Essay Questions

Why does Dr. Ventress want to go into "The Shimmer"?

Ventress has been working with the government overseeing each person that enters "The Shimmer". She evaluates them in her role as a psychologist prior to their mission, but she chooses to go in. The reason is that she is dying. Her disease is terminal and she wants to go into the anomaly in order to experience life in the fullest way she can imagine, and in the end she is willing to become part of an entity she does not know in order to continue to live, rather than die.

What is one symbolic representation of the meaning behind Lena causing the entity to die?

This film deals with the theme of self destruction. Each character goes through their own version of it. Lena is the only one to survive as the same person from start to finish. She gets a grenade into the grasp of the entity in the lighthouse and causes it to die upon explosion. This is a metaphor for how Lena has found a way to stop her self-destructing behavior and allow the opportunity for life to continue in a real way, without an attempt to distort it or blame anyone else for her destruction.

Why is it not good that Kane woke up from his coma?

Kane went into a coma early on in the story and only wakes up once "The Shimmer" is destroyed. It is not good that he woke up, because the real Kane committed suicide inside the anomaly. Lena found a recording that showed him setting off a phosphorus grenade which claimed his life. We then see in the video that an entity takes the form of Kane, and that is who has awoken from the coma, not the real Kane.