It's a dark and stormy night, and five-year old Billy is having trouble sleeping, telling his mother that "they" come for him when it's completely dark. His mother checks under his bed and, finding nothing, leaves him, assuring him there's nothing to be afraid of. But, when she's gone, Billy is awakened by sounds coming from his closet and spots a dark figure lurking within. The figure comes for him when the electricity goes out, putting out his nightlight, and despite his attempt to protect himself, he's pulled underneath his bed. Nineteen years later, Julia Lund, a college student studying psychology, is living in New York and often spends her free time with her boyfriend, an EMT named Paul. One night, just as they're about to get intimate at Paul's apartment, Julia gets a call from Billy, whom she's been friends with since childhood, and he asks to see her. They meet at a small diner, where Julia is taken aback by Billy's awful condition. Sitting down with her, he tells her that he's been having a recurrence of night terrors both of them used to suffer from as children and he feels they were marked by something that has come back for them. Terrified of being plunged into darkness when the diner's power threatens to go out, Billy apologizes to Julia, pulls out a gun, and shoots himself right in front of her. Traumatized, Julia stays at Paul's apartment where, in the middle of the night, she's awakened by a strange phone call and is drawn to the bathroom. There, she finds black gunk shooting out of the sink and opens the medicine cabinet to find it full of webbing that's just as dark and viscous in nature. She becomes terrified and frantic when her hand starts bending and snapping with the material on it and, when Paul comes in, attracted by her screams, she attacks him until he's able to calm her down. She has no memory of entering the bathroom. At the wake for Billy's funeral, Julia meets two college friends of his, Sam and Terry, who met him because they had the same disturbing night terrors when they were children. On the way back home, a strange creature appears to slam into her car, and while she finds no sign of it, a sudden vision of Billy almost causes her to get hit by a passing truck. After they look through Billy's diary and see how terrified he was by these entities he was speaking of, Terry admits that she's lately been feeling a sense of terror she hasn't felt since she was a kid. At first skeptical, as more strange things happen, including Terry and Sam suddenly vanishing, Julia has to face the possibility that these creatures that lurk in the dark may very well be real... and that she is likely next.
They try to make you empathize with Julia through this baggage of her having watched her childhood friend kill himself in front of her and feeling some guilt about having failed to help him, as well as with the knowledge that her childhood night terrors began after her father committed suicide, hinting at a possible link between both occurrences, but I could not, for the life of me, care about what was going to happen to her as the story progressed. I found myself feeling more for Billy, as you get to see the horror he encountered as a kid when they first came for him and how their imminent return had destroyed his life, but Julia? Eh. I also didn't care that she was a psychology student and that, as a result, she was trying to observe and rationalize what was happening, to the point where she was believing it was all a bunch of delusions, before finally being faced with the truth that these creatures do exist. It also doesn't help that, whenever Laura Regan tries to act scared or shocked, she makes these faces that, to me, come off as unintentionally funny. In any case, after Julia has Paul search her body for the same kind of mark the others had, he doesn't find it and this reassures her that she has nothing to worry about. But then, one of the creatures attacks her in her closet and she finds that she did have a mark... in her scalp, and that it contained a long, thin, black needle, a way for the creatures to keep track of their intended victims. Julia runs back to Paul to tell him but, because of her babbling, he thinks that she's lost her mind and gives her some drugged water before attempting to call Dr. Booth. Figuring out what he did, she goes to an empty subway station and forces herself to vomit up the drug, only to get locked in the station when it closes for the night. As the place suffers from rolling blackouts, she's continually attacked by the creatures when it's completely dark and they almost kill her, but she's discovered by a group of engineers the next morning. As it was with Paul the other night, she's so frantic that she attacks them, thinking they're the creatures, and ends up in Booth's mental institution. She barely has time to process that she's there, before she's attacked again and taken to the creatures' alternate world. Still able to see out into the real world, she tries to call for help but no one can hear her, and once she's back in the dark, the creatures pounce on her.
The movie tries to go for something of a double fake-out regarding the character of Billy. First, when the film opens with him as a scared five-year old (Alexander Gould), trying to tell his mother that he's afraid of the dark and "they" will come for him, he's ultimately pulled underneath his bed by the creatures and seemingly killed. But, nineteen years later, you learn that Billy is actually still alive, though hardly well, as he's now a very troubled young man (Jon Abrahams) and has been so since childhood. When Julia gets a call from him while she's with Paul, it's clear this is not the first time she's heard from him in this manner but, even then, she's taken aback by how bad he looks when she meets up with him in the diner. Terrified at the prospect of the place's power going out, as it's threatening to do so from the storm that's raging outside, he rambles about how "they" marked them as children and have come back, that they can't stand the light, and that other people, possibly even Edgar Allan Poe, may have had run-ins with them. He then tells her that he's come to the realization that no one can help him, including her. Unable to take the terror anymore, he pulls out a gun and shoots himself in front of Julia and everyone else in the diner. Afterward, Billy's writing about the creatures helps to give the others a rudimentary insight into how they operate and how to fight them.
