Welcome to the Heavy Spoilers show, I’m your host Deffinition and you’re now locked into the channel where we breakdown all the latest movie news, games, tv shows and comics. This episode we’re going over the new Netflix Horror Movie: Wounds, starring Armie Hammer and Zazie Beetz.
Throughout this, we’ll be breaking down everything that you need to know about the film including the major plot points, curse and ending.
There will be Heavy Spoilers here, so if you haven’t had a chance to watch Wounds yet and don’t want to know what happens at the end then I highly recommend that you turn off now.
With that out the way, thank you for clicking this, now let’s get into our breakdown of Wounds.
Wounds Plot Recap
We follow Will, a bartender that works at a run down and cockroach-infested bar known as Rosie’s in New Orleans. Will spends most of his time on the job hanging out with Alicia and her boyfriend Jeffrey as well as a man named Eric who gets pretty aggressive when drunk. One night a fight breaks out in which Eric gets stabbed in the cheek with a broken bottle and all hell breaks loose in the bar. A group of college students who are also at the location film the incident on their phone and after the fight spills over into where they are sitting, they quickly leave.
When everything quietens down, Will discovers their phone, takes it home and so begins the curse of Wounds. After unlocking it he begins to recieve strange messages from a boy named Garrett who says he’s being followed by some thing and though Will casts the phone aside, he awakens the next morning to find more messages, including one that shows a photo of teeth in a puddle of blood.
Will drops his girlfriend, Carrie, off at college and he begins to suspect that she is cheating on him. From the interactions that we see between the two it’s clear that they aren’t really compatible with each other. Carrie seems to mock Will about his job as a bartender and we get the impression that he is very much stuck in a toxic relationship and meaningless career that is leading him to be unhappy a lot of the time.
A Growing Infection
Will visits Eric to discover that the wound on his face is starting to become infected but he refuses to have any treatment. After receiving another message from the students telling him to inspect the phone once more he notices some photos of a severed heads and a video of one being surrounded by corpses that seeming has a hand pop out of one of the wounds in it. Will shows this to his girlfriend and in the back of a photo they notice a book labeled ‘The Translation Of Wounds.’ After calling Garrett and hearing nothing but screeching, strange things begin to happen, including shadows that appear and disappear in their apartment and horrifying hallucinations that haunt Will. Will gets rid of the phone but that doesn’t stop the curse which now has itself fixated on the character.
It’s a pretty interesting premise and though I feel like Wounds fails slightly in it’s execution of delivering adequate answers, there’s still somethings that are part of the film that definitely have the creep factor.
Wounds Curse Explained
Now before we get into the rest of the plot, I’m just going to discuss what the curse is, how it works and why certain things happen in the movie. We learn that the students have been dabbling in the occult and that they have brought forth something terrible from practicing the things laid out in The Translation Of Wounds.
The book which the movie is based on, named The Visible Filth by Nathan Ballingrud, describes The Translation Of Wounds as an ancient belief system that requires it’s followers to reject the material world in order to have a deeper connection with the spirit realm. In this spirit realm exists a Dark God that call forth creatures known as Aeons that can interact with humans and act as a bridge between the two dimensions.
Garrett and co were studying this and through the books and research online they tried some of the rituals out, summoning creatures forth through wounds that act as portals. This is why they were carrying out the rituals on decapitated heads and so on as they need something that was once living or is still alive in order for it to work. The ceremonies can only exist through pain and flesh and this is why they become fixated on Will, Eric and so on.
We’ll get into what happens later on in the film but the movie becomes very much about Will accepting and embracing this ideology after his life begins to fall apart or rather improves, depending on how you look at it. Will is informed by one of the kids that he has been chosen and they slowly begin to stalk him. In addition to this Will hallucinates cockroaches almost everywhere and they slowly begin to infest his life.
Failed Romances
After making a move on Alicia saying that he wants them to be together. This is rejected because Alicia says that she still loves Jeffrey and Will ends up going back to his car where he receives a strange message from Carrie that further pushes his paranoia.
Will also hallucinates Garret in his home who informs him that he is seen as the perfect vessel.
