One confusing movie in 2017

Personal Shopper

Smashing glasses, ectoplasm, half-open doors, and things-that-go-bump-in-the-night. Personal Shopperhas all the hallmarks of a traditional supernatural horror, but Olivier Assayas’ thoughtful meditation on grief is anything but traditional, swapping jump scares for ambiguous, psychological trickery.

Maureen (Kristen Stewart) is a personal shopper by day, medium by night. After her twin brother Lewis dies of a genetic heart condition, Maureen sets down a paranormal path of discovery to actualize a deal the pair made — the first to die will contact the other from beyond the grave.

Assayas crafts a nuanced story that interweaves the narrative of Maureen’s grief with the gruesome murder of her celebrity boss, Kyra (Nora von Waldstätten). This is where the lines between reality, paranormal, and imagination blur, particularly in the final third of the film. Whether Maureen really is communicating with her late brother or being manipulated due to her fragile mental state, is far from clear.

Despite lots of room for interpretation, including wild theories such as a Sixth Sense-style twist where Maureen was dead all along, director Assayas stripped away all mystery from the conclusion by explaining his vision during a press conference. He explained “there were no ghosts, [Maureen’s] brother was not really speaking to her. It was her own path to find herself … survive the loss of her brother and find her [own] identity.”

That’s settled then.