When I look at this film, I find it hard to believe that Robert Harmon had any sort of passion for this story, as his direction is so ho-hum, with almost nothing to make it stand out, save for a few nicely-constructed shots, such as those you're seeing here. There are very few moments that are genuinely creepy or unsettling and that's especially bad when we know that Harmon is very capable of that. The opening in little Billy's bedroom is probably the most effective scene, as it does have some atmosphere, with the darkness, the sound of the storm outside, the camera cutting back to the shadow of a jangling marionette hanging from the ceiling, and the sheer terror of a little kid alone in his room at night, knowing that there's some kind of monster lurking in the shadows and no one can help him; however, it still could have been done better. The same goes for when Julia's car breaks down in a mist-covered, marshy area and she hears and sees glimpses of the creatures lurking in the surrounding foliage. Again, kind of eerie, but not as much as it could be, and try as it might, the scene with Terry at the pool has nothing on the pool scenes in both versions of Cat People. Also, the first glimpses of the creatures in Billy's closet and in the ventilation duct in Sam and Terry's apartment are also kind of creepy, but that feeling doesn't last long. That's one of the major problems: this movie has a concept that should very easily work (monsters from God knows where that come for you when there's no light to repel them) but it just never does. It's partly due to how uninteresting the characters are and also how the movie never feels like anything you've haven't already seen numerous times before, but another factor is that it simply fails to explore it in broader strokes or take advantage of its inherent possibilities. There's even a plot device of the constant bad weather causing rolling blackouts that should guarantee plenty of suspense, as you'd never know when the characters are going to be plunged into darkness, but it ultimately doesn't matter, as the creatures themselves seem to affect the electricity so they can easily get at their prey much more than the weather. They themselves could be the cause of the rolling blackouts but that possibility never entered my mind until just now, as it's never truly suggested, save for a line from Julia that she never even finishes.
It's a shame that the movie isn't good, as night terrors, like the much more exploited nightmares, are prime candidates for the subject of a horror film. Night terrors are more immediately frightening than nightmares anyway, as they jolt you awake, can have you wondering where you are, and can also make you wonder if something isn't still after you, leading to you possibly attacking someone who tries to help or console you when it happens. I like the idea of there being an actual, external cause for night terrors and, with a better script, it could have been explored much more thoroughly. Moreover, I think the movie would have been more effective if the focus was entirely on children, rather than college students who first experienced the night terrors as children. While I know that adults are certainly not immune to fear, it's more inherently relatable to be scared as a child, especially if you were a particularly timid child who hated being alone in the dark, like I was (I'm not ashamed to admit that I didn't start sleeping in my own bed until I was in middle school). And again, one of the film's few truly effective moments is the opening with young Billy, as well as the silent surveillance footage we see of Julia as a little girl, absolutely terrified after having a night terror in a sleep clinic, and the scene where Sarah tells the adult Julia about how "they" come to eat her at night. But, if they absolutely had to center the story around college students dealing with this recurring terror, at least let Billy be the focus, as we see the horror he experienced as a child firsthand, meaning we'd be able to get into what he's going through as an adult much more than Julia, whose past experiences we only hear and get short glimpses of. Plus, Jon Abrahams was really good at coming off as a terrified young man who'd reached the end of his rope, another reason why I think it would have been better if he were the protagonist.
