicitly saying, "Yep, something weird is happening. He's not JUST in his own head losing his grip on himself."

Either he's real and the classy version we see at the end is some sort of replica or fantasy..or the classy guy at the end is real and the tool we see during the movie is some sort of alternate nightmare...or some other thing.

Honestly I haven't spent much energy trying to read into WHAT it meant because honestly I don't get the feeling the filmmakers put much energy into it themselves. I think their goal was to make it intractable and unsolvable and don't have an answer themselves. Which wouldn't have bugged me IF the ending didn't imply that there IS an answer. If they left it completely ambiguous, then I'm okay with them not having an answer in mind. But throwing on an extra layer of, "Ooh, look how weird an mindblowing THIS twist is," without anything coherent behind it just doesn't interest me.

I mean, that's all a bit of over-analysis for what it was - a cheesy story as an excuse for a ballsy and unique method of film making. So it doesn't really matter. I just felt like they actually were flirting with doing something with the fantasy/nightmare angle that was a little beyond the ordinary and predictable (even as the acting and dialog were pretty poor) and was disappointed that they undermined it in the end.