Have you ever had one of those movies that you could never quite remember all the details to? Like every time you watch it you notice something that seemed so obvious before? Or maybe it seems like things have changed since the last runthrough. In my teen years I loved a certain horror movie about a man in a hotel room. He can’t leave, he can’t call for help, and the room is constantly goading him into taking his own life. I loved the existential ideology that this film examples that just because a location is paranormal, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s haunted, maybe it’s just pure evil. Just because someone died here doesn’t mean that their eternal soul is trapped here to torment all that visit.
I tried to find this movie recently as I no longer had the burned copy I got from my uncle. Eventually I found it on a random streaming site, however after watching long enough I noticed something I didn’t recognize. A whole scene that I’d never seen before was playing right before my eyes. I eventually chalked it up to finding a director’s cut and kept watching, but then more things changed. A scene I vividly remember from the film was gone. After finishing the whole film I was left confused more than nostalgic. Did I find a weird version? Was it a lesser cut that someone just found in an archive? The latter seemed less likely but stranger things have happened.
The next day to satisfy my curiosity I checked it out from my local library which I was lucky enough to find it at.The old previews of movies from the early 2000’s filled me with a small sense of joy. I even saw that old anti-piracy ad that I’m sure most of you remember. When I hit the title screen I immediately hit play, eager to see the film in its correct form. The new scene was still there but the old scene came back. I was getting ready to accept that I had a different version of the film when I noticed something somewhat disturbing. The ending had changed. Instead of our main character escaping the hotel, he died. There was a funeral scene that I’d never seen before. Chills went down my spine as I couldn’t tell what was happening. Sure you could logic your way out of this by justifying that many films have separate endings, but then why had the scenes changed again? Why was I faced with three different versions of one film? I read the case to see what was going on, but it didn’t give any depiction if it was the theatrical cut or the director’s cut.
Netflix was my next stop. I could see that this was becoming an obsession but the burning curiosity inside of me was overtaking rational thought. Now even more had changed, a scene in the beginning had different dialogue. There was an extra who had said a one-off line. The new scene was still there but the main character’s reaction to the situation was more violent. The old scene had come back but was longer. The funeral was longer. Something was extremely wrong.
I had a lurking suspicion that I needed to confirm. I put the DVD back in and I hit the play button again, I regretted a lot. The rabbit hole became deeper as even more had changed. The movie was inexplicably longer. Instead of the camera zooming out and transitioning from the main character driving away in the beginning of the film, there were several long shots of the car on the road and on the highway. A scene at a post office showed the entirety of the time he spent from entering, to waiting in line, to leaving. In the hotel, the entirety of the time spent from stepping into the elevator, to entering the hotel room. What’s even stranger about this are the long moments of silence. All that’s left to fill the air in these moments of transition is the ambience of other people. However if no one else was there it was pure silence.
The eerie tone that encompassed a movie that was already horror filled me with a sense of dread. The longer it went on the less it felt like a movie. In this watch he was much angrier than he was in earlier versions, being extremely hostile and short tempered with nearly everyone around him. I felt dirty for even letting him say those things to people, as if I were able to stop him myself. The worst part was the funeral scene. The service was heartbreaking. Family members talking about how the loss of his daughter changed him for the worse and took him down a path of emotional turmoil. The eulogy made me cry, a best friend never mentioned or seen talks about how great of a man he used to be, even if near the end of his life he was much more lost than he ever was before. Watching the casket being lowered into the ground had nearly broken me. I cried with his family, it had felt like I lost my own brother.
When the credits had finished rolling I had to tear myself away from the couch. I was lightheaded from how much I had cried and needed to drink a lot of water. I didn’t understand what was going on but I knew I couldn’t stop. I didn’t bother checking the time before I hit play again. I knew I was making a mistake in doing this but I needed more. Now he was battling a deep depression. I couldn’t tell if scenes were getting even longer or not from the difference in tone. New characters were added, more were missing, his brutal honesty about his past and outlook on the world had made me feel worse for continuing to watch his miserable life. He drank heavily and gave up his previous stance on smoking. He used to keep an unlit cigarette behind his ear to remember his brother who had passed from cancer, he himself had quit smoking years ago. It was different this time, he chainsmoked through the majority of the film, hardly even doing much else between the paranormal occurrences. Once again it felt less and less like a movie and more of a direct camera feed of his life. He didn’t die this time, instead the room had just, taken him. I don’t know how else to explain it, there was a doorway with pitch black behind it, and he just walked through. The credits roll.
Play. He’s gone now. The movie goes on as if he was there, but he’s never there. You never hear him, you never see him. The moments of silence made me feel like I was going insane. The rest of the movie from him in the room is just different shots of the empty hotel room. The scene with the door shows up again. He comes out looking beaten and bloody and manages to escape. Things were getting interesting again. The credits roll.
Play. This is the longest one yet. The movie starts earlier than it did before, this had never happened before, we see several weeks, maybe even months of his life before the movie even started, each shot was deliberate and somewhat beautiful. The entire film felt like a masterpiece, hours had passed but I clutched on to every second as if I had never seen it before. When it hit the final scene I almost got up and clapped from how amazing everything felt. It genuinely felt brand new. The credits rolled.
Play. The entire film was fucking awful. It felt like one of those straight to DVD disney sequels that everyone talks about like they’re trying to get the taste of shit out of their mouth, I won’t bother talking about how lazy the 90 minute slog felt, every shot was low effort and the dialogue was garbage, no genuine emotion nor tension was conveyed nor felt. The credits roll.
Play. After several hours of reprieve from the last two watches, the fear came back. The main character was terrified of everything and so was I. Every bump felt like it could have been the end, the dread clung to my bones as each second passed. The length of the film could have matched the extended lord of the rings trilogy, or at least that’s what it felt like. My mind was on fire. I couldn’t stop watching even though everything in my body was sending warning signals like a burning down library.
At the end of the film the hotel burned down, and with it my DVD player burst into flames. Remarkably that broke the spell that had locked me in place for what seemed like years. In a rushing panic I grabbed my fire extinguisher and dowsed the player until the smoke had stopped. I didn’t even know how to feel. The shock and the dread running through me had woke me up from the stupor that had kept me in place for so long. What even happened to cause this?
I looked back at the TV screen. The credits rolled. When I looked at my phone I almost threw up. Only an hour had passed. I looked back up to the TV. It was back to the title screen. All that was left was a single option.
Play.