The Reading (2023), directed by Courtney Glaude, is a skillfully made thriller that stars Mo’Nique, an Academy Award winning actress. The movie carefully employs foreboding music, dramatic camera work, and threatening silhouette blocking to instill a sense of impending dread in the audience rather of relying exclusively on clichéd graphic sights.
The story of the movie is off to a terrific start. Plot points and plot devices are introduced in the first act, serving as the ideal stepping stones for the remainder of the story to flow into. The same storyline points, however, fit into multiple locations and provide a compelling but drastically different story when it decides to take a quick turn into genre subversion.
The tried-and-true bait-and-switch technique appears to be a favourite in this film. It repeatedly counts on the audience to put their trust in the wrong people or things, and then it joyfully pulls the rug out from under them. What begins as a supernatural horror centred on a woman’s trauma develops into a slasher thriller about a psychotic, deranged murderer. Although a prized storytelling technique, genre subversion may be challenging to execute and frequently leaves spectators regretting the initial premise’s possible loss. When you combine that with a thriller and an abrupt conclusion, you wind up with a few unanswered questions. Spoilers follow.
The Reading Plot Synopsis
The unsettling home invasion that occurs at the beginning of the narrative leads to the terrible killings of Emma Leeden’s husband, teenage daughter, and son. The only survivor of this incident, Emma Leeden, goes on to publish a book about her tragic experience to honour her family’s memories. Ashley, Emma’s sister-in-law and public relations representative, hires Sky, a young supernatural medium, to pretend to be a psychic reader for Emma in order to promote this book. She is unaware that Sky is a genuine medium with the capacity to communicate with the dead. The plot starts to quickly deteriorate once Sky and her team reach Emma’s tightly guarded home and establish contact with Emma’s murdered husband and children.
The protagonist, up until this point, Emma, is proven to be an unreliable narrator. Sky learns that Emma had actually murdered her entire family in cold blood and that there had never even been a house invasion. What happens next is a traditional “cat and mouse” pursuit inside of a fortified and impassable home. The circumstances that were earlier interpreted as settings for a ghost story provide the ideal setting for Emma to track down Sky and her group of pals.
When the steel reinforced doors and bulletproof windows change Emma’s house from a safe abode of a paranoid survivor to the cellar of a deranged killer, the poor service and lack of Wi-Fi become a helpful hand in the kids’ entrapment. Classic pursuit scenes, jump scares, gory deaths, and spontaneous monologues make up the final two acts. In typical antagonistic way, Emma discusses her past wrongdoings and the reasons behind them, revealing her true identity as a sick and greedy lady.
The final victim of this slasher, Sky, saves her own life, murders Emma, and then escapes in the film’s climactic scene. The plot starts up once again for the final time as the credits begin to roll and viewers are left to decipher the mysterious finale dialogue. Sky is now seen to have been pushing her own book on her own traumatic experience on the very same talk show as Emma from the very beginning of the film. How trustworthy was this second narrator, exactly? That is the question the movie leaves you with at its conclusion.
The Reading Ending Explained: Who is the Actual Villain, Emma or Sky?
It only makes sense that because the entire movie is based on the idea of misdirection and twists, it would throw you for one final loop as it closes. The talk show host, who serves as a proxy for the audience, hears the same stories from Emma and Sky. There is just one survivor in a house full of dead people, and there is no further proof of their story other than what they say.
It’s important to note that Emma Leeden appears in this story as three different characters, each time in a different context. You’ll see that actress Mo’Nique is credited as having portrayed three different characters in the film: Emma Leeden, Ms. Leeden, and Emma.
The first—Emma Leeden—is the first character to appear in the film. A devoted, adoring wife and mother who portrays the stereotypical image of a contented, typical family woman. As Emma recalls the plot of her book based on supposed real-life occurrences, she presents the audience with this vision of herself. It establishes Emma’s position in the story inside the ideal framework of a sympathetic and likeable character. The second Emma, Ms. Leeden, is the tense, bereaved person who has sought to channel her sorrow into something else. This is the woman whose tragedy fundamentally altered her, who need a stick to help her navigate her way, and who only has a scratchy voice with which to communicate. This is a woman who is meant to be admired and appreciated.
