Come True ( 2020 ) Ending Explained | Movie Spoilers | Hinglish
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Today I will explain this year's best sci-fi horror film on sleep paralysis called Come True. Before this, many films have been made on Sleep Paralysis like The Nightmare, dead awake, Shadow People, mara, between the darkness etc. The ending of this film is pretty complicated.
The film begins with a sinister dream. We see a dark mountain, a pathway and a shadow figure in it. An 18-year-old girl, Sarah Dunn, was haunted by this dream. She was sleeping in a park. When she woke up, the time in her mobile was 7:11 AM. She was a high school student but was kind of homeless as well. She slept some days of the week at her friend Joe's house, the rest in this public park. Today she was waiting outside her house for her mom to move out so that she could sneak in. She used to sneak into her own house for a shower and food. At her room we see a Weekend's at Bernie's poster, which was a hit black comedy film from 1989. Sarah's relationship with her mom was estranged, and we will know the reason for it in the end.
Sarah used to sleep walk in childhood, and since childhood, that dream was haunting her. It seemed she was suffering from insomnia. The story of the film is told in four chapters, and the name of the first chapter is The Persona. Persona is the outer face that we present to the world. Much like the personality of people on social media, seldom do people present their true nature. It's always a facade. At school, Sarah's friend Joe offers her a sleepover for the next night. Tonight Sarah sleeps again at the park where she gets that dream again. In her dream we see bodies hanging on the wall, a flash of white beam, a big circular entry in which a shadow man was standing.
Next day on the notice board of the high school, Sarah saw a flyer for a sleep study. A doctor named Dr. Meyer was conducting this study. Sarah was interested in this study as she was about to find a good place to sleep. Also, she was getting paid for this. At the sleep clinic, Dr Anita asked a few questions and enrolled Sarah. Next night Sarah sleeps at Joe's house where she is again haunted by Shadow Man in a dream.
The next chapter is Anima and the Animus. The Anima/Animus is the opposite image of the biological sex. There were a total of six people in the sleep study group, four men and two ladies. Now Dr. Anita gives Sarah a sleep suit which had many sensors. These sensors are used to track the activities of the sleeping brain. Recently, some scientists at Berkeley University invented a device that could scan this brain's data and show it as images. Meaning, while wearing this device, if you see a bunch of roses, then the rose flowers will appear on the screen. It was a technology for pictorial representation of human thoughts. Dr. Meier wanted to use this technology in a sleep study as he wanted to see what image the brain produces while sleeping. Surprisingly, all the computers looked old, I mean from the late 80's. Sarah sleeps well that night.
Next morning Sarah answered a few questions from Anita, she had great sleep compared to her previous days, hence she was relaxed. Next we see Sarah reading a book beside a river where she got a call from her mom. She cancels it in displeasure. Dr Anita and others were excited about Sarah's results, they showed it to Dr Mayers. Later at the library she was finding some good books to read when a dude recommended Philp K Dicks novels to her. He said his novels will make you think. Sarah smiles a bit here as if someone other than Joe was being nice to her. Later we see the same dude in the theater where Sarah and Joe were watching the movie. After the show, Sarah saw this dude again and thought he was stocking her. She dragged Joe away from there while Joe says you like him.
Tonight as Sarah sleeps at the facility, she gets that haunting dream again. This time we see a large hall with panels at the ceiling, a flashing light. Bent over, men were hanging in the air just below them. We entered a dark room where three shadow men emerged from the ground. Later a long corridor is shown which had bodies hanging along with it. At the end of it, a door opens, and we see a baby angel statue coming right at us. For a few seconds we also see a lady shady figure standing in front of a man sitting on a chair. This time Sarah woke up with horror where Dy Mayer himself was monitoring her images.
Next morning Anita shows some images to Sarah and asks her to identify them. Initially, Sarah doesn't recognise anyone of them, but after seeing one clear image of a shadow man, she had a seizure. She is taken for emergency treatment. Then the dude who was stocking her yesterday arrived there, his name was Dr. Jeremy. Everyone called him Riff. Sarah confronts Riff as soon as she saw him, she starts to think this facility as an unsafe place as she had the most powerful panic attack for the first time. Riff apologizes to her and says he was not stocking her. He urges her to continue her study. Dr. Myers also scolds Anita for showing those images without his permission. He says that it's dangerous to show dream images to test subjects, their subconscious mind knows their dream, and it can result in a bad situation.
