A horse is a horse...of course, of course?

[Jordan Cole]

Hey friends!

Last year I got into a quite bizarre argument on the Twin Peaks reddit about the White Horse that went on for days, and it felt like everyone was kind of against me. I'm curious what you think.

Not to focus on the argument, but the crux of it was that people on the reddit continuously spoke of the horse as a "symbol." I don't know where it started but somehow the idea that "horse equals heroin" or "horse equals death" because a quite pervasive meme among Twin Peaks fans. I remember reading that myself when I first watched the series on DVD. Cornpone, the youtube account who does excellent Twin Peaks videos, even stumbled in this one aspect when discussing the horse, dismissing it as an obvious symbol and not wondering about its role in the Mythology.

In my opinion, Lynch does not really work in such one-to-one symbolic language. I think he gets ideas, images, and he has themes he wants to explore in his head (negativity, loss, exploitation, love, darkness, etc), but it's not so clear cut as "I will put a horse in there as a symbol." (Note: Mark Frost very well may operate in this way, but the Horse notably only appears in Lynch-directed works.)

The major problem with the "symbol" idea is that season 3 firmly establishes the Horse as a Lodge Being (though I feel many could have guessed it was already, the harsh spotlight on it evoking Bob and the Giant's appearance in season 2 of Twin Peaks.) In season 3 we see the Horse literally "behind the curtain" of the Red Room (what could THAT mean!?) This to me was a jaw-dropping reveal (the Horse is REAL!! that many fans seemed to ignore. Even today I rarely see it mentioned.

In episode 8 we hear the Horse (I like to think that it is THE horse) at the end, as the Woodsman walks off into the darkness, after delivering a poem all about a horse being the dark within.

In episode 18 we have horse imagery all over the place; a white horse in front of Judy's Diner, horse shoes and photos of horses along the diner wall, a white horse in front of a blue plate (an eye? The Earth? A pool of water?) at Carrie's house.

The headline coming out of these episodes is this: the Horse isn't (merely) a symbol, or part of Sarah's imagination, it's a character! So with that being said, our job as Twin Peaks dorks should be to try to figure out the character's role in things, just as we wonder about The Jumping Man, or Bob, or the Woodsmen, etc, etc. It's a character just like Maddie or Nadine or Pete or the Fireman.

I will extend this further, and stop me if I'm going into loony territory: I believe all of the horse imagery in episode 18 is meant to make us think of "the white of the eyes and dark within" as Cooper and Carrie are driving down the highway and suddenly ominous bright headlights appear behind them. Is this a giant Horse spirit chasing them, following them, spying on them? Nothing conveys "the white of the eyes and the dark within" like this:



Is the Horse an agent of Judy, a spy? Is the Horse another form Judy takes? Is the Horse more powerful than Judy, the one behind the curtain? Did the Horse pick up the Woodsmen at the end of episode 8 and carry them home? Is the horse imagery in episode 18 conveying the idea that while Carrie is in this world, the Horse is keeping an eye on her (this is how I see it, if you hadn't guessed.) Was the Horse keeping an eye on Sarah during Bob's attacks? Can we somehow figure the Horse is good? Warning Sarah? Protecting Carrie? Crying out over what the Woodsman did in episode 8? Maybe...but I can't help thinking of the Horse as another scary Lodge entity, and that a goal of episode 18 was to reenforce this idea. And the other question: why don't I ever see other Twin Peaks fans thinking of the horse in this way? What about you all?

 

[AXX°N N.]

I'm sure I'd be liable to disagree with some symbolic interpretations, but it's worth noting that Lynch puts the horse into symbolic terms. It features in two poems:

The Log Lady introduction he wrote: 15/30: Woe to the ones who behold the pale horse
And of course the Part 8 woodsman's you mention.

The Log Lady's creates a very strong connection through its language to the biblical pale horse which death rides, and Peaks isn't shy of biblical imagery via angels, Briggs reading verses, among others. I think this is enough to support a "the horse = death" reading, although I agree that's not where the reading should end, and that framing it as a symbol only is sort of a thought-terminating cliche.

But it gets complicated when we have characters that are proxies. Naido is Diane, the Little Man from Another Place is part of Mike, Owls are vessels for BOB, the Jumping Man is connected to the Palmers somehow, etc., etc. When the horse is consistently put into symbolic context, through poems, visual signifiers (a figure, a spring toy), it's hard not to take it as some kind of coded figurant, warning, key code.

