Review of Sucker Punch (2011) by Jose C — 17 Aug 2013

As a viewer you have a choice as too how much of the asylum world is real. The only scene that involves her real sister is the one where her stepfather learns that the departed mother left her fortune to her daughters. I've decided that much of the story is real including her being taken away in a squad car. The asylum is not. The therapist is her Mom & the wise man is her real Dad. The asylum & girls are her first fantasy world. The girls represent different sides of her self, & the wicked men in the story are different sides of her step father.

I have no doubt some sexual abuse occured in that home while the Mom was alive because this early teen has a too well developed understanding of both sexuality & the men in both the asylum & brothel worlds to simply be something she imagines there. The fact that virginity is mentioned leaves me to believe the abuse did not go that far. She does not imagine any form of masturbation either so I don't believe it went that far. That leaves the fetish clothing, touching, & kissing as depicted in the film. Likewise, her fantasies don't depict things past the advent of the Vietnam War so the real world time is early 1960?s. Even the robots & train sequence are reminscent of things from Star Trek or films of that period.

She is initially traumatized when shooting the gun & seeing her sister lying in a pool of blood but that is not how her sister (Rocket) dies in her fantasy. She dies at the hands of the Cook. The Cook is symbolic of that nature of her step father. By that time in her reconciling of events she believes he killed her with the knife he approached them with in the house that night. All of the fantasies involving imagery of steam, the light bulb, lead her to that truth. When Rocket dies she no longer feels directly responsible for her sister's death but that in turn brings on a strong sense of having betrayed her for leaving her to her stepfather that night. That is evident in what takes place at the end of the brothel.

The film then represents something of chains holding the girl down. The first is guilt over the sister's death & the second is guilt over having left her sister to die at the hands of the stepfather. The escape of Sweet Pea is a sign she has mentally & emotionally freed herself of those chains. Her knowledge of asylums, labotomies, etc. leads me to believe her mother was a wealthy psychiatrist of that period.

When Sweet Pea gets on the bus, not only are the different sides of herself gone but so are the different sides of the step father. This leads me to believe all of this happened in her mind while sitting in the squad car enroute to the police station. How she arrives at the asylum has a lot of loose ends which is why it must be fantasy. There is no mention of an arrest, an investigation, a trial, or even a judge's decision. There is no mention of her crimes even until near the end when her mom role recounts the events to the labotomist. That is why I believe it's all fantasy. Reality ends with her in the squad car.

If you accept all that, then ask yourself do you want a happy ending or a sad ending? The sad ending is that the sense of justice at the end involving the King pin orderly & his ratting out the stepfather is entirely her own. Her fate is inevitably to wind up at an asylum for attempted murder of her stepfather & 2nd degree murder of her sister. The happy ending is that the sense of justice is shaped in part by conversations of cops in the car. If the cops are thinking the step father abused them & killed her sister, then regaining her sanity will provide crucial testimony to that fact & he will likely hang. I have chosen the happy ending as it makes the most sense to me & leaves me with the best sense of satisfaction with the film.

Snyder failed to provide a stronger connection to her real life & her fantasy worlds & that's why the film failed at both the box office & with critics. It would have done him well to have watched The Sixth Sense before to understand what it takes to deliver a great sucker punch ending for the audience. There are similarities between the films in that both Willis' & Browning's chars have rejected the reality of their lives as the result of a severe trauma. The films are essentially journeys to face those realities again. Sense builds those connections through flashbacks & a stronger bond with his guide.