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Eli (2019)

At the time of the Netflix release, there was so much hype behind this movie. Because of all the positive feedback, and how scary viewers said the movie was. With that being said, I wanted to judge for myself and see if the movie lived up to the positive commentary. To be honest, I enjoyed most of the first half of the movie. Even up until the ending, I thought it had an interesting concept. There were several moments in the film where I was thinking to myself, “what’s going on?” There are a lot of films like Shutter Island where the plot twist in the end works, and allows the viewer to think back and see how each step in the film logically led up to that ending. To me this was not one of those films where the plot twist was successful. As the film begins, we learn about our protagonist, Eli. Eli wears what looks like a space suit and lives in a bubble, because his immune system is too fragile to handle the air. The beginning scene where some local hicks attack Eli and create a hole in his suit was nerve wracking, and showed us the severity of Eli’s disease. He immediately started choking and his skin quickly broke out in terrible hives. Charlie Shotwell’s acting was great within that scene and throughout the movie especially being that he is only 10 years old. 

Eli and his family then travel to a special hospital which resembled a creepy haunted house. It looked like one of
The Conjuring movies could be shot there. The mansion was completely sterile, so Eli was able to breathe throughout the place. The doctor and her assistants were strange from the jump and made Eli and his parents stay in separate rooms. The treatment was experimental, but Eli’s father had researched the doctor and informed his family that the doctor had several successful cases and she would be able to cure Eli. The hospital looking like a horror movie mansion gave off the impression that something would be wrong with the doctor and the procedures.

The procedures were intense and caused Eli’s illness to worsen before it got better. That itself was horrifying to me, but one of the side effects was that Eli would be delusional and have nightmares. At this point in the film, I thought that the horror aspect of it would be Eli’s nightmares and how he can’t handle them. Or, as the film took a paranormal turn, maybe the ghosts he’s seeing could be real. Since we are following Eli as the viewer, would we be able to trust what we see on screen if Eli’s delusion/ nightmares worsen? This was the most interesting thing about the film to me.

One of the characters introduced was a girl Haley, played by Sadie Sink. Her character came out of nowhere with not too much explanation. As an actor, I thought she was great. But as a character, I didn’t really like her. She informs us that the doctor doesn’t like her and that there were several kids in Eli’s place, but she never sees them after the final stages in their operations. Later in the film Eli starts seeing ghost children. 

The ghost children were interesting to me, because it led us to think– should Eli trust the children who are making themselves known to him? Or, are they out to get him? Especially with the scene where the ghost children try to drag him out of the hospital. That left me wondering if they want him to leave the hospital and get away from the doctor, or if they want to kill him by having the outside forces affect him. I was still enjoying the film at this point, and I felt that a lot of moments left the viewer on the edge of their seat. There were a lot of questions that I wanted answers to.

Towards the end of the film, we find out that the ghost children were real and they were failed test subjects of the doctor’s experiments. They were trying to tell Eli to leave the hospital, so he doesn’t end up like them. We also find out that Eli’s father knew this all along and didn’t tell Eli’s mother that the experiments had all failed. Seeing the big reveal and what the parents would do with this knowledge left me wanting to see how the ending played out. But the ending of the film left me confused and disappointed. 

I felt that if the film had stuck to one plot it could’ve been really great. For example, if we found out that Eli had to stop the experiments and leave before he died as a test subject. And, that Eli was just very sick it would’ve been more interesting to me. But, in the end we find out that Eli is the spawn of Satan. The doctors have been just injecting him with holy water this whole time. The entire time this has just been one big exorcism. Eli’s face contorts and he looks more demonic as he realizes his true power and burns all the doctors to death telekinetically. It left me shocked, but not in a good way. 

The last scene also, Haley all the sudden joins Eli and demands Eli’s mother to take them to Satan. Now Eli is threatening his mother and forcing her to do as he wishes. The movie ends as they embark on this road trip to see Satan. It was weird. Are they going to hell? How are they getting to Satan by car? I thought it could’ve been more successful if they had the supernatural element only being the ghosts of the dead children. Who would open Eli’s eyes to the failed experiments, and he’d somehow have to leave the hospital. I thought the exorcism ending came out of nowhere and it ruined the film for me.

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