(Oct 5, 2023 ● Oslin Pierrette)
Woah, wtf, this was some heavy stuff. Really great movie though.
You’re working a case as a defense attorney. A sexual assault/rape case of a child by a teacher. You’re defending the teacher. It’s your job, you’re just doing your job, this is what it entails. Gotta do what you gotta do to feed yourself and family. Protect your record, because that’s a huge part of your currency as a lawyer. So you have to go up there and defend an accused rapist/sexual abuser. Make this an innocent man, and free to walk the world. It’s your job as a defense attorney. What else are you supposed to do? This is where the movie starts. You have a heavily emotional kid on the stand, and you have to prove, or at least cause a reasonable doubt that what she is claiming isn’t true. It’s your job.
But then you start to see the weird predatory mannerisms of the person you’re defending, clear signs that he did do what he’s accused of. That he is that monster. You feel the weight of the world now. You consciously see your options, aware of both of them. Either I do my job, defend my client, and knowingly make a rapist/sexual abuser, a free man to be free to do whatever he wants. Make an abused child have to go out there in the world, with the pain she has gone through, as heinous as that was, and feel that there is nothing to be done for that. Or either you can drop this case, and not defend this man you believed to be a monster and a rapist. It’s your choice.
Kevin, the lawyer gets reminded that he will lose his perfect lawyer record, and that invigorates him. He goes out there and gives a great defense, by badgering and gaslighting a little kid, and you feel every second of the wrongness of his actions. You feel the knowingness of the freeing of a rapist, and pain of the little victim, pouring pounds of salt on her viscously heinous wounds. And if you have a conscience, you’re thinking how can somebody do this and live with this. But Kevin is in the zone, and he pushes her into causing reasonable doubt. And frees the rapist.
He goes on to celebrate with his firm and wife. While they douse themselves in liquor which you feel is needed for the moment, after those events, to drown any other noise out or guilt. You still think how can one do this, and how are those people cheering for him. These can’t be actions that one can go on and live peacefully. But Kevin and his wife do a good job and go on to live their lives. While obliterating others, just doesn’t seem fair. There’s no order and balance in this world if that is true.
It was a big case though, it caught the eyes of “big boys”, over in NY. Kevin gets a tremendous opportunity and takes it, people see where the likes of Kevin can be useful. And in exchange, Kevin is being offered the high life. Full-on luxury of anything he can want. The high status, the women, he can have it all. Kevin and his wife Mary Ann, just living it up, being heavily seduced into that world, also without any guilt in the world from their past.
Mary Ann was starting to feel uncomfortable with the lifestyle. She couldn’t properly get acclimated with it. She started to see demonic visions, and you’re starting to see karma was coming back for her. And it turns into this complete downward spiral. She couldn’t escape the voice of her guilt, also the visions of it. It’s hard to look in the mirror. It was hard for her to deal with herself, she pleaded for Kevin to stay by her side as much as she could. But he was fixated on The Life. He had a better time of silencing the guilt and brushing it and her to the side.
Mary Ann is going further down her spiral, starting to become “crazy”. She is being eaten alive by her guilt. She understands that she was playing with the devil and starting to pay the prices for it. She needs help. What can be done to cure her of this. And maybe this is just her consequence she has to live with. She just pleads that Kevin be by her side through this. But he picked up a triple homicide case. High pressure case. He can only choose one. He’s being told that a loss isn’t the worst, maybe he should comfort her and be by her side. And he feels he would resent her if she got better and he lost the case. He’s fully focused on this case. But his gut is saying that his client he is defending is truly a murdering monster. But he still works the case, and pushes his spiraling wife to the side, completely disregards her. He goes on to win the case. And she has fully lost all sanity that sends her to the hospital.
Mary Ann has to be fully sedated to the point of being in a completely other world. She has to numb all feelings, and be restrained. She can’t live with a conscience, it’s not possible with the guilt she owns. When she is shown a mirror of her own image from the nefarious women. She saw the demonic images in the reflection again. The demonic voices and images have disrupted her again. So to silence it all, she ends it.
