| The Confusion | |
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Directed by |
David Fincher |
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Produced by |
Jason Blum |
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Screenplay by |
David Fincher |
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Story by |
David Fincher |
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Starring |
Rachel Hurd-Wood |
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Music by |
John Williams |
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Cinematography |
Mike Gioulakis |
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Studio |
Warner Bros. Studios |
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Distributed by |
Columbia Pictures |
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Release date(s) |
4th November 2015 |
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Running time |
146 minutes |
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Country |
UK |
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Budget |
$123 million |
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Box Office |
$784 million |
| [Source] | |
The Confusion is a 2015 English-American psychological horror film written and directed by David Fincher and starring Rachel Hurd-Wood and Thomas Brodie-Sangster. It is a film about a teenage girl who suffers from a mental disorder that traps her in a child's mentality, and is haunted by an imaginary friend that spurs her to run away from home. It co-stars Eddie Redmayne, Daisy Ridley, Eva Green, Essie Davis, Idris Elba and Richard E. Grant. The film was shot primarily in Cornwall.
Upon release, the film was a box-office success, grossing $784.6 million on a budget of $123 million. It also went on to receive widespread critical acclaim from critics and audiences. The majority of the praise went almost singularly to Rachel Hurd-Wood's performance, as well as her chemistry with Brodie-Sangster, the film's brutality, script and narrative and John Williams's score. Fincher's inspiration for the film came after he watched Jennifer Kent's The Babadook and became determined to create a psychological film that featured the parameters of an imaginary friend who has overstayed its welcome in a young person's mind.
Rachel Hurd-Wood was the third choice to play Kimberley, and she volunteered because she felt it would be an exciting, new turn for her, and when her performance received universal acclaim she exclaimed 'This is so brilliant. I can't believe this...it's so great. Thank you, everyone. You guys are the best'. Fincher stated how he was pleased with the reception, and several cast members praised his dedication to the film's creation.
Plot
Kimberley Jackson runs into the woods, away from home with a boy she calls Finn. She hides in a river as Dr. James Peterson tries to find her and screams her name. She hides in the river for several minutes, before Finn cautions her to leave before she suffers from hypothermia. When Finn phases through trees as he follows her away from the river, it is established that he is not a real person - he is a figment of her imagination, her imaginary friend. Kimberley cries herself to sleep remembering 'the little grey room' and becoming terrified that people will bring her back to that room, but Finn coldly assures her that she will never go back there. In the night, Kimberley carves threatening messages into her arms with a pen. While she dreams, she talks in her sleep, sometimes with Finn's voice, and re-enacts a conversation between herself and someone else, with that someone else threatening to beat her into the ground. Finn watches her while she sleeps and he mutters that she is too scared for her own good. When she finally falls asleep, he fades slightly.
Peterson returns to the facility that Kim ran away from, the Hestia Institute, where they are providing a home for dangerously disturbed young people and children. He investigates Kimberley's room and finds the place had been ransacked by her in her brutal escape from the facility, and then discovers several threatening notes written jaggedly into the walls, each of them re-enacting conversations between her and other people. The police arrive, led by trainee Ivy Franklin, and she takes pictures of the messages on the wall. She asks about Kimberley and he insists that information about her can only be afforded to officers of higher classification than Ivy, who is only a trainee. Ivy speaks with several other patients, and they report Kimberley's violent, erratic and frightening behaviour. Ivy reports to her boss, Captain Serena Daniels, who determines that Kimberley is dangerous, based on her reported behaviour. Ivy views this opinion as harsh considering they haven't properly encountered her and don't know enough about her, but Daniels relents.
When Kimberley steals clothes and food from several shops, Finn encourages her to burn the clothes, out of a fascination with seeing things end. Kimberley is tempted, but she scalds herself on the fire she makes. When a woman tries to nurse the burn, she takes it as an assault and runs away. Peterson surrenders Kimberley's records to Daniels, who reads through them and becomes visibly disturbed as she does. She refuses to divulge what is contained in the records to Ivy on the basis that she has the authority to do so. Kimberley tries to treat the burn herself, unsuccessfully, and she hides in a bookshop, where as she reads Finn reads it aloud, showing how he contributes to her understanding of things. As he reads, he twists several of the plot points to be frightening and Kimberley shouts at him, attracting the attention and anger of several other people there. A librarian tries to get her to be quiet, and Kim kicks the woman into a bookcase and runs away. Finn goads her as she runs, and she is nearly hit by a car as she crosses the road. She outpaces the bookshop worker who tries to chase after her.
After hearing reports about the altercation at the bookshop, Peterson goes on a personal campaign to find her, fishing through the Institute records to find out about locations she would be known to return to. When he does, he discovers her family home near Padstow and decides to go there himself. Ivy confronts him and he confesses that he has been responsible for her psychiatric care since she arrived six years ago, and he agrees to show her recordings of the meetings that he has officially had with her - the videos depict their conversations where Kimberley portrays what appears to be a separate identity she calls 'Finn', but when he peruses too far she becomes extremely violent and attacks him (Peterson shows several scars along his collar from where she attacked him once). After one attack pulled her into a seizure when he tried to find out about her parents, she was put into solitary confinement after being deemed too dangerous to be allowed outside with the other inhabitants - the day she escaped was the very day before she would be allowed to interact with everyone else.
