1- Alice crashed her car, exited and was struck by another driver and dragged into the woods. Therefore, the parents would have a shared mental breakdown and were feeding off of each other’s delusions. This seems rather unbelievable but it’s a rare phenomena and one of them was the catalyst, likely Maddie since we see at the beginning of the she has an intriguing prescription medication.

2- Playing on the Prescription theory, much of what we see is actually from Maddie’s perspective but not everything we see is true if we consider Frank’s perspective. A big clue here is… yes, Alice shrieks that the face is changing. Near the end of the film, Maddie repeats to Frank what Alice said but Frank insists he has no idea what she is talking about (face changing) which indicates that Maddie is delusional and perhaps the entire film is HER delusion.

Taking these 2 theories into account, assuming Alice crashed her car, exited, called parents, then was hit… why do WE see Alice calling mom and telling her she hit another girl on the road? Perhaps it’s the MDMA and she never hit anyone. She manages to tell mom she’s on Hallow Road. For Maddie to experience delusions, then we must assume at some point that she heard something happen to Alice on the road but WE, as viewers, don’t see this. We are automatically thrust into her headspinning delusions.

3- Another theory I’ve seen is the parents hit Alice, either causing the initial accident. They shared a mental breakdown, drove home and we watch their delusions escalate from here.

4- Changelings & Fae. I do love this theory for a few reasons. I don’t need to elaborate because it seems like we all understood this possible element of surprise. The only clue in the film that does not support this theory is, again, when Frank says “What are you talking about?” to Maddie regarding the face changing statement. This is where things get under your skin…

I want to believe this theory so much that I almost refuse to believe other theories, much like Frank & Maddie want to believe their daughter is alive and that everything that we saw transpiring was really happening. But did this happen? As the strange woman would say, that’s the dilemma in a dilemma.

Let that sink in. The director & writer(s) set everything up perfectly to mindf*k us. Frank & Maddie had dilemmas in dilemmas with choices to make going far beyond the actual fork in the road. As viewers, we were so pulled into making these decisions with them, deciding how to interpret everything and what WE chose to believe. It honestly felt like this movie played out like one of those old Goosebumps books, choose your own ending, where you get to a page and are instructed to head to X or Y page based on the decision you make.

This may or may not have been the directors intention but it’s brilliant!

I don’t think you’re crazy at all. Compared to me you are as right as rain! I actually really like the idea that the French guy, the Indigenous characters, and the UFO nuts may all be encountering the same entity but interpreting it completely differently.

And your “happy ending” theory is fascinating. Maybe Mike saying that actually gave the entity a narrative it didn’t want, so it reset everything to get the outcome it wanted. That would also fit your idea that the entity isn’t simply trying to kill them — it’s manipulating the story itself.

The whole “feeding on suffering/narrative” idea is especially interesting. Alien, spirit, demon, whatever it is, the movie gives us just enough evidence to make all of those interpretations work. I mean – the craziness and ambiguity of Benson and Moorhead’s universe so fantastically compelling.

Love that you are fielding questions in this thread for me! You are definitely hired! The job is yours!

YES! I know exactly what you’re talking about now — and I completely missed that on the first viewing. The pink raincoat is actually a really interesting detail because the two women specifically describe seeing this mysterious woman walking up and down the road and disappearing into the woods, and then we get that brief glimpse of someone who seems to fit the description.

What’s especially interesting is that the credits actually identify Margaret Bixby as “Lady on the Road,” so I don’t think that figure was necessarily just some random person who happened to wander into the shot. But the movie never really gives us a definitive explanation of who she is or what we’re supposed to make of her. I like the possibility that she’s connected to Noelle, though. That’s exactly the kind of tiny, creepy detail Banfitch seems to be planting throughout the movie and then refusing to explain for us.

Now I’m going to have to go back and watch that cemetery scene again!!

I think what you’re getting at is how Cheryl could possibly reconcile with Ronald after discovering that his fake bus-accident story was what got her out of the house the night Matthew was taken. And honestly, I wondered about that too. The important distinction is that Ronald wasn’t knowingly involved in Hayden’s kidnapping. He made up the accident because he had a crush on Cheryl and wanted to manipulate her into coming to the hospital. Hayden’s kidnapping was his own separate scheme. But the show really does just jump over the emotional fallout of that revelation. Eight months later, we’re simply told Cheryl and Ronald have reconciled and have a baby girl. So I don’t think there’s a missing explanation — the show just moves on from it incredibly quickly.