The New Daughter (2009) is a canonical horror film with thriller elements. His idea is classic – the family moves to a new place, which entails a series of tragic events. The message of the film is archetypally simple – the characters must go through a series of obstacles in order to start a new life, which refers us to the path of the hero according to Campbell or Jung. However, according to the peculiarities of the horror genre, a positive denouement is not at all necessary.
What is the movie The New Daughter about?
The plot is as follows: the main character is going through a hard betrayal of his beloved wife. After the divorce, his two children remain to live with their father. To cope with the collapse of his family and go headlong into work, the writer moves to a house remote from civilization. Children, a boy of seven years and a girl of adolescence, he takes with him.
During the day, the house looks quite ordinary, but at night the distance from civilization makes itself felt. Everything around is plunged into absolute darkness, the only source of light for a long distance is the windows of the house. To get to the nearest neighbors you need to go by car for at least half an hour.
The hero’s daughter, Louise, becomes nervous and restless as strange noises disturb her at night. A receptive girl is frightened by the nightlife at home.
One day, while walking with her younger brother under the outskirts of the house, she discovers a burial mound. From this moment on, the frightening in the house becomes even more, but the most sinister is the behavior of the girl. She becomes as if obsessed, disappears from home at night, and one day returns with an unusual figure in her hands.
The father tries to explain the daughter’s behavior by saying that the transitional age was superimposed on the severe shock associated with the breakup of the family. The youngest child in the family feels that the explanation cannot be so simple.
At some point, even the father, who is trying to find a logical explanation for everything, realizes that everything is worse. Strange blisters cover his daughter’s skin, and terrible murders take place in the vicinity.
A man tries to find information on the Internet and finds out that the house in which they settled has a bad reputation. The former owner was killed, and her daughter disappeared. The reason for everything is thulumus – this is the name of the ancient burial ground found by the children. It is believed that monsters awaiting their hour in it, dreaming of capturing the Earth. Sometimes they need to feed, get “fresh blood”, so they kidnap girls.
The writer’s daughter is chosen as the next victim, which means he must try to save her.
The film ends with the monsters, the monsters of the mound, coming out into the outside world. They appear only at the end, so it is not clear how the confrontation will end.
Meaning of the movie The New Daughter
What the film is about, if you look deeper than a rather primitive plot, you can understand by looking at what is happening from the point of view of Jungian psychology.
Moving to a house far from civilization symbolizes the withdrawal of a person into himself, immersion in the depths of his subconscious. So divorce is a symbol of a break with the whole outside world, with society.
The new home of heroes is also a symbol, a symbol of the human person as such. At first glance, it is beautiful and harmonious, well-designed, it has many rooms that are so exciting to explore, but there is also something that is hidden from the eyes. The protagonist, a creative person, a writer, is exactly like this, internally beautiful and mysterious, he appears to his reader.
But it is interesting here that all the darkness of a new home, a new stage in the development of a person’s personality, is taken over by his child. The writer’s children here are an anthropomorphization of his creations, the books he created. All his inner darkness is infused into his first child, and the second remains unheard, although much more insightful than his creator, the father. This often happens with works of art – some of them sublimate all the pain and fears of their creator, but never defeat them, while others know that trouble is approaching and feels where to expect it, look into the future further than the person who created them, but neither understood nor heard even by them.
The meaning of the ending of the movie The New Daughter
The ending only confirms this psychological theory, the meaning of the ending is that the main character recognizes the presence of his inner monsters, sees them face to face. The exit of the monsters of the mound into the outside world is an act of acceptance of the problem. The viewer will not know if the man defeated the monsters, but he sees that he now knows what to fight with, which means he has a chance.