Kimberley and Finn contemplate what happened to her before she escaped, and Kimberley appears to believe that Peterson was one of the few people she could trust in the world, which prompts Finn to try and convince her otherwise - he points out that he has been with her since she was four years old and has nursed her through 'the kids, the nightmares, the parents...everything'. Kimberley remembers both of her parents trying insanely to convince her that she ought to drop Finn's existence since she was getting too old, but Kimberley was just too close to him to do that. In the night, under the belief that the ground beneath her feet is inflated, she tries jumping across cars, but Finn snaps her back to reality and points out that she could be imprisoned for it. Kimberley laments that she has precious little grip on the world around her and it is realised that Finn is what ties her mind to the real world. At the same time, Peterson reveals to Daniels that Kimberley suffers from an almost unnaturally early development of schizophrenia, which has manifested quicker with the existence of Finn. Daniels contemplates that the events described in her records have intensified her schizophrenia and left her entirely dependent on Finn.
Peterson is approached by his mentor, Mike Parker, who exchanges opinions with him as to what Kimberley is going through and Peterson admits that he wants to help her, but he doesn't disclose why. Parker already knows and he sympathises, and when Ivy eavesdrops on their conversation and faces Peterson about it later on, he explains that, when he was a child, his brother suffered from Dissociative Identity Disorder, which led to him being savagely bullied at school and Peterson was too scared to do anything about it - one day, when one of his five personalities became psychopathic and beat a bully to death, he was arrested and died in prison a few years later. He works at the Hestia Institute in the hopes that he can prevent something like that happening to anyone else again. In the meantime, Daniels reads over Kimberley's records a second time and vents about it to her lieutenant, Summers, stating that she'd never anticipated a case like this her entire career.
Kimberley's father Dr. Kevin Jackson, who is serving a life sentence in prison at the time, hears on the news about Kimberley's escape and resolves to escape and see his daughter again, in the hopes of apologising - he does not disclose what he wants to apologise for. Kimberley experiences a catastrophic nightmare while she sleeps on the street and she storms out into the cycle path by Padstow harbour, venting hysterically about how she's been having nightmares her entire life, and that they can never truly leave her. Finn comforts her and she tearfully expresses that she doesn't know what she is scared of. To clear her head, she walks through Padstow, but is spotted by Ivy, who alerts Peterson. The two of them try to track her through a crowd, and when she recognises Peterson from the Institute she masquerades as a passer-by watching the street band that plays outside one of the cafes. However, when Finn taunts her, sarcastically asking what her plan is when she thinks they have gone, her hysterical reaction alerts both Ivy and Peterson to her location. Kimberley runs into an alley but Peterson corners her there and tries to calm her. When Kimberley anxiously screams that she doesn't want to go back to the little grey room, he assures her that they won't, but she knows he is lying and attacks him. Ivy pulls them apart and Kimberley runs, while Finn invisibly laughs at the failures of both adults in restraining her.
Encouraged by her imaginary friend's taunts to her 'enemies', Kimberley runs faster and steals a bicycle. She cycles out on to the road and Kimberley goads her into cycling dangerously fast. When a car pulls on to the road, she loses control and is thrown from the bike into a field, where she is knocked unconscious by the landing. Josephine Fisk finds her and takes her to a house by the sea, where Kimberley wakes up. Finn tries to convince her that they are in a dangerous place, but Kimberley objects, feeling safer with a roof over her head. She befriends Josephine and is alarmed by how nice she is being to her. Josephine asks her why she ran away, and Kimberley explains it's because of her parents. After having late tea with Josephine, Kimberley (Despite Finn's objections) explains what happened before her escape - Kimberley was bullied at school, and this was made worse by her drunken father. One night, when Kimberley started a fight with one such bully at school, her father lost his temper with her and beat her with a cane, leaving savage bruises on her body - her mother intervened, and he struck her in the neck so hard that he killed her. Kimberley ran from home and hid in a neighbour's house, where her father broke in and tried to restrain her, but not before that neighbour called the police.
TBA
Cast
- Rachel Hurd-Wood as Kimberley Jackson, an eighteen-year-old girl who suffers from schizophrenia, which results in the development of an imaginary friend. Unpredictable and dangerous because of this, Kim runs away from home and vies for a personal sense of stability that she has fought for her entire life.
- Kyla Deaver as 12-year-old Kimberley
- Thomas Brodie-Sangster as Finn, Kimberley's imaginary friend. Finn is calm, methodical, cold and honest, and represents the complex insecurities in Kimberley. He has been a part of her since she was four years old.
- Eddie Redmayne as Dr. James Peterson, an abnormal psychologist who studies Kimberley's behaviour and campaigns personally to protect her throughout the film. Redmayne described his character as 'the kind of guy who holds his hand out to you, even though you want to tear it right off'.
- Daisy Ridley as Ivy Franklin, a trainee police officer who joins Dr. Peterson in searching for Kim and trying to protect her from the dangers that she instigates. Passionate and naive, Ivy confesses that she doesn't entirely understand her situation but is motivated by the fact that someone needs her help.
- Eva Green as Captain Serena Daniels, Ivy's boss who is determined to bring Kimberley in before she becomes too volatile to control. She is revealed to have grown up under trauma with children like Kimberley, which gives her a complex fear of such people.
- Essie Davis as Josephine Fisk, a woman who lives by the sea in Cornwall and takes in Kimberley after the altercation in Padstow. She is the first person that Kimberley confides about her past.
- Idris Elba as Mike Parker, a senior psychiatrist and a confidante of James', who helps him in guidance as to how to deal with Kimberley.
- Richard E. Grant as Dr. Kevin Jackson, Kimberley's negligent father who is given a life sentence after murdering his wife in front of Kimberley, ultimately causing Kimberley's over-reliance on Finn.
- Emily Watson as Evelyn Jackson, Kimberley's mother.
- John Simm as the lead singer in a band that performs by Padstow bay.
- Jackie Earl Haley as Summers, a police officer and one of Daniels' lieutenants.