Things Heard & Seen, starring Amanda Seyfried and James Norton, is now out on Netflix, but who is the murderer? Here's Things Heard & Seen's ending explained.
Rolling Stone ‘Things Heard & Seen’: Haunted by Ghosts, and Many, Many, Many Other Ghost Stories
Amanda Seyfried must contend with a haunted house and some recognizably human monsters in a gothic tale filled with things you’ve heard and seen before
By Anna Kooris/NETFLIX
There are ghosts that haunt the houses of New York’s Hudson Valley, we’re told early on in
Things Heard & Seen (now streaming on Netflix) the spirits of former owners who may have unfinished business in this realm, or who may be protecting new occupants from possible danger, or who may be right evil bastards waiting to inspire the living to embrace their own inner darkness. The residents of the region, at least in the early 1980s, seem to accept this as a fact of life; some even view it as a perk. And they all know about the Vayle place, which has just been purchased by a young married couple: George Claire (James Norton), a recent addition to the local private liberal-arts col
If you went in thinking you d be able to fully comprehend Netflix s
Things Heard & Seen because you d read the Elizabeth Brundage novel it is based on, think again. The film which premiered April 29 sees the relationship between married couple George (James Norton) and Catherine Clare (Amanda Seyfried) begin to unravel after the family moves into an old farmhouse in Upstate New York. Eerie things begin happening at the house as Catherine realizes that George may not be all he says he is. These suspicions eventually result in her murder. Despite knowing who the killer is, the film s ending leaves us with more questions than answers.
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Hollywood thrillers in which sophisticated, attractive city folk move to creaky old country homes and experience scary things are a dime a dozen. Less common is when those Hollywood thrillers are based on the theology of 18th-century Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg. But here we are a Sweden borgian thriller and thus it’s not a bad idea to read up a bit on the man, by which we mean to Google him, before diving into “Things Heard & Seen,” a well-cast and often entertaining but campy and sometimes obvious thriller starring Amanda Seyfried and James Norton. What you’ll learn is that Swedenborg believed (among other things) that death was just a continuation of life and that people lived on, in the spiritual world, past the expiration of their physical body. For the film’s purposes, we’ll boil it down for you: Ghosts! In fact the film, based on the novel “All Things Cease to Appear” by Elizabeth Brundage, begins with a Swedenborg quote: “Things that
Starring: Amanda Seyfried, James Norton
2/5
Things Heard & Seen right from the get-go.
Writers and directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini begin with a creepy quote from 18th-century theologian Emanuel Swedenborg, which is
followed by a slide show of various haunting paintings, all of which is accompanied by Peter Raeburn’s unearthly and imposing score.
The film then dives into its story, which revolves around a married couple, George and Catherine, played by James Norton and Amanda Seyfried, and their young daughter. They move from Manhattan to a small town in upstate New York in the spring of 1980, after George