You don’t get to outlive the pain that you caused in others, or are complicit in. That pain comes back to constantly disrupt you on a spiritual level. Especially if you still want to bare a spirit and a soul. You don’t get to have it all, you must pick a side. Picking both sides is basically picking a tainted consciousness and soul to live with. Crazy disastrous living, basically what Mary Ann was experiencing.
Kevin is starting to see it all. The “gift”, really the advantage that was his blissfulness was starting to fade. The veil was coming down. And the guilt was starting to creep in. His karma was starting to catch up to him. He couldn’t avoid the consequences of his actions like before. Especially seeing the truth of what the karma and guilt has done to his wife, she wasn’t crazy, she just couldn’t deal with it all, and Kevin left her on that guilty & crazy island alone. You’re starting to see the fairness and balance in life. You don’t just get to do whatever heinous actions to put you over and ahead in life. Yeah, you get to have the world, but your soul is the price that the devil takes, when you bargain and play the devil’s game. You will become one of the Devil’s advocates, an incarnate, a humanoid. You will strip the humanity you have left in you. You are accepting you will burn in hell, that it’s inevitable you are rolling downhill into your eternal demise. And with that understanding you will live your most pleasurable hedonistic lifestyle on Earth.
That’s what the last part of the movie gets into. Kevin finds out he’s the son of the guy who’s the head of this construct, Milton. Who basically is satan or the devil himself, you see this is what they try to portray when his finger boils in the holy water, and he laughs, because Milton fully accepts his fate and lifestyle. They meet face to face with levels of dialogue I’ve never seen before. Speaking directly to the devil, or close to it. Kevin’s just asking why, why he’s making him and all these people do these evil things. And Milton simply tells him, he doesn’t have that power. He can only set the stage. He can only put women in your face. He can only offer you the high life & luxury. He can only offer you whatever you want, in exchange for whatever heinous acts. But he can’t make the decisions for you. The temptations just feel so strong that it feels like you’re getting pushed into all these things. Milton even at one point told Kevin, losing the case isn’t the end of the world, go be with his wife. And Kevin was the one who wanted to win, showing Kevin he was the driver in all the heinous decisions he was making. He saw the free will of his actions. The guilt was starting to set in, but Milton was telling him to drop the guilt, it’s useless weight to hold. What’s the point of it? He starts persuading to be with the devil, and he was making a scarily great case. Calling God the biggest prankster, a sadist.
“Let me give you a little inside information about God. God likes to watch. He’s a prankster. Think about it. He gives man instincts. He gives you this extraordinary gift, and then what does He do, I swear for His own amusement, his own private, cosmic gag reel, He sets the rules in opposition. It’s the goof of all time. Look but don’t touch. Touch, but don’t taste. Taste, don’t swallow. Ahaha. And while you’re jumpin’ from one foot to the next, what is he doing? He’s laughin’ His sick, f***in’ ass off. He’s a tight-ass. He’s a sadist. He’s an absentee landlord. Worship that? Never.”
And you think about it, it’s like yeah, it does feel like God wants us to suffer for God’s blessing. While Satan says you can taste and eat what you see, you can have what you want, you can indulge in your temptations, satisfy your thirst and cravings. Devil is pictured as an evil guy, when he’s just the guy by your shoulder simply offering you all the pleasures humanly possible, “no strings attached”. And it’s this bargain between Satan and your belief of needing to be a good person in life. It’s a great illustration of what bargaining with the devil is like. So you can have all you want in the world, and that’s it. Yes, but you must let go of love and give up your soul. You can’t have it all. Love comes with empathy, guilt, and compassion. And those heinous actions will have you buried in guilt, strip you of your sanity, when you’re wanting to live a life with love and soul, you have to drop your soul to free yourself of those “burdens”. And that is the bargain with the devil. Choose paradise and hedonism on Earth, that will result in your inevitable demise, accepting Hell. Or you can not be hedonistic, be a righteous person who wants to do right in the world, and put the work in to obtain the beauties of the world. In Kevin getting the final understanding, he shoots himself in his head. He knows he can’t accept the devil, but also knows his actions have been too heinous, and unforgivable to live. That’s the choice you have to make by the time you make it through the devil’s doorstep. To get there, you probably have to do actions on unredeemable levels, where that door to leave the devil’s lair closes behind you. So now achieving love, or bearing a soul is not a viable option. Choosing the Devil is seemingly the only option. Or you can choose what Kevin did, instead of going down that undeserving and meaningless lifestyle, just end it.