A major reason why I'm not a fan of They is because it's absolutely dreary and unpleasant to look at. It was one of the early films of the 2000's to adopt that really bland, de-saturated, virtually colorless look, with a lot of silver, white, and inky visuals in the frame, and while that can help create a mood, if it's not used effectively, it leaves you with a movie that saps all of the energy out of you when you watch it. Besides the actual look, the film is set in New York, during a bout of thunderstorms, with almost constant rain and depressing, overcast skies in the exterior shot, and the sets are sometimes often very unattractive as well. Julia and Paul's apartments look fine, but Terry and Sam live in this very downcast, darkly-lit loft, with lots of murkiness in how it's shot, even when there's sunlight coming through the windows, and the vibe is added to by the mere presence of the dark, depressing paintings Sam is often working on. The same goes for the interior of Billy's childhood home during his funeral wake, no doubt due to the generally dour mood of that scene (the palette there and in other scenes make me think of the way David Fincher's films often look), with his old bedroom having become a visual representation of the dark, hopeless mindset he'd fallen into, with newspaper clippings of missing children, items connected with ancient beings believed to cause night terrors, and a drawer filled to the brim with batteries, to ensure he was never without light. The scene where Julia meets Billy in that little diner in the city really has an unappealing look and feel to it, with the rain outside, the crowd, the noise, the flickering blue neon light outside the window, and the threat of the power going out, not to mention how places like that are just kind of seedy-feeling in general. Heck, even the interior of Dr. Booth's office is dark and depressing. Definitely not some place you'd want to go for therapy. And the movie's third act involves scenes in subway tunnels, with the ending taking place in a blank-looking sanitarium, so you're assaulted by blandness right to the end. (A scene early on when Julia has an encounter with the creatures while driving home from Billy's funeral through a marshy area is actually a welcome break from the blandness, as there's some color there, despite how it's meant to be spooky and uncomfortable.) Again, I get that they were going for atmosphere and mood, but the movie itself doesn't work, so the visuals just make it all the more hard to sit through.
Keeping the monster or monsters in the shadows is a tradition that's about as old as cinema itself and, when it's done well, it makes for a lot of suspense and creepiness. However, They shows how you don't go about it if you want the viewer to care. Like many other monsters in horror films, the exact nature of "they" is left totally ambiguous. While they do appear to be from an alternate dimension and, as Billy suggests in his diary, possibly use darkness as a means to enter ours, you don't know if they're aliens, demons (they're sometimes referred to as such), etc., or, for that matter, why they target specific children, mark them, and then return for them when they're young adults. There seems to be a connection between their appearance and the experience of losing a loved one, as many of the characters admit to having first encountered the creatures in their night terrors after such events (Julia after her father killed herself and again after Billy does the same, Terry after her sister drowned, Sarah after her mother's death), but it's not answered either, nor is the question of why they avoid bright light. All of this sounds like the makings for a good, spooky creature feature but, on the contrary, it never gels. Maybe it's because the movie is so run-of-the-mill in its direction and style, the characters aren't the most compelling, and also because "they" themselves aren't that interesting in design when you get a good look at them (which isn't very often), but I could care less about the mystery of what they are and where they come from. In the end, I find that there's just so little to grab onto about them and what is given isn't enough. Yeah, you also don't know much about the exact nature of the Aliens (that is, until Ridley Scott came up with some truly uninspired, ridiculous explanations but, God, I can't talk about those movies right now), the creatures in The Descent, and so many other movie monsters, but in those instances, the few clues you're given make them all the more intriguing, without destroying the terror of not having exact answers. With They, you get hints that people throughout the centuries have been encountering them and that they could be the source of folkloric explanations for night terrors, as well as for Poe's dark, nihilistic style of writing. Interesting idea, but it's not explored enough to offset that you're dealing with some very generic monsters that, while the possible explanations for their origins run the gambit of supernatural, inter-dimensional, or what have you, are the focus of a movie that fails to make you care.
A possible reason for why there's so little to the creatures is how drastically the movie's screenplay was changed from its initial conception. In Brendan Hood's original script, "they" were described as organic machines that harvest humans for "spare parts" whenever their own bodies are beginning to break down and decay. However, while Hood is still given the sole writing credit for the film, his script was re-written again and again by as many as ten people, to the point where only the basic structure of college students stumbling across strange creatures was retained. I'm guessing that, somewhere along the way, the decision was made to make the creatures totally ambiguous and, by the time the finished script was ready, it had been quite a complex and messy path that was taken to jettison all of the more concrete initial concepts in order to get to that point. It could also explain why the movie feels so lopsided, initially coming off as a psychological horror film, only to turn into a creature feature during its latter half. In fact, in an alternate ending that ended up in the actual film in some of the DVD releases, it's revealed that Julia is a paranoid schizophrenic in an asylum and that they, as well as the characters in the story, are just creations of her diseased mind. While that ending would fit with the movie's initial feel more, knowing myself, I would have likely been downright furious if I'd seen that, as I almost always hate it when they do that (if you've seen my review of High Tension, which was one of my very first, you know all about it).