Next afternoon Sarah was doing the laundry where we see a shadow figure in the real world behind her. She got a call from Zoe, Zoe was screaming or something when the call abruptly ended. Here Sarah saw something which triggered a seizure in her. She passed out. A few minutes later we saw an old lady who informed Sarah that some boys had stolen something from her. Sarah checks her pocket, her phone was missing. She quickly cycles to Zoe's where Zoe was not at her house.
That same night, Sarah makes a decision to end the sleep study. She was waiting outside the facility when Riff arrived there, he again apologized to her and took her to his office. Sarah explained about her second seizure, and she was visibly panicked. She demands answers from Riff about those images. Riff says he can't say it as it will impact the result. But Sarah was adamant, she threatened to quit the study if she didn't get her answers. Hense Riff took her to the observatory, he put the brain scanning headset on himself. He says this technology will show our thoughts as images on screen. On the screen we see Riff hand as he was seeing. We are using this to study dreams. While sleeping, the brain creates quite a lot of thoughts, images, sounds, reality which we simply call dreams. Nobody knows why we get dreams, how we get dreams. He also makes her see other test subjects’ dream image footage. In one such footage we see a dorm room, a never-ending stair case where shadow figures were hanging upside down, statures doing a nazi salute. This gives Sarah some relief, she agrees to continue the study.
The next chapter is the shadow. Shadows are the creative and destructive side of a personality. Later, Anita and Reff were monitoring the subjects when suddenly a shadow figure appeared on the screen. The brain data from Sarah and two different people showed the same image. Anita was spooked by this, she was wondering how possible this could even be. Riff says that in my childhood dreams, I used to see such shadows which I had ignored considering it to be just a bad dream. Here his theory was that this shadow figure is in the sub-conscious mind of every human being, a collective memory and fear of all mankind passed from generation to generation, which has been interpreted by different cultures with different names. According to one study, death, loneliness, losing freedom, being mutilated, and humiliation are the five main fear factors that all human conscious mind shares irrespective of race, religion, and country. Similarly, here the Riff theory was all humans subconsciously feared this shadow figure.
Here Sarah starts having seizures again, and she woke up in fear. Blood was dripping from her left eye. In fear she runs away from this facility and goes to a nightclub. She asked the night guard there if Zoe was here, to which the guard nodded. Sarah started searching for Zoe there, but she couldn't find her there, she fell unconscious in the washroom. Riff was following her, he now picked her up and went to his house.
On the other hand, Dr. Myers comes to the study center at two o'clock in the night. We see two test subjects opening their eyes, yet they were sleeping, they were looking beside their bed. Dr Mayer and the crew saw a shadow man on the screen whose eyes were glowing. They were standing right next to the subjects. Meaning everyone was having the same dream. Then suddenly, images on the screen started fluttering, and two test subjects woke up simultaneously. With this, the power went out in the facility, and the screen went blank. Dr Mayer and the crew were sweating in fear.
The next chapter of the film is The Self. The self, meaning finding one's true inner self and being at piece with it. Here we had a dream again where a beam of flash light was moving around, we entered a cemetery-like structure, a shadow figure was standing on a podium, going further we saw another shadow figure with glowing eyes surrounded by many dead shadow figures pointing at that farmer. Sarah now wakes up at Riff's house. She had an eye patch, her eye was dark and seemed infected. Here Riff was sleeping, and he had connected himself to the machine. Sarah sees some images on the screen where she and Riff were getting intimate.
They both had vampire-like teeth. After some time, Sarah saw the shadow figure on the screen, this Riff was dreaming. Sarah in a hurry wakes him up. Later these two go out for coffee, in the bathroom Sarah checks her eye, it was healed completely on its own. Sarah was little confused here, she removed her eyes patch. She asks Riff whether or not she can crash on his couch tonight, for which Riff agreed. At Riff's house these two become intimate. During the height of intimacy, Sarah saw two shadows behind Riff and passed out.