Finally, we get Emma, who is this character’s third incarnation. The insane woman brandishing a knife, eager to put her family in danger for fame and wealth. brutally so. The protagonist’s name changes as the plot spins out of control during the first act’s climax. Sky is now in command of the story because Emma is no longer in charge of it. Sky’s description of the events includes a persona who is the slasher killer Emma that we witness. Sky is now in charge of narrating the story, so she is free to adjust it however she pleases.
Hence, rather than being about either character’s villainy or wrongdoings in the end, the real question is about their believability. Who do you ultimately believe? Mr. Sky or Ms. Leeden? It depends on your point of view.
Was Sky Really a Psychic Medium?
When a character’s trustworthiness is questioned, it might be challenging to believe anything that happens to them. What else did Sky lie about if, as the film’s ending strongly suggests, she had in fact misled about what had occurred inside the Leeden house? The first 45 minutes of the film, while the plot is still one of supernatural terror, feature every incident of Sky’s telepathic skills. There isn’t much textual proof that backs up Sky’s claim that she is a medium—really it’s just her own assertion.
The movie frequently uses ominous, intimidating stillness in place of fictitious ghosts to generate terror. The entire structural integrity of the plot depends on our desire to make assumptions based on context, which invites the audience to fill in the blanks on their own. We are expected to take Sky’s psychic talents at face value since “The Reading (2023)” would have abandoned any attempts at paranormal storytelling by the time a storyline is intended to develop on such elements. Neither a backstory nor any insights are provided to us regarding Sky’s psychic abilities. It only ever tells and never shows.
with the exception of Johnny’s mother. The movie opens with Sky and her friends performing a psychic reading for another college student called Johnny just ten minutes into the story. Sky tells Gregory, her boyfriend, about how she sensed the mother of Johnny as being angry and powerful during her encounter with her. The sequence also gives us the one thing missing from the entire movie, even if it is meant to be a foreshadowing of a potential future calamity. really trustworthy text.
There is no justification for Sky to mislead Gregory about her skills or for her to elaborate in any way. That doesn’t seem like the best plan to add feelings of fear and hesitance into the game if she is running a fraud. Since Emma still controls the narrative power over the plot at this point, Sky isn’t attempting to sell a story to anyone in this scene. This particular sequence in the movie is arguably the only one that can be trusted and taken seriously because Sky now lacks the motivation or even the ability to undermine the plot.
What is The Driving Force Behind Either Emma’s or Sky’s Deception
With such an ambiguous and confused conclusion, the variation in viewpoint alters how you view the narrative. If Sky is to be believed, the final hour of the film transforms from a piece of deceptive fiction into the real truth. And if that’s the case, you’re left wondering why a mother like Ms. Leeden would be motivated to murder both her husband and her children. Similar to this, what is the cause of Sky’s dishonesty if she is to be viewed as the dishonest one.
It would turn out that the response to both of those queries combines with one another naturally. The remuneration for either of the two women’s outcomes—their pain or their crimes—is equal in the end. Fame and wealth. Both characters are shown to be having financial difficulties at some point in the narrative. Sky is already just barely escaping poverty, while Emma is moving steadily in that direction. While Emma’s character is obviously characterised by psychopathic and narcissistic tendencies, the motivation for Sky’s actions still revolves around the themes of financial instability and greed. Sky is initially seen as having financial difficulties and wanting to assist her mother in paying her bills at the beginning of the film. She still accepts Ashley’s job offer despite how emotionally and psychologically taxing the psychic scam she runs with her friends is for her because she can’t refuse an offer for so much money. It has already been established that her character’s agency and her place in the plot come from money and greed.
Sky and Emma’s personalities were always meant to be similar to one another in some way. This movie rejects the idea of having a trustworthy narrator, which results in the creation of two distinct but equally self-serving narratives by two different characters. Both of these narratives must coexist in the story without overpowering or undermining the other. The film does this with varying degrees of success, but it still provides the audience with an engaging, entertaining, and mildly unsettling experience.
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