Thinking about Naim Reid. Thinking about Naim going to the pastor and his wife. Thinking about Naim going to a police station and coming out to a cop.
Thinking about how the beginning of the movie introduces the idea that he is so fearful — afraid of the snake, afraid of heights, and the threat of the spider. Afraid of his and Ryan’s reflection as they’re making out. He’s so scared, and he’s just a kid, and we see over and over again this childlike trust he has in the people who are supposed to help him.
Why does he go to Hunter’s parents? Obviously there was some aspect of jealously, but Hunter and Ryan were also actively hurting each other. He doesn’t just watch them make out. He watches them pelt each other with fucking rocks and I think it was scary enough for him to regress into the idea that they genuinely needed help.
So, he does what he was raised to do. He asks for help. He watches Hunter get dragged in to the dark and he goes to the cops and he asks for help. He has that nightmare and he asks his mom for help. He’s attacked by an evil entity and he runs into the gas station asking for help and NO ONE IS HELPING HIM. Not the church, not the cops, or Izzy, or his mom.
In the end at the mill, entity Ryan tells him again that they want him to be afraid. Then in the daylight IN THAT SAME PLACE his mom confirms it. She tells him he needs fear. HE ALREADY HAS IT. He was already afraid at the beginning of the movie!!!! He’s been afraid the whole fucking time !!!!
And as my good personal friend Henry Chang once said “If you cannot be unafraid, be afraid and happy.”
So, he stops asking for help. He runs, and Ryan is there, and they cannot be unafraid but they will be happy — and I guess I’ll just be thinking about it for the rest of my life
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