What the ever loving fuck? Is this what it’s like to get three-quarters of the way through a burger only to find half a pube in it?
Someone explain this bullshit to me.
There’s a little girl. A genuine little girl, not some Judy-Garland-playing-pretend situation. And the town accuses her, tries her, and executes her for witchcraft. Which, you know, is a pretty fucking terrible thing to do. So, she curses them, which is the only fucking thing she can do in the situation.
And she’s the motherfucking bad guy? None of those assholes who fucking murdered her even have to, oh, you know, face her and apologize?!
The movie even calls her a bully. They fucking murdered her and she’s the bully because she’s hurt and scared and angry?
What lesson, exactly, are kids supposed to take from this piece of shit? That adults can do whatever they want to you and as long as they have a good excuse, you just need to get the fuck over it?
Fuck that shit.
If a children’s movie can’t have compassion for the little murdered girl at its heart… I just don’t even know.
I wish I’d never seen that.
Tiny Cat Pants 
Misogyny– it isn’t just for adults anymore.
This movie shook me so bad i had nightmares about it. And the thing is that it’s really beautiful and interesting up until… I can’t imagine being the parent of a daughter and watching along, enjoying how visually luscious it is only to have that ending. It kind of weirdly, reminded me of “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” where a little girl’s suffering is central to the well-being of the community, except that, in this nightmare version, there’s no one so grossed out by her suffering that they have to leave. Or even really sympathetic to her (though, of course, we’re supposed to see that Norman is, which I also have quibbles with, but not as majorly.).
Instead the “happy” ending is that she accepts that she’s become “just as bad” as the grown men and women who stole her from her mother and murdered her, even though she kills no one. Just the expression of her rage and terror is “as bad” as the people whose rage and terror led them to kill her. And that leads her to peace and lets her move on.
It’s really alarming.
I had no idea that was the underlying plot. My god. You have successfully informed me, which successfully repulsed me and I will never, ever watch this with my kid. I’m sorry you saw it, but thank you SO MUCH for saving me from seeing it. It looked, from the commercials, like it would be right up my alley. So this is a near-miss.
Jess, the worst part is that for 3/4 of it, it would completely be right up your alley. I was trying to crochet while watching it and I kept getting caught up in the beauty of it. It’s just exactly the right kind of New England creepy/charming. The characters have these obvious kind of rich inner lives and the story is entertaining.
So, you’re going along and, even when you realize what the deal is, you think “Well, obviously, these zombies who murdered the girl will have to go apologize to her and the townspeople will all learn a little about tolerance and forgiveness.” But the zombies never have to apologize to her. She’s just the bad guy for still being pissed about it, even without them making any efforts to make it right.
I mean, it seems like either the murderers will have to apologize and that will be, in part, what settles things, or the murderers will attempt to apologize, she’ll tell them to go fuck themselves because she’s going to destroy the town, and then Norman is forced to deal with her by himself, because it becomes clear that what she wants is for innocent people to suffer like she did. (And I think this may have been what they were going for, but they failed, big, big time in this regard.)
Either one of those things would have worked. But, no, instead it’s this horror show.
Some friends and I watched this a few months ago. It’s not a kids’ movie. It’s scary, for starters, but then there’s the underlying message. I was not a fan. We even stopped it with only a few minutes to go (W woke up and wanted to play), but ended up coming back and finishing it later on.