I think the horse is most evocative as presented--extremely abstract recurring motif. It never talks, so I'm not sure I see the point in trying to tease out its potential machinations. If anything it's unnerving because it has such an ineffable angelic and yet imposing presence. It reminds me of how I feel watching Au Hasard Balthazar--it's using the inherent ineffibility of animals in an interesting way and stubbornly sticking to it.

 

[Vedic]

Via Roberto Calasso's Ardor, the aśvamedha, or "The Horse Sacrifice" was a highly significant Vedic event.

Lynch has also spoke of Georges Franju's Le Sang des bêtes where a horse is efficiently dismantled.

I think it's something which has multiple resonances.


EDIT

Found the text in Ardor I was looking for:

"What is the horse? It is one of Prajāpati’s eyes that had swollen up and then fallen out."

“Prajāpati’s eye became swollen; it fell out: from it was produced the horse; and inasmuch as it swelled up (aśvayat), that is the origin of the horse (aśva)"

"Through the sacrifice of the horse the gods restored it [the eye] to its place; and verily he who performs the horse sacrifice makes Prajāpati complete."

 

[Jordan Cole]

So I should maybe clarify what I'm saying, which is that I'm not saying the horse can't be a symbol, but to think of it in a similar way as say, Bob. Bob is a symbol/metaphor to larger themes of abuse and darkness within us or denial or what have you (yadda yadda yadda!) But we can also talk quite literally about Bob, his origins, his motivations, his character and his place in the mythology (which I admit, is more interesting to me. I find the emotional/metaphorical ideas powerful but I almost don't like talking them out loud too much, if that makes sense?) I rarely...ok, I've never seen the horse spoken of in this way, and I find it incredibly fascinating to do so!

I do think when Lynch writes "Woe to the ones who behold the pale horse", there's now a double meaning happening there, the symbolic meaning (i.e. read your bible, kids!) and a hint at the mythology: the horse is not a good being for Sarah to see, and (looking to the future at season 3), we should have our eye on it because as a Lodge being, it's up to no good, in a story context. I wouldn't be surprised if Lynch had more plans for the horse way back then.

I think Lynch tends to use symbols and metaphors that are more personal to him and from his own life, as opposed to Frost's tendency to use symbols and references that are specific parts of history, other cultures, other mythologies, books, poems, etc (I just checked and the horse IS in the original script for episode 14, so this could have been conceived of by Frost.) I'm not saying Lynch never does that, I just think he tends not to as much as some may think. I of course could be totally wrong! It's just what I gather from interviews, his book, his stories and anecdotes, his paintings, etc.

The horse being an animal and never talking I've noticed has stopped some from interpreting its place in story mechanics, but the Jumping Man never talks too, and other Lodge weirdness seems so abstract and hard to pin down on a story level, but that usually doesn't seem to stop anyone! I think season 3 is implying the Horse has some sort of intelligence and important role in things.

 

[eyeboogers]

Revelations 6:8 "And I saw, and behold, a pale horse, and its rider's name was Death"

The horse appears whenever someone is about to die, has recently died (the assassinated gangster in "What Is your name") or in risk of dying.

 

[Jordan Cole]

I think the same can be said about many characters or visuals though! A lot of people die in Twin Peaks, especially by the time we're in season 3. Though I don't think its appearances in season 3 correlate very specifically with death. It's at the end of episode 8, long past the deaths that happen at the radio station. It's in the midst of episode 2, I believe, in the Red Room (does anything really die there? I guess Windom Earle did.) It's referenced all over episode 18 which feels more like a stale purgatory than a death.

I don't mean to be dismissive, I just personally think "is about to die, has recently died or in risk of dying" is way too vague for a solid or conclusive interpretation. Tons of characters are at risk of dying, and so many die in random scenes here and there during season 3. The only one that really feels strongly aligned with death specifically and immediately in the same sequence is the one that appears before Maddie's death. Everything else is too disconnected.

In Fire Walk With Me the horse does not appear before Laura's death (as, in not immediately before), but before an assault/appearance from Bob in Laura's room.

I'm afraid I don't find much interesting about the general horse=death idea. It's too broad for me, maybe too easy, and not engaging with its role as a Lodge (or whatever term you like) entity, and ignoring a lot of its appearances, whether literal or through visual clues (ep 18).

