Reasoning

Below, Jason, Hugo, and other actors watched the movie with great interest.

Although they had the script, the final cut after editing was still hard to imagine.

On the screen.

The two captives, after the initial panic, gradually calmed down.

Lawrence analyzed, "Since the person who brought us here didn't kill us, there must be another purpose."

Suddenly, his gaze was drawn to a clock on the wall.

The clock was too new, standing out from everything around it.

He voiced his confusion, but Adam paid no attention.

Lawrence muttered, "Clearly, someone wants us to know the exact time. There must be some meaning to this, otherwise they wouldn't have gone out of their way to install a new clock here."

He had a theory and began to search for new clues everywhere.

The camera once again locked onto the clock, the seconds hand tirelessly ticking away, imbuing the film with a sense of tension through the logic of time. The handling of the pacing was like one puzzle piece locking into another.

At this moment, Adam found a mysterious envelope in his pocket. Inside was a cassette tape, and the words "Play Me" were written on the back.

After telling Lawrence about it, Lawrence also found the same thing in his pocket. However, in addition to the cassette tape, there was also a bullet and a key.

Lawrence was ecstatic, thinking he was saved.

After trying, they realized that the key couldn't unlock the shackles, either his own or Adam's.

Both were somewhat disappointed, but in order to get more clues, they still made an effort to retrieve the tape recorder from the corpse.

Adam placed the cassette tape inside, and a hoarse voice emanated from it.

Adam was certain that he had never heard this voice before.

"It's time to wake up, Adam."

"You might be wondering where this is?"

"Let me tell you, this might be where you meet your end."

"In the past, you've always hidden in the shadows, peeping into others' lives. Do you enjoy this voyeuristic thrill? So today, you either watch yourself die or find a way to stop all of this."

At this point, Adam's identity was finally revealed. He was the paparazzi and private detective that Lawrence had been concealing.

Lawrence was slightly moved, for some reason this reminded him of the recent news stories that had been continuously broadcast on television for the past few months, about a sadistic serial killer who enjoyed torturing people to death. He had committed several crimes, but the police hadn't managed to catch him yet.

As Lawrence reminisced, montage shots were interspersed. The circumstances of several victims were exposed on the big screen.

Inside a hole enclosed by wire mesh, a chubby white man hung limply, looking like a fish skewered on iron spikes, his flesh and blood blurred. Methods of death including strangulation, broken necks, and electric chairs... all sorts of torturous deaths were shown, making many moviegoers shudder.

Although the killer was insane, this was just too insane.

Some of the more timid audience members couldn't help but cover their eyes, anticipating the end of this segment.

Even the film critics were sitting up straight, wondering how these death traps had been designed.

Lawrence grew more and more anxious the more he thought about it, but his emotional intelligence was high. He didn't bring up anything further. Instead, he tried to boost morale, suggesting they work together to escape.

Then, due to Adam's inherent suspicion, Lawrence handed him the cassette tape to play.

However, the recording revealed a truth that neither of them could bear: in order to stay alive, Lawrence had to kill Adam by six o'clock tonight. Otherwise, both Lawrence and his wife and daughter would meet their maker.

The hoarse voice was practically devilish. He knew full well that Lawrence was a doctor who saved lives, which was why he gave him such a choice.

Lawrence forced himself to calm down. He looked at the suspicion in Adam's eyes and explained incessantly that this was the manipulations of that person, an attempt to sow discord.

No one knew what Adam was thinking, but they did indeed join forces again.

The two searched for clues, following Adam's hints from the recorded message, leading them to open a heart-shaped symbol drawn on the toilet lid. Inside a black plastic bag, they found two handsaws gleaming with a metallic sheen.

However, the shackles were too sturdy, or perhaps the sadistic mastermind didn't intend for them to escape so easily. The handsaws proved to be ineffective.

Time passed slowly.

The first half-hour or so of the film, although it created an atmosphere full of suspense and mystery, inevitably felt a bit stifling due to the extended single bathroom scene. However, just when the audience's patience was about to wear thin, Lawrence's personal life subplot and his interactions with a flirtatious nurse at the hospital breathed new life into the cinema.

These didn't need much explanation through shots. The assistant's resentful gaze conveyed more than enough.

Then came Adam receiving instructions from the mysterious person to investigate Dr. Lawrence's affair and gather evidence. This was also why Adam had been concealing his true identity from Lawrence. He had seen Lawrence before.

As these threads came together, the audience's interest was piqued.

Several film critics, however, seemed rather bored.

"The later plot twists can already be guessed. It's likely the assistant imitating the crimes, or maybe he's the sadistic one himself, wanting to kill Lawrence. As for Adam, he probably got caught accidentally and was dragged into this mess."

The subsequent plot seemed to confirm this conclusion.

The night they were abducted, Lawrence's daughter lay in bed hugging a teddy bear.

In the pitch-black room, sounds of footsteps suddenly reverberated.

The daughter was awakened, curious about where the sound was coming from.

But then the sound abruptly ceased.

She shouted loudly, which startled Lawrence and his wife.

When they reached their daughter's room, she said there had been someone in her room just now.

Lawrence turned on the lights in the room but found no traces. He suspected his daughter had had a nightmare and kindly comforted her.

At that moment, his phone rang. There was an urgent surgery at the hospital, and the hospital required Lawrence to come in.

Just as he was about to leave, his daughter said, "You won't leave us, will you?"

Lawrence chuckled, "Of course not, I'll be back soon."

What no one knew was that after he left, his assistant emerged from a cubicle in the corridor, which was right next to his daughter's room, the bathroom, and proceeded to kidnap both of them.

Later, after Lawrence finished the surgery and returned home, he found that the porch light wouldn't turn on.

In the pitch-blackness, strange sounds resonated. He turned on his phone's flashlight.

He didn't discover anything around him, thinking that maybe the power switch had tripped.

Then he took his phone and walked outside to check, and then...

These segments of darkness were depicted with great finesse, as is a signature of James' directing style.

Throughout the movies he directed, aside from mainstream commercial films, there were often scenes like this portraying darkness.

Darkness inherently holds fear in people's hearts.

What James liked to do was magnify this inner fear, and he was quite skilled at it, managing to captivate the audience's attention effectively.

Many professional critics have said that the core of horror films always comes from the unknown. And darkness is inherently unknown. This omnipresent sense of mystery is alluring to the audience in a fatally tantalizing way.

Moreover, the audience that enjoys cult films is more accepting of this style.

At least, at this moment, the countless viewers and film critics in the theater had widened their eyes, not wanting to miss a single shot.

This movie was filled with various metaphors, and the frames themselves carried an indescribable allure.

If one could immerse themselves in it, they would naturally be able to sense the charm of the film.