This one was interesting until the company apparently ran out of money and had to rush the ending. You knew something was wrong when the protagonist's para-normal friend couldn't make it on the fatal night. Then his shrink tells him he was locked in a closet on the day of his mother's "accident." This revelation, we are told, emerged because the protagonist was in a 'crisis stage.' Then he says I'm going to a hotel, but first I'm going back to get my things. The shrink says, good idea! Come on -- the writers are getting desperate. Then the para-normal friend's black car is parked outside. But it isn't! That defies credulity and consistency. And so -- the ending. The finale, which has been discussed, is clearly a final wish-fulfillment, the long-held wish from the five year old for the idyllic picnic he was denied so many years before. Other problems -- the doll. Why? Why not the roller-skate (or whatever it was) that propelled Mama down those stairs? And -- what was the protagonist's mental state? Did he finally/gradually go crazy? His development was not well charted. But, basically, the rushed ending defeated a promising film.
Review of The Skeptic