Again, you almost never get a good look at the creatures, as they're lurking in complete darkness 99% of the time and, whenever they attack, the editing and camera movement are so quick that you can never make out any details (as you can see, it was nigh impossible for me to get shots of them that are even remotely clear). When you do get to see one, it's basically the Cloverfield monster shrunk down to human size: a four-legged creature with a thin body and spindly legs, as well as with an elongated, shriveled face that has a vaguely human look to it. Not a very inspired creature design, I must say, and it's a shame too, since Patrick Tatopoulos, who also worked on Independence Day, Godzilla '98, Pitch Black, and the Underworld films, usually comes up with some cool-looking monsters (I am including the look of Godzilla in that movie when I say that, even though they shouldn't have strayed so far from the iconic design). It also sucks that they're almost completely CGI, save for some practical heads, arms, and claws used for closeups when Terry encounters them at the rec center and when Julia is fighting with them in the subway tunnels near the end. The same also goes for the brief glimpses you get of their world, aside from some black-colored gunk and sticky webbing associated with it. The dark lighting does help a little bit but you see enough to make out how dated those digital effects are, although the effect for when Julia's hand distorts, cracks, and crumbles in one scene is effectively done. Speaking of practical effects, this is a PG-13 movie, so you're not going to see a lot of gore. You see a little bit of blood spray on Julia's face when Billy shoots himself but, when the creatures attack someone, it ends with them dragging their victims off into the dark rather than ripping them apart. There is one notable bit of makeup work, concerning the bizarre, infected, painful-looking marks the creatures leave behind on their intended victims, specifically when Julia picks at one she finds in her scalp and, as tiny drops of blood drip into the sink, she pulls out a long, needle-like object they've been using to keep track of her.
The movie opens with a completely black screen, as you hear the sound of a little boy, young Billy, yelling for his mother. Billy's mother comes in to check on him and finds that he's scared in his dark bedroom, as a thunderstorm rages outside. He asks to sleep with her but his mom won't have it, saying that he should learn to sleep in his own bed since he's almost six. He tells her, "They come for me when it's dark," but his mom dismisses this, assuring him that no one is coming to get him. Just to humor him, she checks under his bed before leaving, telling him to pull the covers over his head if he has to, as well as leaving the door open a crack. Once he's alone again, Billy looks around his dark room, including at his closet door, which is ajar, before turning on his side and attempting to go to sleep. A few moments later, the room's door slowly closes by itself, and Billy opens his eyes to find himself almost totally in the dark again. He calls for his mom but gets no response this time. Looking up at the shadow of a clinking marionette on the ceiling, Billy looks at his closet door and then at the window, seeing the water stream across the glass in unnatural patterns. The closet door opens by itself and Billy sees a glimpse of something move around in there. As he looks, trying to get a better look at it, the figure looks back at him and lets out a threatening, hissing screech. Billy, again, yells for his mom, when the storm knocks out the power, killing his nightlight and plunging the room into total darkness. Panicking, he grabs a flashlight off his nightstand and pulls the covers over his head. Sitting up, he listens as the creature moves around his room, knocking a toy over and making unsettling droning sounds. The flashlight starts to flicker and Billy smacks it, trying to make it stay on, but he's unable to keep it from going out. He continues listening to the creature moving around the room, when it suddenly gets quiet, save for the sounds of the ongoing storm. Figuring it's now safe, Billy pulls the covers off of him, only to be grabbed by his feet and dragged off the bed, hitting the floor hard. Before he can do anything to escape, the creature grabs him again and drags him under the bed, where he disappears into the blackness.
Nineteen years later, as the story's focus switches to Julia Lund, we get a scene where, just as she and her boyfriend, Paul, are about to get busy in his bedroom, she gets a call from Billy, who asks to see her. She tries to put it off to the next day but, much to Paul's chagrin, she does agree to see him within half an hour. Taking the subway to downtown Manhattan, she goes to a small diner, where she finds Billy waiting for her, and is taken aback by how bad he looks. She sits down with him at his table and asks him what's wrong, noticing a strange mark on his left hand. Jittery and frightened, he seems concerned when the neon light on the other side of the window beside them starts to flicker. He tells her, "They're here," and that the flickering is not because of the storm that's going on outside. He adds that, when the two of them had night terrors when they were kids, they were marked and those that marked have come back. A baby starts crying nearby and Billy tells her that it's a warning that they're nearby, as well as that they affect the electricity, phones, and other such things. Julia tells him she doesn't understand what he's going on about but Billy tells her that they stay in the dark and that, as far back as the time of Edgar Allen Poe, people have been encountering them. Ranting about having to work during the night so he can sleep in the day and that his mother thinks he's crazy, he says that he's come to the conclusion that no one can help him. Julia offers to help him but he says she can't and says that he shouldn't have called her. Becoming more and more hopeless and defeated, Billy tells Julia that he doesn't want to be scared anymore. The lights in the diner flicker and dim more frequently, threatening to go out, and Billy, reduced to tears, says, "Sorry," before pulling a gun out of his coat, putting it under his chin, and pulling the trigger. Julia's face is sprayed with blood and, while everyone else panics and evacuates the diner, all she can do is sit there in total shock over what just happened.
