Mysterious Skin question (spoilers), and dude, if you haven't seen it, see it! (without reading this post)

SPOILERS!!

Been meaning to watch Mysterious Skin for years but never been in the "mood" for it (kiddie rape stuff and all, not that I'm in the mood for it now. ugh. anyways.).

LOVED the movie. We all knew where this was going and it laid out all the bits and pieces perfectly and the ending (Post-Rape when JGL meets the other kid for the first time in his mom's house) was shocking, not in it's surprise or graphic visual on-screen gore or even any extremely graphic dialog.

It's the nonchalant way Neil tells Brian everything and the lack of surprise or shock (besides his nosebleed) as he takes it all in. He just reverts back to that quiet child after the trauma before the alien thing got embraced as a coping mechanism.

The interspersed shots of them as kids is just gut-wrenching. And once again, we knew all this, maybe not the specifics (fisting, ugh), but for anyone who didn't realize the aliens weren't real and was a coping mechanism made up from the beginning, we see the alien hands be replaced by human hands when he is on the exam table as a kid midway through. And we know coach groomed Neil.

So way before the end if the audience is paying attention, they figured it out before the scene at the end on the couch. But it's still just shockingly uncomfortable.

So, a few questions and thoughts.

The other girl who got abducted is crazy, right?

Was the UFO actually there coincidentally? If so, was she crazy AND abducted? (I don't think so but would love it the movie was Fargo Season 2 nuts.)

Was Neil's rapist at the end the coach? I can't find the rapist in the credits and he was obviously meant to look like him and reflect the reality of what the coach was doing to him back then and not his rose-tinted fond memories as a foil for the almost seduction-like scenes with coach in the earlier parts of the film. So, the rapist looked to be about 10 years older than coach but the way it was shot I couldn't tell if it actually was coach or just supposed to look similar, with the 'stache and general look Neil described as liking. I could see it being him. I dunno.

The way they shot the scenes with the coach from the kid's warped perspective of it being fun games and playing and it just kept going on without any abuse and you just feel it progressing slowly was just gut-wrenching. I just sat there horrified. I haven't had such a viscerally painful reaction to a movie since I was a child (I'm 34). It was more horrifying to see the two of them happily playing knowing he was doing it all with a plan than it was to see the actual abuse.

Two observations about coach's residence; obviously it's full of kids stuff, but is that to indicate that it's a den of depravity with tons of victims, or that he's something of a child too (who was abused, and he's just keeping the chain of abuse going) like michael jackson who just has toys around as a grown man, or is it both?

We never really see the coach act violently towards the kids, is that because he doesn't think what he's doing is wrong because he was abused like Neil? Or does he just have no need to ever act violently (yes, I agree having them fist him is sexually violent, but there's never any talk of him penetrating them, so it appears as if he's not trying to "hurt" the children (though he obv still realizes it's wrong in society and legally, he just justified it morally to himself). Or is it just because that's not his MO and he has no need to and doesn't give a shit (this would be supported by him being the rapist)? Or is he fully cognizant of it all and stocks the place to rape kids and does it to attract them and is a monster and knows it and doesn't care?

We see that Neil is seriously traumatized by everything but over time seems to go from being "complicit" (hard to use that word for an abused child) in the abuse to harming others (when he nearly kills the kid with the fireworks and then sexually assaults him in front of Wendi) to eventually at the end seeming to finally recognize that coach didn't love him and he was just a piece of meat to him and that all these things he is doing and has done and the things that happened to him are indeed, NOT OK.

They both progress as the movie goes on to finally coming to terms with everything once they're together on that couch.

But seriously, was that really a UFO? Was UFO girl actually taken? Was that scene just a dream or distorted memory/unreliable narrator? (I gotta rewatch)

This is top 10 hardest, most emotionally draining movies to watch, mostly because it isn't about surprising us with a shock ending. It's just showing us a story and making us sit there uncomfortably and watch everything unfold even though we know how the story plays out. Just incredible. This is up there with Schindler's List, We Need to Talk about Kevin, and a few others.

Also, what was up with the relationship with Neil and his mom? Was there something sexual there? They were awfully close.

Incredible Movie. Hard as fuck to watch.