Greatly diminishing Milton or “satan”. Kevin was Milton’s strongest host to siphon from, and the parasite lost its strongest host. A parasite that built an extremely strong system and defense mechanism. Set a very persuasive stage to seduce Kevin under his rule of Hedonism. Kevin was seduced and Milton(satan) was able to strengthen his defense mechanism while Kevin was distracted by vanity. And before he knew it, he was fully entrapped in the Devil’s Lair, with the door closed behind him. Milton(satan) is at full power, or feels close to it, smooth sailing the rest of the way. The parasite has grown to full power basically. A full thriving structure that parasite can feed off of. The parasitic devil has won the war. Until Kevin, the strongest host, entrapped in the devil’s lair. Shoots himself in the head. Immediately disintegrating a major portion of the parasitic structure. Diminishing satan’s power tremendously. Parasite can’t live without the host. So the parasite has to architect a way and system to make the host do things that promotes the growth and then the power of the parasite. Even though this parasitical system has grown to this seemingly all-powerful mechanism that Kevin is under, that he feels he’s feeding off of. Once Kevin removes himself, it destroys a lot of the systematic power that the parasite once had. The parasite needed and was actually feeding off you the whole time. They need you a host, can’t live without it, not the other way around.
That’s where I felt the movie should’ve ended but they brought him back to that initial courtroom that started all of this. And he chooses to do the right thing. He loses his perfect record, he may get disbarred, but he gets to walk out without the guilty conscience, and with dignity. He gets offered to do big time media interviews, to share his voice, which can make him a star for the brave decision he made. But he turns it down, and I liked that part, because it illustrates, you have to constantly put the work in for good and righteousness. The Devil is always creeping around trying to get you to his lair.
But back to bargaining with the devil though. How people do these heinous actions to achieve worldly pleasures. You see these types of people replicated all around the world. A growing epidemic of this satanic disease. Where people are giving up working for good, and bargaining with the devil, for more instantly gratifying pleasures. Who will disregard the well-being of humanity to support their own selfish vanity. And it gets scary how common these people are placed in impactful positions of well-being. The world is surrounded by a system of devil and hell. It feels like the devil is winning over the world. And his advocates are growing this destruction and demise of humanity. Their flames are growing, they are burning the world down, and accepting the hell of it. The parasitical structure is growing to unstoppable levels, irreparable levels. And they are recruiting at exponentially high rates, and disguising their power and face in more innocent manners, growing the devil’s range of power even more. Just look at what Kevin does to the victims, disregard their pain, and free the monster to cause more heinous actions in the world. That aspect is in every system. Pharmaceuticals, food, health, shelter, media. These people who head these companies are more than likely Devil’s Advocates. Their actions are purely for their vanity, their own self interests, and it completely disregards the people’s well-being. To the point where it gets sadistic. And these are the people who run the systems that are supposed to be for the public’s well-being, they manipulate the image like they are for the people, while siphoning all the wealth for themselves. We are in a dark burning world, and we have to find out how to take away these humanoids, and the devil advocates flames, or they will destroy the world, or at least humanity.
Great movie. Also there was a heavy horror aspect to it, that complemented the devil and demonic themes so well.