 

[Mr. Reindeer]

I agree that like most of the Lodge entities, the horse functions on both a symbolic and literal mythology level. The horse is probably one of the more obvious symbols besides Bob himself, and I think was clearly drawn from Revelation probably by Frost (although Lynch has been known to read the Bible for inspiration and has said a biblical passage inspired part of Eraserhead, and he also read the Bible when he was stuck for ideas on INLAND EMPIRE; but as you say, the idea originates in Frost’s script). But I do think it exists in a literal mythological sense as well as some kind of Lodge entity. The horse neighing sound at the end of Part 8 is pretty sinister and creepy.

 

[Jordan Cole]

Episode 8 has a lot of great stuff but the real final thing that exploded my brain was hearing that horse. And so distant, and in the pitch black desert...Terrifying. It's the first time it hit me that the horse was not a good thing.

I guess what inspires this post is it seems to me like the horse is the only thing in all of Twin Peaks that people reduce to just a symbol and don't treat as if its literally there, and ask questions about why its there in the story. I got torn apart on the reddit for saying this! People thought it was ludicrous that the horse wasn't just a symbol or Sarah's imagination (yes, even after season 3), as if the show just did that sort of thing all the time.

Just saying its there because it represents death...to be frank, I...don't even think Twin Peaks or Lynch's storytelling functions that way at all. I may be forgetting something, but there's not usually just visuals put in to just represent something else...usually what you see is what you are getting and there's a firm foundation in the story, the mythology, and reality of that world/s, even with the use of metaphor and symbolic references to various things. Things don't just sort of float in to represent things and then go away. I'm always surprised when the horse is talked of in this way, even by some of the most mythology-obsessed Twin Peaks fans!

After season 3 I'm pretty firmly in the "the horse may have represented death early on, but it no longer does" camp. It's a lonely camp! I really think the idea behind the horse evolved way past the "death" thing starting around FWWM, and was fully figured out by season 3, much like many aspects of the show kept evolving and were built upon after small hints and early ideas.

 

[Cappy]

Probably a little off topic, but Belle and Sebastian have a song called "Judy and the Dream of Horses".

 

[Jordan Cole]

I know! I always think of Twin Peaks. Actually, I work as a background actor and the past week I was on a show that used a lot of horses, including a white horse. I just stared at that white horse a lot!

 

[meadowlark]

Probably a little off topic, but Belle and Sebastian have a song called "Judy and the Dream of Horses".

It's a great song, as well. I think it's quite "self-referential". An ordinary girl called Judy writes a song called "Judy and the Dream of Horses". She shows it to one of her friends...

 

[meadowlark]

Via Roberto Calasso's Ardor, the aśvamedha, or "The Horse Sacrifice" was a highly significant Vedic event.

Lynch has also spoke of Georges Franju's Le Sang des bêtes where a horse is efficiently dismantled.

I think it's something which has multiple resonances.


EDIT

Found the text in Ardor I was looking for:

"What is the horse? It is one of Prajāpati’s eyes that had swollen up and then fallen out."

“Prajāpati’s eye became swollen; it fell out: from it was produced the horse; and inasmuch as it swelled up (aśvayat), that is the origin of the horse (aśva)"

"Through the sacrifice of the horse the gods restored it [the eye] to its place; and verily he who performs the horse sacrifice makes Prajāpati complete."

At the start of one of the Upanishads, it mentions a kind of cosmic horse, stretching across the sky. One of its eyes is like the Sun. The horse is a symbol of the cosmos. The quote has been translated from Sanskrit to English as:

"Om. Dawn is the head of the horse sacrificial. The sun is his eye, his breath is the wind, his wide open mouth is Fire, the master might universal. Time is the self of the horse sacrificial..."

At Carrie Page's house, there is an image of a white horse against a blue circle. The circle could be a mandala: another symbol of the Cosmos. The characters who see a vision of the horse are really seeing the Cosmos.

 

[Jordan Cole]

I'm still more interested in what the horse's literal function is as a Lodge being and its connection to Judy than whatever it may be a symbol for. In my view, the tokens of the horse spread out around episode 18 are symbols...for the horse!

 

[AXX°N N.]

