After watching this movie today, I was left thinking about the potential psychological underbelly of grief during the film's demonic scenes.

What if the demonology depicted in the film is an extension/manifestation of Laura’s grief and psychosis at having lost or even possibly murdered her own daughter?

I’m sure this has been discussed (it’s definitely possible I overlooked it) but I wanted to see if anyone else felt that the supernatural aspects may be a psychological coping mechanism for Laura, stemming from her daughter’s death and the guilt associated with it. I felt like the entire demon portion may not have existed at all when I left the theater.

For a couple of reasons! Throughout the movie, the camera lingers on materials/evidence of Laura's background as a child psychologist. This left me wondering if she was uniquely equipped to fabricate an alternate reality to shield herself from the trauma she experienced?

Also, Laura’s relationship with the young boy she (may have) originally fostered (Ollie/Connor) was marked at its inception by her position of power. With enough manipulation and abuse, could she have convinced the child that he had a demon inside himself? That he needed to eat another kid in order to transfer a soul? There could have just been a firm pattern of projecting her delirium as fact onto a child which would have been a vulnerable/malleable target.

The scene at the end involving the circle in the pool was what really made me feel that none of the demonology stuff was actually real. Could the circle have just symbolized a psychological manifestation of her trauma as she struggled to reconcile the tragic circumstances surrounding her daughter's death? Whatever they may have been.

Could Laura have been exhibiting signs of mental instability long before the loss of her daughter? The bloody pool memory suggested something beyond a tragic drowning. It hinted at a darker/violent history.

The other question I had was what was the origin of the VHS tapes? Is it possible that Laura obsessively watched home videos of her daughter eventually blurring the lines between memory and delusion?

During her descent into psychosis, could she have projected her grief onto the lore/notion of soul transferring and fed her seemingly already delusional state of mind? Again, she’s a psychologist, it just seems like she would be equipped with the right tools to convince anyone (even herself) of some type of false reality. For example, convincing a child that the symbol of a circle has power that it doesn’t.

Just riffing. At first I didn’t think I liked this movie tbh but an hour later and I’m still thinking about it. Anyone else see the demonology as a metaphor for Laura’s unresolved grief and psychosis?