Solomon Gray’s We’re Not Safe Here, starring Sharmita Bhattacharya and Hayley McFarland, is a horror of anticipation. Neeta, a schoolteacher and an artist, was going through an existential crisis. She was stuck in a loop where she held the brush, stared at her canvas, and tried her best to focus, but she couldn’t. Her colleague, Sarah, noticed how sleepy Neeta looked when they went to grab a couple of drinks after school. She assumed Neeta was struggling with artist’s block, but Neeta felt it was not just that; she felt anxious and doubted her artistic abilities. Sarah’s words of reassurance didn’t help much. Neeta went back home and found herself stuck in the same routine, and she stabbed her canvas in frustration. Her life turned upside down when she received a call from her colleague, Rachel. She had been absent from school for quite some time, and Neeta was worried about her. Rachel explained that she’d been dealing with a difficult situation, and she wanted to meet Neeta to discuss everything. It was late, but Neeta could sense the urgency in Rachel’s voice, so she didn’t mind her coming over.
Spoiler Alert
What was Rachel’s actual motive?
After Rachel arrived at Neeta’s house, she told her about the strange voices she often heard and the terrifying hallucinatory episodes she experienced. This was not the first time Rachel had gone through something like this. During her childhood days, her best friend, Lily, told her about an incident that had unfolded in their neighborhood some fifty or sixty years back. An innocent little girl repeatedly stabbed her mother while she was asleep. She ripped up her mother’s clothes and covered her face with a pillowcase so that she didn’t have to witness what was about to unfold. The little girl dragged her mother across the house; even though theoretically it should’ve been impossible, she somehow managed to do it (suggesting the presence of a supernatural force), and she stuffed her mother into the closet. The closet was extremely significant in this case, because apparently the little girl had been talking to her invisible friend in the closet for quite some time, and he’d asked her to introduce him to her mother. When the cops arrived, the mother and the daughter were inside the closet, and the little girl was brushing her mother’s blood-soaked hair while talking to the invisible entity. The mother died enroute to the hospital. Lily had apparently learned about the incident from her dead grandmother the previous night. Nothing really made sense to Rachel anymore, and she remembered feeling extremely terrified and alert. Rachel decided to head home, but she noticed that Lily had taken another route, and instead of going home, they showed up at the house where the incident had taken place.
Rachel noticed a photograph of her and Lily on their bikes taken a few moments before they’d arrived at the house. The photograph looked old and faded, yet it was obvious that it was taken just a while back because they were wearing the same clothes. The strangest part was that Lily’s head in the photograph was covered with a pillowcase. Rachel immediately knew that they were in danger and that they had to leave the house. She remembered Lily’s terrified face; her pupils were dilated, and she simply whispered the word “listen.” But Rachel couldn’t hear anything, and that was when Lily pointed at the closet, suggesting that the noise was coming from there. Rachel walked to the closet, and when she pulled the door open, she felt a rush of air, and she completely froze. She snapped out of it after she heard Lily gasp, and she knew that Lily saw something that she didn’t, and it left Lily horrified. Rachel heard some whispers, and they ended up running out of the house, and they rode their bikes until they were completely worn out. Rachel had asked Lily what she’d seen at the house, but she didn’t respond. Rachel had Lily promise to discuss it the next day, but the next morning Lily didn’t show up. Lily and her mother just vanished; their house was untouched, and no one knew where they’d gone.
While at first it seemed Rachel chose to discuss her vivid hallucinations with Neeta because she was a patient listener, as we progressed towards the end, it became evident that Rachel had a very clear goal. It’s impossible to tell if the story she’d told Neeta was based on true events, considering her memory wasn’t really reliable, but there was no denying that she was being haunted by spirits. Since we don’t really have any other perspective, trusting what she’d told Neeta is the only way to make sense of what happened later in the film. Rachel had mentioned that after moving out of her hometown to pursue higher education, the hallucinations had stopped, and the haunting memories had grown distant. She was living her life joyfully when suddenly it all came back to her. She remembered a woman with red hair waving at her from the corner of a bar. When Rachel walked up to her, she leaned in and whispered that ‘He’ liked her and asked her if she was curious about him. She wrote down an address on a napkin and handed it over to Rachel. She gradually realized that the woman was Lily; while years had passed, she remembered the red hair. She wanted to confirm, but Lily had disappeared. She remembered seeing an elderly lady outside the bar, and when she asked her about the red-haired girl, she just smiled and told Rachel to “keep praying.”
Now, Rachel had mentioned documenting her thoughts in her diary, and when Neeta started to hallucinate as well that night, she searched for answers in the diary. She found the address Rachel had mentioned, and she decided to go there in the middle of the night. Neeta could also hear the whispers, particularly ‘His’ voice, and felt the urgency to know how she was connected to the whole mystery. She bravely entered the house on Essex Road. It was abandoned, and Neeta heard constant whispers all around her. Things started to get intense as she went near the closet. When she opened it, she found a blood-stained pillowcase and a photograph of her and Rachel. For a few seconds Neeta felt as if she was trapped in the closet, and the whispers started to consume her. But she managed to break free, and she ran out of the house and sat in her car. She experienced a severe episode. It was almost as if someone had taken possession of her body. She imagined being held captive by an elderly woman, who repeatedly told Neeta to “keep praying.” After a few seconds she snapped out of the episode, and she headed home. When she returned home and accused Rachel of intentionally leaving the photograph in the closet, Rachel sheepishly admitted that she didn’t have a choice.