Carrie and Will get more and more distant and his hallucinations increase. He also gets in a fight with Jeffrey over the Alicia incident and after receiving more strange messages from Carrie he goes home to discover her transfixed on something on the computer. She’s completely unresponsive and only after almost drowning her does he manage to get her out of this state.
The next day the two break up and Will calls Alicia repeatedly who after ignoring him multiple times, eventually tells him to stop. Will breaks down, goes on a bender and quits his job after getting into an argument with Rosie. After receiving a message he goes to Erics and tells him that he needs a place to stay but Eric says that the college kids broke in and made him lure Will there. They said to give him a present and Eric leads Will to his room where he finds the phone and they say that his gift is wrapped in flesh. Will realises that the kids broke in, performed the ritual on Eric’s wound and he calls Garrett to initiate the screeching sound which completes the ritual and allows the creature to crawl forth. Will, embracing the fact that his life is pretty meaningless, submits to the higher power and allows himself to become a vessel and hold on a second what the hell just happened?
Wounds Ending Explained
Ok so I’m gonna try and explain this as best as I can.
Throughout the film, we have just watched Will beat from pillar to post both mentally, physically and spiritually. By the end of the film, the guy has lost it all and is in a really bad state. Will is an alcoholic, doesn’t really have friends outside of customers and is probably being cheated on by his girlfriend who doesn’t really have a very high opinion. When the students call him the perfect vessel they mean because the guy is pretty built, like who remembers when he was cast as Batman in the failed George Miller Justice League movie?
I do!
It’s also because he is also someone who will likely submit to the creature because things aren’t exactly going his way.
In the case of Garrett, he was probably not willing to submit and was killed for it and thus the students decided to pass the curse over to Will who was far more likely to give in by the end.
Carrie remarks to Will at one point that he has become hollow, simply going through the motions of his job and this builds the picture in his mind that he is the perfect candidate to be taken over.
The Meaning Of The Cockroaches
Now throughout the movie, Will is constantly haunted by cockroaches and on a metaphorical level, these represent the stale surroundings that he has become involved in as well as the fact that the Aeon is slowly starting to take him over.
In the end due to the collapse of his relationship, the rejection by Alicia, the loss of his home and job he just ends up giving in because if he is part of something better then that will surely be an improvement over the circumstances that he is currently in.
Now, though the film might end negatively in some people’s eyes it actually has a more positive meaning behind it once you scratch the surface. Wounds is about improving your life and it carries the message of getting rid of the things that are holding you back. Whether this is a toxic relationship that makes you paranoid and jealous or a dead-end job that isn’t really going anywhere, Wounds says that if you lose these things that there may be something better at the end of the rainbow.
Now whilst I admit, it’s not really presented in this way, due to the amount of cockroaches and things popping out of people’s faces, Wounds overall leaves Will with something that will give his life meaning and hopefully take him out of the never-ending monotony of his life. Though the film cuts just as things get interesting, we do know that the character has become something new, no longer held back by the trappings of mediocrity and he will have something to live for.
Just don’t come anywhere near me with that book bruh and we good.
Wounds Movie Review
But what did I think of Wounds overall? Well whilst the premise and message behind the movie are interesting, I feel that Wounds falls flat slightly in its execution and though Will leads a very monotonous life, that doesn’t mean that the viewer should be subjected to it either. Wounds has a really interesting backstory and subtext but none of this really makes it’s way to the screen and because of the lack of many things that I mentioned not being present in the film, it makes watching it slightly boring.
Now the book is definitely worth picking up if this video has piqued your interest but if you don’t have knowledge of it then I can imagine a lot of this movie seemingly pointless and underdeveloped.
Wounds is ok but it doesn’t do anything spectacular and when compared to Netflix’s other film release last weekend, Eli, it pales in comparison.
Overall I doubt I’ll ever go back to Wounds and I’ll probably have forgotten what happens in it by the end of this sentence so it gets a…
4/10
Wait what were we talking about?
Your Thoughts
Now obviously I’d love to hear your thoughts on Wounds and what you took from the film and Will’s downward or upward spiral. Comment below and let me know!
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