Is it all in the woman's head or is it supernatural or both?

Easily the best interpretation i've seen. I felt the same way..i think it attacked her because it knew how vulnerable she was. Struggling for so long to accept her reality and without any help. It didnt expect her to put up such a fight for her son, who she resented out of circumstance. Once she woke up and snapped out of this and realised she truly loved her son it cowered away to the basement, waiting for her to slip, again.

I think in the film it is real, which is why the movie is so great at so many levels, even if it is all a metaphor, in the film it goes all the way, the movie says it is a horror film so it goes big, there is a *beep* monster, END. Credits roll, THE MONSTER IS STILL THERE, NO SUDDEN FLASHBACK ITS ALL IN HER HEAD BS, THERE WAS A FRIGGIN MONSTER THAT IS NOW LIVING IN THE FCKING BASEMENT LOL.

This is the key question, foebane.

For me, I don't know how to answer it, but it highlights everything the movie does well, and everything it does poorly.

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The movie expresses the truth that the psyche always tries to project itself onto the world. Psych-horror exploits the fact that reality is not fixed but takes the form one gives it. Expression becomes reality. If your mind is sick, like a sick God you make the world in your image.

The movie speaks to the primal sense that feelings within us can be so powerful they can develop into an independent entity, a malevolant emotional spirit so overwhelming it can burst its psychic bounds and become concrete in the external world, an autonomous force, out of one's control. "Something came over me"... "It wasn't me..."

Or, that a malevolent emotional state can attract that spirit, which is always immanent (and imminent), giving it energy and form, which it always seeks, that form expressed in a way unique to the individual.

Who hasn't needed to leave a room after someone has "lost control" because the violence seems to linger, a vibrating, haunting presence? Who is to say that presence isn't real?

Jennifer Kent:

“People said to me, ‘Is it a supernatural monster – like, is it all in her head or is it real?’ And I say, ‘Yes.’ Which kind of irritates people. I’m saying yes to both, because the psychological place that this woman is in is very real, but for her and her son that monster is also very real.

So there are a lot of layers to this story, if you want to look into it. And I worked on it so it could be viewed from all angles. If someone wants to see it as a psychological descent into madness, then that’s how they can see it. If they want to see it purely supernatural that’s how they can see it. Or it can be a combination of both. That’s something I worked on very carefully in the development of the screenplay"

"She has made a career out of suppressing the darkness and difficulties and stressing them so much that they were gaining so much energy that it was starting to control her. You can consider it the shadow side or a supernatural force, or however you want to read it. It can work both ways...

What would happen if you pushed down on some grief or difficult feeling for so long and with so much strength that it developed an energy and split off from you?"

"I always was drawn to the idea of grief, and the suppression of that grief, and the question of, how would that affect a person? I like stories that are heightened and have a mythical quality, which is why I didn’t just keep it in the psychological realm — it skips over into this other realm of supernatural mythology. But at the core of it, it’s about the mother and child, and their relationship."

I think the film (by nature) defies a literal interpretation. The monster might be real, or a hallucination, or just a metaphor for Amelia's mental illness, but trying to pin down which one it was would be a mistake. You also have to remember that we're seeing the events of the film through Amelia's eyes, as her sense of reality becomes more and more distorted. Did she really cough up black goo in the basement, or did she just vomit and perceive it as black goo? Was her son really being dragged up the stairs and flung against the wall, or is that just how she'd remember it? Maybe she was the one throwing him around, but her refusal to believe that she'd ever hurt him made her disconnect herself from what was happening, and imagine he was being attacked by an invisible force?

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