It strikes me that although the Native American mythological elements of the series have been forefronted so often throughout the material, old and new, no one here (including me) has drawn a connection between the horse and the way horses were regarded in Native American culture. Symbols of power and use for what they allowed re: mobility and venerated for it ..... when you connect this to Laura's own personal relationship with a freed and later tragic horse, a strange overlap occurs--innocence, death, freedom, power, tragedy--and they all sound like a word cloud that embodies Laura Palmer.

 

[secretlettermkr]

I'm still more interested in what the horse's literal function is as a Lodge being and its connection to Judy than whatever it may be a symbol for. In my view, the tokens of the horse spread out around episode 18 are symbols...for the horse!

a horse cant be a symbol for a horse, in any case may be a SIGN, not the same thing

 

[Jordan Cole]

a horse cant be a symbol for a horse, in any case may be a SIGN, not the same thing

I'm saying it's representing the character of the horse, similar to how hearing the jazzy Red Room theme brings to mind the little man. As opposed to the little horse tokens being a symbol for ___metaphor/cosmic/etc___. I'm saying I think the purpose of those is to explicitly make you think of the actual horse character from the show/FWWM.

 

[Jasper]

This is a great idea for a thread, and I’ve enjoyed all of the posts. I’m responding so late because it’s such a rich subject that I just haven’t had time to collect my various thoughts.

I’ve tended to see the horse primarily as symbolic, as some sort of apparitional harbinger of woe and relatively inert manifestation relating to an accute metaphysical situation. Is the horse an autonomous, conscious character, perhaps even choosing victims? I honestly haven’t interpreted it this way, though I’m open to the discussion.

As mentioned, there’s significant ambiguity in Twin Peaks about what’s symbolic, metaphorical, etc., and what’s concrete, notably regarding the lodge and lodge beings. One of the greatest qualities of Twin Peaks is that it allows and encourages the viewer to examine events from wildly different interpretive vantage points. Does BOB actually exist, or is he in fact, “the evil that men do”? It’s repeatedly suggested that much or all of what seems like firm reality in the world of Twin Peaks (and perhaps our world as well), might in fact be some kind of dream, and might otherwise be subject to change.

As has also been observed, many things were in flux during the creation of original show, between the time of the show and FWWM, and between those installments and The Return. Lynch also commented, when speaking about Mark Frost’s books, that Frost has his own version of things while Lynch has his, and to this I’d add that each man’s version of things is clearly plastic, just like Hawk’s “living” map. As Jeffries says, “It’s slippery in here.”


Revelations
I’ve always taken the horse to be negative, and I don’t think, at least at this stage, that it’s especially related to drugs. I agree with those who see it as having almost certainly arisen primarily from the Biblical pale horse, though it must have taken on additional shades of meaning. @AXX°N N. mentioned Major Briggs reading biblical verse in The Missing Pieces as an example of Lynch utilizing the Bible in his work, and to that I’d add that Briggs is specifically reading Revelations, which is where we find the pale horse.

As an aside, Briggs also beholds a horse, with a white spotted head, and this indeed bodes ill for him!

All of the above, along with, importantly, the Log Lady intro to episode 14, where we first saw the horse, ("Woe to the ones who behold the pale horse”) provides highly compelling support for the biblical origin theory of the horse.

The horse in Twin Peaks shows up in the original series and FWWM in association with a drugged Sarah Palmer and rapes and murders committed by Leland Palmer (involving Laura and her double, Maddie), then in part 8 with the woodsman poem and neigh in the desert, as well as appearing to Cooper behind the curtains in the lodge immediately after Laura had been violently vacuumed out. The horseshoe necklace and white foal figurine belonging to Carrie Page exist in the context of her being an employee of Judy’s (which has a white horse outside), and possibly an unknowing prisoner in some sort of illusory world created and/or controlled by Judy. Judy, since she appears at the detonation of the atomic bomb, can certainly be seen as an apocalyptic figure, or potential apocalyptic figure, and mass death and destruction certainly follows the bomb test, when atomic bombs are detonated at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Revelations also features three other Horsemen of the Apocalypse, who ride white, red, and black horses. (It’s probably coincidental, but they cover all of the main Lodge colors.) To lift directly from Wikipedia, “In John's revelation, the first horseman rides on a white horse, carries a bow, and is given a crown – he rides forward as a figure of Conquest, perhaps invoking Pestilence, Christ, or the Antichrist.” The last horse, the pale horse, is unambiguous, as its rider is Death.