Too traumatized to go home, Julia stays over at Paul's, taking his bedroom while he sleeps on the couch. Before she falls asleep, there's a moment where she notices that his closet door is ajar and, feeling uncomfortable about it, she gets up and shuts it. Later that night, Julia is awakened by the sound of the phone on the nightstand ringing. She answers it but gets no response, aside from strange, chittering noises on the other end before the line goes dead. Hanging it up, she calls for Paul but gets no answer, and when she walks out in the living room, she finds he's not there. She walks into the kitchen, hearing what appears to be a baby crying in another apartment, when she hears the shower running in the bathroom. Walking in there, she again calls for Paul, but when she pulls back the curtain, she finds that no one is standing in the tub. She then hears the sound of the pipes groaning, which draws her over to the sink. She looks down the drain, which unexpectedly erupts with a small geyser of sticky, black gunk, making her jump back. The light beside the medicine cabinet flickers continuously, and almost goes out at one point, before seemingly managing to kick back on. Hearing odd sounds in the cabinet, Julia opens it to find it filled with a black webbing, as the light starts flickering again. Unaware that there's a dark dimension filled with creatures behind the webbing, she reaches in and pulls some of it out, as the beings' moaning sounds can be heard within. She lowers her hand, which is covered in the black, sticky substance, down to the sink, and is horrified when her fingers crack and contort into a tangled mess, followed by her wrist cracking and doing the same. Panicked, Julia closes the cabinet door hard enough to crack the mirror, and lets out a scream when she hears the creatures growling. Paul comes rushing in, asking her what's wrong, only to get attacked by her. She pushes him against the mirror, causing pieces of it to fall in the sink, and then shoves him against a stand full of various bath items. Backing up and pulling a section of the shower curtain down, Julia points and screams, with Paul approaching her, trying to calm her down. But, she beats on him and backs up against the wall, screaming again. Paul is finally able to get through to her, telling her he's not going to hurt her, and she comes to her senses. She asks him how she ended up in the bathroom and he figures she must have been sleepwalking, before comforting her with an embrace.
During the wake at Billy's childhood home before the funeral, and after she's put off by Sam's insensitive sense of humor when she first meets him and Terry, Julia goes up to Billy's old bedroom. She finds that it's full of bizarre items and images that illustrate his disturbed mindset, including newspaper clippings of possible kidnappings of children and a desk drawer full of batteries. Following the funeral, Julia drives back home on a road in the middle of nowhere. She tries to listen to the radio but the song starts skipping, and unknown to her, the headlights blink. She also sees that she's running out of fuel. As if things couldn't get any worse, she sees something run across the road ahead of her, only for it to suddenly dart back out and smash across her windshield. This causes her to momentarily lose track of the car and skid off the road but she quickly regains control and stops on the edge. Trying to compose herself, Julia attempts to reengage the engine, only for it to stall, as the fuel gauge is now on empty, and the battery appears to die, as the headlights go out. Grabbing a flashlight, she gets out of the car, only to be momentarily spooked by bizarre animal sounds she hears around her. Walking to the front, she pops the hood and inspects the engine, as something appears to be watching and approaching from the surrounding marshes. She fiddles with the engine, jumping back when it suddenly sparks, and hearing the strange sounds again, she shines her flashlight in the direction of the marsh. She doesn't see anything, but continues to hear the sounds, and her flashlight dies almost instantly. Spotting some rustling in the grass nearby, she quickly closes the hood and gets back in the car. She closes the door, locks herself up, and tries to start the car again, but according to the gauge, the battery is very weak and the car struggles to start before dying. Continuing to hear the sounds, Julia is scared out of her wits when Billy suddenly appears in the passenger seat. Screaming, she falls out the door, into the road, and is nearly hit by a passing big rig. Her car, radio and all, inexplicably starts working again and Julia, getting to her feet, very cautiously approaches it and gets in. Finding nothing in the backseat or the passenger's side, she drives off.
