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I just watched this for a second time, as suggested by Mofo Rising, and I'm (again) a bit confused. The main character (Peter) is obviously insane, , and keeps hearing voices, , but were those voices supposed to be MEMORIES, , or just random crap? His mother eludes to him having a good upbringing, , but the voices suggest an abusive one, as does the covering of the mirrors and the self-mutilation. Also, the detective seemed just about as crazy as Peter was, , beating on his car, firing the shotgun in the end. . . It seems one point of the movie was that the daughter we going to have problems also.

I haven't seen this since it first came out on video, but my impression is that the director intended to put you inside the head of the schizophrenic main character.  So, if you're confused--if you have difficulty sorting out what is real and what is "just random crap"--then he succeeded.  That's what Peter's everyday life is like; a constant struggle to separate reality from the voices in his head.  In a way, figuring out the "real" story is beside the point.  I remember it as a very good movie, though not exactly a pleasant one.  I want to see it again some day.

I haven't seen this movie since it originally came out on VHS.  I'm still split on what was real and what was just in his head. I'm going to have to check it out again on dvd to see what my opinion of it still is. I remember really liking the performances but having some issues with it from a narrative angle.

Yeah, a lot of the scenes were staged from inside Peter's head. Witness the scene in the library, where the voices and noise in Peter's head build to a dizzying crescendo, and then from another angle we see Peter banging his head against the card catalog in an otherwise quiet library.

Hearing voices is common for a lot of schizophrenics. It's also quite common for these voices to extremely negative and to make potentially destructive suggestions, such as self-mutilation. So they wouldn't be memories, just products of malfunctioning mind. We're left to decide about his childhood. I'd venture to say his mother sure as hell didn't seem like a very loving woman. An abusive upbringing is not always the cause of schizophrenia, sometimes it just happens. Alternately, Peter may remember his upbringing as sadistic because his sense of reality is incredibly skewed.

The narrative is quite unreliable, and at some points misleading. I don't think you could positively state that Peter wasn't the killer, although it seems like he isn't. Perhaps the detective is there to point out that "sane" people can be just as dangerous and illogical as the insane.

All-in-all, a superb look at schizophrenia from the inside and out.

This is actually one of my favs. I think the director did a decent job of portraying schizophrenia in a generalized way.

I think I need to watch it again, , I'm not sure what I was thinking in my original post, I hadn't seen it TWICE, only once. I think I started to post about another movie and that A.D.D thing got in the way  :bouncegiggle:

It took a second viewing of Cronenberg's "Spider" for me to like it, and now I think it's a great movie.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_29fnrF-s-8