Babak Anwari’s horror film “Wounds” attracted the attention of viewers around the world, entering the big screens in 2019. An unusual plot, excellent acting and a well-created atmosphere of growing fear make Wounds a rather interesting work, the purpose of which is to play on the nerves of the viewer. After a fight in a bar, a young waiter finds a phone that has fallen out of the pocket of a participant in a brawl, after which his life changes dramatically, and not for the better.
The meaning of the film “Wounds”
Sometimes curiosity can play a trick on us. It, like good intentions, can lead a person straight to hell, where the main character of the film, a young charming bartender William, ends up after he witnesses a brutal fight in a food establishment that makes ends meet. Running away after calling the police, one of the visitors of the establishment accidentally loses his phone. The bartender takes the find with him. At home, the hero cracks the password on the phone, after which he begins to receive messages from a certain Harold for help. At first, the man takes it for an ordinary teenage prank and tries to find the owner of the device. However, soon the files sent to the phone become more and more creepy.
Will, rummaging through the phone’s memory, discovers photos of brutally murdered people stored there. In addition to the photo, the man finds on his phone a video from the place of storage of “trophies” – the severed heads of the victims tortured by the maniac. In the background, the voices of a man and a woman are heard, admiring the perfect murders. The guy is trying to get through to one of those with whom he corresponded from the found phone, but attempts to get in touch with friends of the owner of the device failed.
Strange things also begin to happen in the bartender’s house: he becomes more aggressive, hordes of cockroaches move from the bar to him, conflicts with his girlfriend become more frequent, demanding to immediately hand over the phone to the police. On the way to the precinct, the man receives a message announcing that he has been chosen by a certain group for a special cause. He has a seizure, during which the man loses his phone, and as a result, the police, not having received evidence of Will’s words, attribute everything to the bartender’s fantasy.
After visiting the precinct, Will goes to a bar where he meets up with an old friend. They leave for the beach, but she refuses him intimacy, citing a relationship with a guy and reminding Will that he also has a girlfriend. A man takes his girlfriend home, after which he immediately receives a photo from his own apartment. arriving there, he finds his girlfriend watching a strange video and in a dazed state.
That night, in the kitchen, Will meets a mysterious interlocutor with whom he corresponded and who tells the man that he has become part of the ritual. Soon the vision disappears and the bartender wakes up in his own bed, unable to determine whether the meeting was a dream or actually happened. But the misadventures do not end there either: an open wound appears on Will’s body, similar to a hole left after a stab.
Trying to figure out what is happening, Will is looking for information about a stranger and goes to a site dedicated to the occult practices. He recognizes the photo of the book from the video stored on the found phone and follows the link containing the description of the ancient ritual. Soon, a strange photo comes to his phone again: someone is sitting on the bed in Will’s room. The man runs home, where he finds his girlfriend watching the same strange video. The phone continues to receive calls from an unknown number.
After regaining consciousness of his beloved, Will interrogates her who took the photo. The frightened girl denies any involvement in the photo. Will continues to search for information that can shed light on a life-destroying mystery. He breaks up with a girl, leaves work and settles with a friend, after a fight in a bar and the phone was found. Eric (a friend) is in a terrible state: he has an infected wound on his face, and the house is infested with cockroaches. The friend admits that he was following the order of a stranger who asked him to give Will a gift, which turns out to be a phone found in a bar with a message concerning Eric, from the wound of which a certain entity begins to crawl out. Will asks her to enter his mind and allows him to completely absorb himself.
The essence of the film lies in the demonstration of the behavior of a person faced with unknown and dangerous forces. How can a person drawn into someone else’s “game” be able to find a way out of it, and what is he ready to sacrifice in order to return to a quiet life? Why does a change in one area of life so drastically change its entire course (or maybe it only pushes you to realize that everything has changed a long time ago?) and can you resist this by being left alone?
The meaning of the film’s ending
Does darkness really come into a person’s heart from outside? The dark forces pursuing the protagonist seemed to be waiting for the final scene in order to finally reconcile with the man: Will voluntarily agrees to a kind of deal with evil in order to restore the order that he had long been deprived of. In order for the world to have a balance, both good and evil are necessary, the bearers of which are ordinary people.