Following a meeting with Sam and Terry to look through Billy's diary, and a visit with Dr. Booth for the first time since she was a little girl, Julia heads down to her apartment building's basement storage area, which naturally has bad electrical wiring, to retrieve a box full of items connected to her past. As she sets aside everything laid on top of the box, a shadow passes over the wall behind her and when she looks, she sees nothing, but hears some familiar, unsettling sounds. Walking out of the storage space, she closes the door and locks it, when the door next to it slowly opens. As she looks at it, she ends up bumping into a man and tells him he scared her before heading on upstairs (I thought the guy she runs into was Kurtwood Smith but I was wrong). Meanwhile, at Sam and Terry's apartment, they talk about Billy while Sam is painting and Terry is picking at a mark on her leg. Sam decides to go out and get some air, leaving Terry by herself. Once she is, she hears what sounds the lift they use to get in and out of their apartment acting strangely, but it's empty when it comes back up. Then, she hears what sounds like rats moving around in the air ducts, followed by the snap of a trap in there. She removes the grating from a vent and uses her cigarette lighter to illuminate the inside. To her dismay, she sees a rat crawling away unharmed. She picks up the nearby trap, only for it to snap in her hand, causing her to drop it. Hearing an odd sound, she tries to flick her lighter back on, when she sees a figure in the dark down the vent. Unable to get a look at it, she tries repeatedly to flick her lighter back on, as the creature crawls down the passage and plants up against the left wall, hitting the metal with a clang that startles Terry. It lunges at her right as she manages to finally get the lighter to ignite, hitting it in the face with the flame. After she comes down from being startled, she sees that it has disappeared without a trace.
Back at Julia's apartment, she looks through the box, which contains a videotape that has the date "3/21/82" written on its side. She pops the tape into her VCR and sees that it's surveillance footage of her at a sleep clinic, meant for doctors to study her night terrors. Julia hits fast-forward on the control and stops it on a spot where she sees her young self bolt up in bed and look around the room. Young Julia lets out a silent, frightened scream and is then shown pounding on the wall, while looking across from her at something that's clearly terrifying her. The sight of this has Julia tearing up and she hits pause on a shot of her frightened face. She's then startled when her phone rings and answers it, only to learn that it's a classmate of hers named Kim. After they talk about her upcoming oral psychology exam, which she's supposed to be studying for, she asks Kim to call her later in order to make she's still awake. Hanging up, she tries to study but still can't focus. Instead, she goes back to the box and pulls out books that are on the iconography of dreams and night terrors, as well as a file on her from those who examined her, full of drawings depicting what she saw in her night terrors, a photo of her and Billy as kids, and reports on her condition and mental state, with her claims of "demons." After looking through this for a long time, Julia ends up falling asleep after laying her head on her sofa while sitting in the floor.
At the downtown rec center, Terry puts her stuff in a locker, only to stop momentarily and look warily at the door leading to the swimming pool, apparently feeling uneasy. Regardless, she puts on her bathing suit and washes down before entering the pool. As she does, blood is shown to be oozing out of the mark on her leg. She then hops into the pool and swims a lap, stopping to listen to some people walking on the other side of the room. The man who was also swimming gets out and heads to the locker room, leaving Terry in there by herself. She continues swimming, but when she reaches the other end of the pool and turns back, the light down below goes out. She stops in the center of the pool and looks up to see that the lights lining the ceiling are going out as well. Futilely, she asks for someone to turn the lights back on, and hears scuttling and clicking around the pool's dark edges as she wades in the center. Something enters the pool when her back is turned but she turns around and sees the large ripples it left behind, prompting her to swim to the edge as fast as she can. Under the water, the creature quickly swims after her, but Terry manages to reach the edge and pull herself out. She rushes to the door, only to find that it's locked. She yells for someone to open it and screams for help, but it's obvious no help is coming. She walks back to the pool and finds no sign of her pursuer in the water. The last bit of juice in one light drains away and Terry runs to another door across from the pool, managing to get through it and lock it from the other side. She breathes a sigh of relief, but that doesn't last, as she turns around to see a couple of the locker doors slowly open. She backs up against the door, only to turn around and come face-to-face with one of the creatures. Screaming, she turns back around, only for another one to appear and leap right at her.
