I thought the sudden return of the monster was really effective because of how it upended narrative conventions and audience expectations. And to do it twice in such a short span of time was even more impressive because, perhaps it’s just me but because so much of the exchange between Violet and her husband was done without words, I had to make sense of the stares they were sharing and the meaning of the tender moment they had right before she kills him. And for a moment I actually caught myself thinking that, maybe he thought she had been kidnapped instead of having chosen to run away? Maybe that’s why he killed that whole family of carnival folk?
But when she sliced open his neck I was reminded that this is also the man who raped her and that I’d just been trying to rationalize his actions the way a woman caught in an abusive relationship suffering from Stockholm Syndrome might try to rationalize or romanticize her captor’s actions. Creepy. Creepy but effective.
It just made me realize how strong the pull and desire for a happy ending is that we’d take any man, even a monster, in order to reach that end.
I’m not entirely sure if this is the doing of the film or just my own, highly solipsistic reaction to what was happening on screen, but one thing was definitely clear about the character and about the film’s message – Violet wasn’t getting out of this abusive relationship by relying on anyone else other than herself. And the way to do that was not to fight the monster head on, or to live by someone else’s rules, but to use those rules to her advantage like when she plays the submissive wife to get the monster to turn his back so she could slit his throat.