Scissors

The events appear set in a contemporary late-20th-century city, with modern conveniences, a soap-opera culture, and early-90s medical/psychiatric treatment. Hypnotherapy sessions and a politically charged domestic scene reflect the era's attitudes toward mental health and celebrity personas. The urban landscape—elevators, apartments, and theaters—anchors the film in a recognizable, real-world time.

The story unfolds primarily within a modern urban building: an apartment block where the elevator attack happens, and a hardware shop where Angela purchases her defining weapon. A large, enigmatic apartment later serves as a stage for psychological experiments and traps. The setting alternates between intimate domestic spaces and cold, clinical rooms, emphasizing the claustrophobic feel of the thriller.

🧠 Mind Games

The plot centers on manipulation and false realities designed to trap Angela within a carefully constructed narrative. Hypnotherapy sessions, staged clues, and a killer who can assume multiple identities bend Angela’s perception of truth. The house as a labyrinth mirrors her fractured mind and the actors around her as players in a chilling psychological experiment. The film uses suspense to probe how guilt, control, and fear shape identity.

🗝️ Repression

Angela’s sexual repression and childhood trauma lie at the core of her breakdown. The past—especially the violent memory tied to her mother and Billy—drives present decisions and heightens paranoia. The narrative suggests that repressed memories resurface as dangerous compulsion. The thriller exposes how repression can distort judgment and escalate danger when confronted.

🔪 Violence & Perception

The same pair of scissors used to wound Angela becomes the murder weapon in an eerie, orchestrated crime. What appears to be a straightforward murder is revealed to be a manipulated scenario designed to frame Angie and to test her psyche. The film makes the audience question whether violence is a literal event or a constructed illusion. The illusion is reinforced by a raven’s taunting and a room full of psychological exhibits.

🪞 Identity & Sanity

Angela’s grip on reality unravels as the boundaries between truth and fabrication blur. The reveal that her attacker is actually her psychiatrist in disguise reframes the entire story as a study in control and selfhood. Sanity becomes a performance, with others orchestrating scenes to elicit a particular response. The ending leaves Angela liberated yet wary, as the past asserts its grip on her present.