The next day, after oversleeping and failing miserably at her oral exam, Julia is languishing in her bathtub, allowing her answer machine to pick up a call from Paul, who tries to apologize for being drunk the other night. When the phone rings again, she gets out of the tub and answers it, thinking it's Paul again, but it turns out to be Sam, who says he needs to talk to her. She heads over to the apartment and Paul tells her that Terry's missing, adding that the rec center called to say they found the bag with her stuff still there. She asks him if he called the police and says that he did but they won't find anything. He then goes back to Billy's diary, reading an entry that talks about being taken to the creatures' world and marked, which they only do to kids who have night terrors. He flips to another entry, where Billy talks about his mark reappearing, indicating they were coming to reclaim him, and finally to the last entry, where Billy describes pulling an object out of his mark. Julia explains it away as Billy being unstable, but Sam tells her about the mark on Terry, before showing her his own, which is near his collarbone. Following that, Julia goes for another session with Dr. Booth, meeting a young girl named Sarah in his waiting room. Talking to her, she learns that her mother has died and, noticing that she's making drawings with crayons that are similar to the ones she herself made as a child, she asks her if she has bad dreams. She says she does, specifically dreams where "they" come for her in order to devour her. Sarah says that lights are the only things that keep them away, before rolling up her sleeve and revealing that she has a mark on her arm. In her session with Booth, she tells him about her growing belief in the creatures, but he asks her to look at it from a psychological point of view, she considers that it might be something she wants to believe out of guilt over being unable to help Billy. With that, she leaves, but before she does, Booth suggests that if these things were actually coming for her, she'd be marked as well. In the next scene, Julia has Paul search her body for a mark, while she's in just her bra and panties. Though he doesn't take it completely seriously, he ends up not finding anything. Julia tries to explain but figures he'll just think she's crazy and stops. Paul, however, takes advantage of the situation and the two of them have sex.
Sam is painting in his apartment, when he hears creaking sounds in the elevator shaft. Ignoring it, he carries on, when a sudden draft blows along the flames of the lit candles he has around the room, before a barely perceivable, shimmering form rises up to the ceiling and activates the fire sprinklers. The room is instantly doused, shorting out the lights in big sprays of sparks and forcing Sam to run for cover. He walks over to a door and locks it, when he hears bizarre screeches and howls on the other side. Looking through the peephole, he sees the creatures scuttling down the hallway, towards the door, with one leaning down in front of the peephole from the ceiling and screeching at him. Backing away from the door, he runs to the nearest window but finds that he can't raise it, even when he unlocks it. It's the same deal with the window next to it, and Sam desperately screams for help at some people through the window of the building across from his. They're unable to hear him, so he smashes the glass, when he turns and sees that the elevator is coming up. He runs and rolls through the opening before it's even halfway open and, landing there, frantically presses the down button. On the way down, the lift stops, falls down very fast, and then stops again. Sam sees the light inside it flickering and the lights on the button controls flashing wildly, before the lift jerks back and forth and then plummets down. It stops just short of the bottom of the shaft, enabling Sam to slip through its opening and hop onto another floor. The lift falls a little bit more, and before Sam can run for it, he's grabbed by his legs and dragged into the dark shaft beneath it.
Once she's back at her apartment after hitting the sheets with Paul, Julia is watching TV, when she hears a sound in her closet. She stares warily at the ajar door, before deciding she's had enough of this and goes in there to prove that there's nothing to be afraid of. Unable to turn the overhead light on, she turns and looks at the hanging clothes to her right, sensing that something is back there. Pushing them aside, she's attacked by a creature, which jumps and grabs at her. Julia manages to stumble backwards out of the closet, the creature not chasing after her due to the light, and she runs out of her apartment, down to the streets. After nearly running into a man, she slows down and feels a pain in her scalp. Putting her finger to the spot, she finds a bit of blood there. She's startled by a commotion down an alley to her left but it's just someone emptying the trash. She heads through the side of the building on the alley's left side, which is a restaurant, and makes her way through the kitchen and to the restroom. Looking at herself in a mirror, she pulls back her hair, revealing a red, infected-looking spot in her scalp. She picks at it and pushes on it, wincing from the pain it causes, until she rips a long, needle-like object from within her flesh, which she drops into the sink. Julia immediately goes back to Paul's apartment, having to wake him up from a deep sleep by pounding on the door and yelling for him loudly. When he opens the door, she runs in, turns on the nearest lamp, and has him look at the mark on her scalp, telling her that she's marked like the others. As Paul grabs his medical supply bag, Julia babbles about what she pulled out of her head, getting attacked in her apartment, and so on. She's so busy going over what happened that she doesn't notice Paul pour some powder out of a tablet and into a glass of water, which he then gives to her. She gulps the water down and continues on, talking about how the creatures could be everywhere because of the blackout situation, but Paul makes her sit down and tells her to take deep breaths. He then reveals that he drugged her water. Panicking, she gets up and tries to run but Paul stops her, telling her that he won't let anything happen to her. This appears to calm her and he sets her down on the couch, while he goes to get her some clean clothes. In the next room, he tries to make a phone call while patronizing her, but Julia isn't fooled, and when he looks back in the living room, she's gone.