When the Lamb broke the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature saying, "Come." I looked, and behold, a pale horse; and he who sat on it had the name Death; and Hades was following with him. Authority was given to them [the four horsemen] over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by the wild beasts of the earth.
— Revelation 6:7–8 (New American Standard Bible)

The Race Track (Death on a Pale Horse) by Albert Pinkham Ryder (1895–1910)


Horses, including white/pale horses, can have strong associations with death in pre-Christian traditions. They are often travelers between realms, which can includes them going from the realms of the gods or humans into the underworld, an ability which in some cases gives them a psychopomp function. (@Jordan Cole asked, “Did the Horse pick up the Woodsmen at the end of episode 8 and carry them home?”). They can also be harbingers of doom, and can otherwise be found somehow associated with the destructive end of one of the cycles of ages.


Nightmare
A very interesting horse-connected thing that hasn’t been raised thus far is the nightmare. The “mare” in “nightmare” seems to have originally been a vaguely defined supernatural being who’d torment sleeping people by sitting or trodding upon them, thus bringing about nightmares. A female horse has been conflated with the nightmare since at least the 1300s. A famous example from 1781 is The Nightmare, a painting by Henry Fuseli (Swiss):

The Nightmare invoked the relationship of the incubus and the horse (mare) to nightmares. The work was likely inspired by the waking dreams experienced by Fuseli and his contemporaries, who found that these experiences related to folkloric beliefs like the Germanic tales about demons and witches that possessed people who slept alone. In these stories, men were visited by horses or hags, giving rise to the terms ‘hag-riding’ and ‘mare-riding,’and women were believed to engage in sex with the devil. The etymology of the word ‘nightmare,’however, does not relate to horses. Rather, the word is derived from mara, a Scandinavian mythological term referring to a spirit sent to torment or suffocate sleepers. The early meaning of "nightmare" included the sleeper's experience of weight on the chest combined with sleep paralysis, dyspnea, or a feeling of dread. The painting incorporates a variety of imagery associated with these ideas, depicting a mare's head and a demon crouched atop the woman.

Also, the Wikipedia entry for Mare says:

“According to Paul Devereux, mares included witches who took on the form of animals when their spirits went out and about while they were in trance. These included animals such as frogs, cats, horses, hares, dogs, oxen, birds and often bees and wasps.”

It’s quite interesting to consider a horse’s utility as a symbol of nightmares in the context of Twin Peaks, where dreams are so important, and where it’s repeatedly intimated that the characters, and perhaps also viewers, live inside a dream. This observation warrants a reexamination of the Log Lady intro to episode 14, where the horse made its debut:

"A poem as lovely as a tree:
As the night wind blows, the boughs move to and fro.
The rustling, the magic rustling that brings on the dark dream.
The dream of suffering and pain.
Pain for the victim, pain for the inflicter of pain.
A circle of pain, a circle of suffering.
Woe to the ones who behold the pale horse.”

A “dark dream” of “suffering and pain” can be comfortably placed in the category of “nightmare.” As we see above, it would not be unreasonable to suspect the additional role of the horse as a harbinger of the dream becoming a nightmare, especially appearing as it does to a somnolent Sarah Palmer at two tragic points, not to mention appearing to Cooper in The Return, after a previously serene Laura has been torn screaming from the lodge.

The horse is explicitly connected to a “dark dream,” and an interesting property of the horse itself (excluding mere tokens of the horse) is that it only appears at night, or in darkness. It appears to Sarah Palmer twice at night. We hear the horse neigh when the woodsmen are walking into the pitch black desert. In The Return, as in the Log Lady intro, a wind precedes the horse, and here the wind eerily parts the lodge curtains, beyond which the horse appears in seeming endless darkness, and the camera actually pans closer and closer until we pass the horse and the entire screen is filled with darkness. “The horse is the white of the eyes, and dark within.” None of this does anything to weaken the notion of a connection between the horse and nightmares.

If we wanted to go a bit further out on a limb (or night-wind-blown bough), taking into account the mythological developments featured in The Return, we could even conflate Judy with a nightmare-bringing spirit or witch, who, like such folkloric figures, can appear in animal form, including in the form of a horse.


Le Sang des bêtes
@Vedic mentioned the film, Le Sang des bêtes.

