Personal Shopper Review (2016) and Ending Explained

 

Personal Shopper can be found in horror section, but the movie is not a horror.

The Story

Personal Shopper is about character named Maureen played by Kristen Stewart .  She is a young personal shopper for a celebrity woman. She also claimed to be a spiritual medium.  She is devastated by sudden death of her twin brother Lewis from a congenital malformation of the heart, and she is trying to contact her dead brother.

The Review (Spoiler Free)

Personal Shopper is claim to be horror movie, but it is not.  It is more of French flavored Art-House style drama. There is very little horror elements in it.  Personal Shopper is one of those movie with very little music and a lot of focus on Maureen’s normal boring daily activities.  It is definitely a slow-burner.

There are few creepy ghost scenes in the movie, when Maureen is trying contact her dead brother.  But the movie didn’t stick to this main story but side track by other sub-stories that didn’t really make any sense.  At the same time, the movie introduces little bit of murder mystery element in the story which didn’t really make any sense.  Personal Shopper definitely goes through some identity crisis.  It doesn’t know what it wants to be.

Kristen Stewart plays really depressing character, and after while, you get tried of her character.  I am afraid she is typecast into this type of character on every movie she is in.  Also I was surprised that she was topless in the movie.

The ending also was completely inexplicable.  It appears that the movie attempts to try to be esoteric or cryptic with a seemingly inexplicable ending.  The ending is abrupt, and ambiguous.  Absolutely nothing in the movie preceding it in any way provided a clue to what is happening.  Don’t even bother trying to figure out what the ending is all about.

At the end, Personal Shopper is not scary, it’s not mysterious, it’s not adventurous, it’s not thrilling, and it’s not dramatic.

Ending Explained (Spoiler Alert!)

Personal shopper has very ambiguous and confusing ending.  The movies doesn’t clearly explains the ending and it was done purposely by the director to make the audience think and engaging in discussion.

There are few big question that is not clearly explained.  Who is the mysterious person who is sending the text to Maureen?  Who killed Kyra (Maureen’s boss)?  Did the Maureen’s brother revealed himself to her?

There are two very poplar explanations of the ending.  First is the idea that Maureen was murdered at the hotel and became a ghost.  We do see a ghost leaving the hotel after the event.  The biggest problem is that, afterwards, she does interacts with two people, Lara, Maureen’s brother’s girl friend and Lara’s new boyfriend.

Other popular explanation is that the Maureen’s brother was with her the whole time and even protecting her from the killer at the hotel.  But the problem is that the spirit never really made it clear to her that it is her brother.  The spirit seems to be just toying with her.  The final scene was a good example.

The final scene is very confusing.  It appears that Maureen’s brother finally seems to be communicating with her.  Yet it continues to be toying with her and doesn’t exactly tell her that it was her brother.  The spirit does communicate with her with a knock.  One knock means “yes” and Two knock means “no” which Maureen got the idea from video she saw earlier in the movie.  But at the end, the Spirit seems to be telling her that everthing is in her head.  So the explanation that make sense is the fact that she is imagining everything and everything is just in her head.

First of all, I don’t think Maureen is a good medium.  She is inexperienced.  But she may believe that she is a gifted medium.  Earlier in the movie, Lara asked her if she has experience doing medium.  She couldn’t give her a good answer.  At the same time, since she is obsessed with her brother’s death, it is possible that she can easily make up stuff in her head and see things that wasn’t there.

Maybe what her boyfriend said was the truth.  He said that there is no such thing as ghost and she needs to move on with her life.  So the movie isn’t about her communicating with her brother’s ghost but it’s all about her struggle to finally letting go of her brother and moving on with her life.

So to answering the big question:

1) Who send the text to Maureen.  It is obvious that Kyra’s boyfriend, Ingo, was sending her text to let her think that it was her brother so he can frame the murder of Kyra.

2) What happened in the hotel?  It is obvious that Kyra’s boyfriend was going to kill her, But Maureen was step ahead. She coordinate with the cops to catch him in action.

3) Did the brother revealed himself to her? No, her brother was never there.  Because ghost doesn’t exist.

In the Nutshell

Although Personal Shopper has some potential, it fails short. If you are looking for good scare, you will be disappointed. [2 out of 5 stars]

I would like to know what you think of the movie. If you already saw this movie, help us rate the movie by click on the Star Rating

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Genre: Paranormal

Rotten Tomato Rating: 80% / 52%

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One comment

  1. This is a terrible article. Some of the things stated here are in direct contrast to what happened in the movie. Did you even watch it?

     

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