Julia makes her way down to the depths of the nearest subway station, making herself vomit up the drugged water by the tracks. But, while she manages to solve that problem, a loud buzzer alerts her to another, as she turns around and sees the entrance's gate come down. She tries to run out but doesn't make it. After futilely shaking the gate and yelling for help, she runs back down upon hearing a train car pull up and runs through its door. She sits down in a seat as the train moves on with her, when the lights inside start to flicker. Despite this, it looks as if Julia is home safe, when the train stops when a light up ahead goes from green to red. The lights in the train's ceiling quickly begin to go out one by one and, within seconds, Julia is plunged into darkness. She runs to the back of the car and out the door, running through the tunnel along the tracks, trying to stay within the light as all of the other lights in the tunnel start going out. It's clear that it's pointless for her to try, and when she's completely in the dark, they start to arrive, crawling along the sides of the tracks behind her. She's tackled from the front by one and is dragged along the tracks, as the other creatures join the one in attacking her. But then, the train's lights come back on, scaring them away temporarily. Unfortunately, it takes off without her, and Julia is left in the darkness again. She hears the creatures howling down either sides of the tunnel and makes her way through a door to another part of the underground. She walks down this tunnel until she reaches a green light by the tracks, which she becomes determined to stay by. But, it unexpectedly shorts out and she's back in the dark again. The train comes around the bend behind her and she runs ahead, trying to flag it down to stop. This almost gets her run over and she's forced to jump to the side of the tracks. She grabs a nearby rod for a weapon, when a creature smashes through the wall to her left. It grabs her and tries to pull her through an opening near the tracks, but she's able to use the rod as a wedge to secure herself. The creature's pulling is so strong that she constantly has to adjust her grip in order to keep it, but when the train passes by, the creature retreats when a light from the other side of the track illuminates it.
Climbing out of the opening, Julia spots a ladder leading up to grating on the surface and she promptly climbs up there, as the light that drove the creature threatens to go out. It goes out before she reaches the top and, though she does make it up there, she's unable to budge the grating. She yells for help, as they begin to climb up the ladder after her and, inevitably, grab her. She grabs onto the grating and tries to fight them off but they manage to pull her back down. They pull her down the ladder and to the floor below, where they swarm and viciously attack her, one grabbing her head with its enormous hand. She sees more and more of them crawling down the walls and joining in the frenzy, before she's grabbed by the legs and dragged across the ground, down the tunnel. Desperate, she grabs a large shard of broken glass that she finds and stabs at one. A small light shines into the spot and they immediately retreat. However, Julia is still frantic when she gets to her feet and attacks the source of the light, a team of engineers, when they approach her. She slashes one of the men across the chest, causing him to collapse, and goes on slashing at the air wildly, as the engineers try to get close enough to help her. Eventually, one is forced to move in, grab the arm wielding the shard, and punch her in the head, knocking her out, as the screen goes completely white.
The white fades and the film has shifted to Dr. Booth's sanitarium, where Paul is talking with him about Julia. Suddenly, they hear her screaming down the hall and rush to her room, where she's sitting up on the floor. They manage to get her to calm down a little bit, telling her that she was found in the subway and that she's suffered a concussion. The two of them help her to her feet and move her to the bed, as she tries to explain what she was doing in the subway. Booth tells her she needs to rest right now and he and Paul leave her, closing the door behind them. Getting out of bed and looking the door's small window, Julia sees, to her chagrin, that she's in a mental institution and Booth and Paul think she's crazy. Just as she's processing this, a pair of swinging doors to the commissary shut and a creature suddenly smashes through the window at her. Hearing this, Booth and an orderly rush to her room, only to find it empty when they fling open the door. Perplexed at how she could have gotten out if the room was locked, they find no sign of her under the bed or in the closet, which is slightly ajar. Booth notices some coat hangers slowly swaying back and forth on their rack but doesn't make anything of it. Unbeknownst to him and the orderly, Julia is frantically yelling at them from within the creatures' dimension, but they see and hear nothing. The orderly goes to call for security, while Julia keeps trying to contact Booth, who stands in the doorway, still looking in the closet. To her horror, she sees that he's about to leave and the creatures, who are gathered in a large mass behind her, start to close in on her. Booth stops once more before finally shutting the door, putting out the light, and leaving Julia at the mercy of the creatures, who then cover her.
Sadly, this is yet another movie where I have almost nothing to say about the music score. It was composed by Czech composer Elia Cmiral, whose done the music for movies like Bones, Wrong Turn, and the American Pulse films, among others (he also has the dubious honor of having scored the notorious Battlefield Earth), and it's as run-of-the-mill as anything else about They. It's nothing more than generic horror movie music, interspersed with instances of warmer, more emotional bits for scenes like when Julia watches the footage of her young self, and it leaves no impression whatsoever, which is sadly fitting, don't you think?
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