We’re Not Safe Here’s ending suggests that ‘He’ was the demon, and whenever someone entered the closet or went near it, the demon took complete control of them. At the very beginning of the film, a mother with a blood-stained pillowcase on her head was held captive by her daughter; this scene illustrated the story that Lily had told Rachel. The demon communicated with the little girl through the cabinet, and ‘He’ used the girl to get to her mother. Was the devil bloodthirsty or desperate to find devoted followers? Possibly both. The whereabouts of the little girl were not known. Maybe she was someone from Lily’s family? Or perhaps Lily was simply curious, and she went to the abandoned house where the devil in the form of her dead grandmother told her the story. Lily was possibly instructed by the devil to bring her friend (Rachel) to the house, and unknowingly she had passed the curse on. The fact that Lily showed up years later and asked Rachel to head to the abandoned house suggested that the demon was not done with her. She tried to escape from it, but she realized that there was no way she could fight it. So, she’d ultimately surrendered. The demon needed a new victim, someone he could use to spread the darkness, and Rachel chose Neeta for it. So, who was the elderly woman? It might be the little girl from the story. She’d mentioned that Neeta’s eyes looked just like her mother’s, hinting at the possible connection. All of the demon’s victims/worshippers were connected somehow, and once the demon took over their bodies, they could never go back to their usual lives. One could kill themselves to escape their torment, but maybe their soul was never really set free. The demon took it from them, and they were turned into mere puppets, doing exactly what he told them to. Also, as I’ve stated before, there’s no guarantee that Rachel had told Neeta the truth. Maybe it was Rachel who’d heard the story and was being tormented by the demon when she lured Lily to the abandoned house and offered her to the demon. Perhaps later, Lily tracked her down and ensured that she continued to live in constant torment. We don’t really get to find out if, after making an offer to the demon, the person could go back to their normal lives. Did they form an underground cult? Maybe!
What did the photograph suggest?
Rachel was disappointed when Neeta returned home unharmed. She repeatedly asked her if she’d seen someone in the abandoned house, and since she didn’t respond, Rachel assumed that she was spared. But she couldn’t really make sense of the situation. She was under the assumption that once she offered Neeta to the demon, the constant whispers and visions would gradually go away. But she wasn’t sure anymore. Rachel had mentioned that after she crossed paths with Lily at the bar, she’d found herself in front of the abandoned house, and the photograph that Neeta found confirmed that Rachel had been there. She’d left the photograph of her and Neeta in the closet, hoping to pass on the curse and find some relief.
During We’re Not Safe Here’s ending, when Rachel saw the photograph again, she was left terrified. In the photograph, Neeta’s head was covered with the pillowcase. Neeta started to have similar visions as Rachel. She saw pebbles hitting her window (something that Lily did to call Rachel when they were young), and she saw a woman standing outside her house, with her head covered with a blood-stained pillowcase. She pointed at something (maybe the closet? just like Lily did when she and Rachel had entered the abandoned house? So was the woman Lily? That seems quite likely, though it was not revealed in the film.
Neeta was shocked when she realized that the grandfather clock in her house had suddenly started to work; it all felt extremely ominous. Neeta was petrified when she saw that her head was covered with the blood-stained pillowcase in the photograph. Rachel apologized to Neeta. She explained that she had struggled to fight it, and she knew that if she discussed everything she’d experienced with Neeta, the demon would call out to her. Presumably, leaving the photograph in the closet had an effect, considering Neeta had been having vivid nightmares even before Rachel showed up. Rachel announced that the demon was now Neeta’s to deal with. Living in the presence of the demon was almost impossible. Neeta only saw darkness all around her, and she painted her canvas black. Clearly, she had lost control of herself, and she had entered a strange void. The demon didn’t kill its host; instead, it used them. It looked like Rachel had stopped having visions once Neeta was dragged into the darkness. Even if that was true, Rachel would never manage to live a ‘normal’ life. Maybe the demon would some day call to her again, or perhaps Rachel already carried a certain darkness, considering how she’d plotted against her colleague even though she was completely aware of the result.
Did Neeta target Sarah?
In We’re Not Safe Here’s ending, we skip to ten months later—Neeta arrived at the doorstep of her colleague/friend, Sarah. We discover that, just like Rachel, Neeta had been missing school for months. Sarah had been worried about her, and she was glad to see Neeta. Neeta was almost in tears; she told Sarah that she needed to talk to her about something that had happened to her. Sarah invited her into her house. An unknown entity who had their head covered with a pillowcase was seen waiting outside the house. This suggests that Neeta was still carrying the demon, and Sarah was his next target. She perhaps had tried to deal with the situation on her own, but clearly it hadn’t worked. Just like Rachel, Neeta too chose herself over the greater good. Somewhere deep down, she knew it was so wrong, but passing on the demon was the only way she could get her life back again. The sound of the siren confirmed that things were about to go so wrong. The pillowcase symbolized the suffocation and darkness that one experienced as soon as the demon possessed them. At first I thought whatever the characters were experiencing might have had to do with generational trauma or sexual abuse, but the ending didn’t really support either of these theories. Though why the demon always targeted women continues to be a mystery. Almost like therapy, where one tries to untangle their trauma, Neeta and Rachel did the same, and the ones who listened to their stories were ultimately affected by it to the extent that they too started to carry the trauma within themselves, quite literally. While trauma can be passed through generations, and it would’ve made sense if the demon symbolized it, that doesn’t seem to be the case here. It’s simply a demon targeting vulnerable individuals and taking control of them, spreading his darkness and destroying lives. The audience here is a potential target of the demon, considering we’ve also listened to the story. So, if the film left you feeling suffocated, then it was because of the invisible pillowcase covering your head! The title of the film ultimately means that you’re not safe from the demon anywhere.