As mentioned here, Lynch screened this documentary when he was filming Eraserhead:

“In the documentary Lynch (One), David Lynch recounts being deeply affected by a scene in the French slaughterhouse documentary Blood of the Beasts [Le Sang des bêtes, 1949], in which a tall and majestic white horse is abruptly slaughtered and its blood collected in a square box.”

I saw this film a long time ago in a film class, and, for me, the scene with the white horse stood out as particularly unforgettable, (and traumatic). I was fascinated to discover that Lynch was similarly impressed when he was a student. Whether or not this scene plays any part in the identity of the Twin Peaks horse, it wouldn’t do anything to weaken Lynch’s association of the white horse with death, trauma, and “woe.” Indeed, woe to the ones that behold the pale horse in this film. When I saw the film, more than one person fled the room.

Here is a frame from the film juxtaposed with appearances of the horse from FWWM and The Return (flipped horizontally in the lower two frames):



I’ll leave it there for now, though there’s a lot more that could be discussed about the subject. For instance, we haven’t touched upon the Silver Mustang Casino, which has a horseshoe logo oriented in what is most commonly considered to be the “good luck” position, in contrast to Carrie Page’s pendent, which is in what’s generally considered to be the “bad luck” position.

 

[Jordan Cole]

That was a great post, but I guess what I'm trying to say is there's a difference to me between symbols of the horse, like the Mustang Casino, and discussing what the horse's function is in the plot. Not symbolism but plot.

I'm not exactly a literalist but when I watch things I take it as a given that the thing I'm seeing in the show or movie is happening. When I watch Twin Peaks I don't see a reason to be like "well that character is real, but THAT ONE is a symbol." I can't see any reason to not include the horse in the list of Lodge beings to wonder about, but I always see it discussed only as some sort of vague dream symbol. I've never understood that.

I think even as weird as things in Lynch's work gets, he would probably maintain that yes: you are seeing this actually happening. As the comics used to say, not a dream! Not an imaginary story! Even the "dream" Cooper has in episode 2 of season 1 turns out to be an event that will actually happen to him.

What surprised me on reddit, multiple times, is whenever the horse comes up, it's like the default position that people treat it as some sort of hallucination or symbol imagery but not something that's there...like...that's really a horse there!! Why is it there?!? People don't do this for any other thing in the show really.

 

[Jordan Cole]

As mentioned, there’s significant ambiguity in Twin Peaks about what’s symbolic, metaphorical, etc., and what’s concrete, notably regarding the lodge and lodge beings. One of the greatest qualities of Twin Peaks is that it allows and encourages the viewer to examine events from wildly different interpretive vantage points. Does BOB actually exist, or is he in fact, “the evil that men do”? It’s repeatedly suggested that much or all of what seems like firm reality in the world of Twin Peaks (and perhaps our world as well), might in fact be some kind of dream, and might otherwise be subject to change.

So my take on this is just that like with all stories, it's both. Stories are generally metaphors. Especially horror. I always get confused/irritated when some new kind of pretentious horror movie comes out and people give it accolades for being about "trauma" or something "more" than just a horror movie, because to me the entire genre of horror is itself metaphorical. That's the whole point of it! It's all about death and grief or unfinished business or sex or etc etc.

Sure, Bob is metaphorical in a sense, but so is Truman and Norma and Dale and everyone...it's a story, so these are all kind of standins for concepts and ideas. Am I making sense? But I just can't imagine a Twin Peaks where it's implied that all of the supernatural business is not literally happening in the story of the show. That would basically mean everyone in Twin Peaks has lot their minds, right? Hallucinating or something? I don't get it. I don't think there's any ambiguity about if the Lodge beings are concrete. Of course they are! They're right there! HE'S RIGHT BEHIND YOU!

I don't see why that would invalidate the exercise of reading them as symbols or metaphors too though. That's what horror is...The ghosts at the Overlook are really there! That doesn't mean The Shining isn't about alcoholism or abuse or colonialism or what have you. I had a big argument with a friend once about The Babadook. He kept telling me the Babadook is a metaphor for depression and so "not really there" in the movie, all in the mom's head. I just kept saying why isn't it a metaphor for depression but also an actual boogeyman haunting the mom?

Meta readings don't negate this either, but I do think "it's a dream" readings do. I feel like that negates everything, so I kind of hate that way of looking at it. I mean...isn't a story more fun when you feel like it's actually happening?