Riff takes her to the hospital, but Sarah was not conscious. He was waiting in the hospital where he got a dream now. In the dream we see metal like the one on a navy destroyer, behind that a shadow figure was standing. Later a long, dark corridor which seemed like a hospital setting, a multi-limbed creature was chasing him. I mean just a weird dream. When Riff woke up, Sarah was missing. He informs this to the security of the hospital. The strange thing here was that Sarah was the only patient in this hospital at this time. Riff saw Sarah sleep walking on one of the cameras. Riff runs down the hospital. When he tried to wake Sarah, blood started coming from her eyes. He now calls Anita to come with the portable machine as he wanted to know what was going on in Sarah's mind. Anita comes and puts the machine on Sarah and starts walking with her. It was clearly visible in the image that she got trapped in the nightmare. As they were observing, Sarah walked into the woods. Many shadowy figures were now visible on the screen. After reaching a point in the field, a mobile phone started ringing, which Riff picked up. As he unlocked the phone, Sarah came to her senses with a loud scream. Riff ran towards Sarah who was breathing fast. He calms her down and explains everything.
When all three were heading back to the hospital, Sarah saw r mobile in Riff's hand. She identified it as her lost phone. How it was there in the field and who was that unknown caller puzzled her. Suddenly, the time in it changed, it was showing 10:01 PM. Riff checked his watch, it was also showing 10:01 PM. He was shocked when Sarah ran from the facility, it was almost 2 PM. Just then these guys heard some crepy sounds, three glowing eye creatures appeared in the dark, they started chasing them. First they grabbed Anita, then Riff. Sarah saw all this in panic and horror as they attacked her, the scene abruptly ends.
Next we saw Sarah in Riff's house where she was naked. She had notched Riff's eyes, and he was dead. There was blood on her body. As she goes to the washroom to clean herself, a text message arrives on her phone. In which it was written that please go, you have been in a coma for 20 years, we have a new way of contacting you, we do not know how you will get this message. Wake up. After reading this, Sarah becomes happy and starts laughing. We see her vampire-like teeth in the mirror. With this film ends.
So this was the story of the film come true. Its ending is quite confusing, so let me explain. Sarah was a coma patient, probably a woman in her late 30's. She was in a coma for twenty years. She was probably driven into a coma when she was in high school. This whole film was going on in Sarah's mind, nothing was real. She was in a dream reality. All the doctors, the Sleep Study, High School, Joe, the whole world was part of her reality. If you observe closely, most of this reality was made up from the 80's. A few modern things like cell phone, MRI, laptops are there at best. Here it seems that real doctors from the physical world had invented a new method to wake up coma patients by sneaking into their dream reality. They were trying to implant a message in her mind, finally they did it through a text message. That's why it's written we don't know where and how this message will end up. They were trying to convince the consciousness that its experience is not real. Here the protagonist, a teenage girl, Sarah, was the manifestation of her conscious self. She was trapped in this reality. Four chapters of the film explain her progression.
All the people in this dream reality were dreaming the same shadow man because they were all the projection of Sara's subconscious mind. It seems these shadow people would be the projection or manifestation of real-world doctors in this dream reality who were trying to wake Sarah up by standing next to her bed.
In the real world, doctors always tried different methods to wake her up. But her subconscious mind always tried its best to trap her in this reality. When Sarah first saw the image of the shadow man, she had a panic attack, in the laundry she had a seizure after seeing a shadow. The mind's defence system was kicking in here to stop Sarah from knowing her true self. The phone here worked as a gate between the outside world and this reality. The outside doctor somehow observed this and forced Sarah to walk there. When Reff unlocked the phone, Sarah gained her senses. Meaning she was connected to that phone. In the end, Sarah gets the text message, and her trapped self realizes that it's all a dream reality. To test it, she imagines her teeth like a vampire, and she sees it like that. Meaning she now knew that all this was a dream.
Here I believe Riff as the projection of Sarah's real-life boyfriend or the nerd person who was interested in her. She projected him here as her Animas. When Sarah stood face to face with shadow men, she woke up at Riff's house, in his blood. The intrusive methods used by the real-world doctors caused Sarah to kill her Animas. First it was Joe with whom Sara's self attached itself, once it was gone, she attached herself with Riff. Once that was gone too, she received the text message from the outside world, and she achieved self-realizations. Here I see the Buddhist and Hindu philosophy of Nirvaana, an eternal peace, freedom and self-realization when the mind gets free from the influences of parents, friends, partners, children or any worldly affairs. In the beginning, Sarah woke up at 7:11 am. The spiritual meaning of this number is transforming oneself into their true self. Whereas the number ten zero one means, your guardian angels are trying to communicate with you. The outside world doctors were sending these subliminal messages.
The director of the film has shown these complex things in a non-linear way. Undoubtedly, this is one of the best movies of 2021. I highly recommend it.
