Creepuscular

Rating: Null/10 (30 March 2020)

When Dennis enters the car for the abduction he thoughtfully tidies up a bit and then maces the two girls in the back with a sedative. Casey's sitting shotgun and she's just able to lift the door handle. But she can't leave. It'll have to be more interesting than that.
Dennis places a chair near the entry of the room, wipes it with his yellow cloth and sits. With resolute menace, Dennis declares Marcia Victim #1. Marcia breaks free from him and runs to Casey who tells her to pee on herself, and in the next room with Dennis she does. He spurns her back into their room, outraged monstrously by this disgrace to his tidy personal sensibilities and attire. Good for her that she had that personally humiliating thing she could do.
Casey flashes back to a scene from a hunting trip. In a dining room, a burly man tells a hunting story as a tiny little girl watches with a precociousness bordering on adult sophistication. She's like a little doll with a woman's head.
Claire says they should fight him immediately with everything they've got. She's probably right and Marcia says she'll do it if Casey will, but Casey won't do it. It'll have to be more interesting than that.
One of Kevin's personalities visits his therapist, Dr. Fletcher. Fawning over some 'haute couture' sketches he's made of women who are incapacitated and cannot see, she notes that he's very functional (and doing well at his job - at the Zoo). Later, at a museum she decides to appreciate a painting of incomplete women who cannot speak.
Dennis enters the room with cleaning supplies and stresses that The Victims keep their area neat. He is meticulously demanding. He says they are there for a purpose; they are "sacred food" and he won't bother them anymore. They are being prepared for something.
Casey acquires the belief that there's a trick to it all. She'll try to get 9-year-old child/man Hedwig to help them escape. Hedwig just says he 'stole the light' from Dennis who will notice soon and get angry ("etcetera"), and then cries about how Patricia thinks he's stupid. Dennis takes over again after an escape attempt, isolating Claire in a closet and demanding they each remove an article of clothing on the pretense that they got dirty. There are bad angles in the wood panels by Casey as she surrenders her first shirt.
Dr. Fletcher pitches a lecture about her patients having powers in the far upper spectrum of human ability, thanks to their suffering and at their own insistence. It's an interesting concept.
As they stand over the body of a young deer in the woods, Casey's dad says "The thrill, Casey, is about whether you can or can't outsmart this animal." Casey steps forward almost defiantly before the carcass; it's almost like she's empowered.
Marcia is down to her crop top and panties as Patricia leads her and Casey to the kitchen. Patricia seems pleasant as she prepares sandwiches with paprika. Patricia personally likes paprika and she pontificates about the eating predilections of lions (incidentally, they favor the belly). After an escape attempt, she holds a knife to Marcia's bare belly and says she was chosen because she's always been protected and has never truly suffered: "You never had a chance". Patricia's particularly creepuscular and prone to perversion. Dennis later menaces Casey angrily like she's some kind of threat, saying they'll be kept separate, The Beast is coming for all three of them, and she has a crumb on her (second) shirt; she must take it off.
Little Casey is in the woods with Uncle John with his shotgun. He looks like he may be trying to impress her. There's an interesting tension.
Hedwig roughhouses with Casey a bit and brags about his "special power" (the 9-year-old can come out any time). She wins Hedwig's trust by telling him about how she gets detention on purpose to get away from everyone. Now he'll bring her to his room where there's a window; her suffering has a special use. She is specially suffering.
Dr. Fletcher fawns over Dennis, saying he's needed by the others because he's strong and he cares for Kevin (so himself, ultimately); he's not evil, but "necessary". She's especially good at postulating the many ways in which Kevin and his many personalities are functional.
It's Casey's 'privilege' to go to Hedwig's room to be really impressed when he does a 'funny' dance before The Victim. It's a Special version of a sacrificial dance (a headdress and spear would complete the look). Casey's losing hope in this multi-creep, multi-room dungeon and she needs to escape through his window, but his window is a drawing in crayon on craft paper and he's busy being interesting.
Back in the room, Dennis tells Casey that The Beast is an evolved being that believes "the time of ordinary humanity is over" (the typical Super Serial Killer), she will be in the presence of something "greater", and he's not going to take her last shirt because tonight is a sacred night.
Little Casey walks somberly down a hill in the woods. Uncle John's there and he tells her to take off her clothes so they can play their 'game'. She's later shown holding a shotgun on her uncle and pumping it, as if a child might be expected to have the bravado to even begin to 'handle' the situation in this way, as well as the ability to handle the shotgun (and possibly even pull the heavy trigger).
Dr. Fletcher goes to the Zoo and tells Dennis they're extraordinary. Dennis agrees and tells her about The Beast. He also tells an interesting story about how when he was three his mother would punish him cruelly if he made a mess. In her closet, Marcia finds a wire hanger which she bends and shimmies through a door crack to try to release the outside latch, but it's not possible (it doesn't have the rigidity needed for that kind of use). When Dr. Fletcher discovers he's abducted the girls she tries to reason with him, as if that'd be possible now after facilitating the escalation of his condition with little in the way of therapy and an abundance of undiscerning praise. He maces her.
At night the Patricia/Dennis-via-Hedwig 'Horde' attain an even lower level of Creepuscular; just 'magically' mutating into The Beast by the power of their insistence. It bolts through a train tunnel into town, then bolts back home to crush Dr. Fletcher to death like a boa constrictor.
Casey gets out of the room and discovers Marcia's half-naked dead body; her stomach (and its contents) gruesomely devoured. Horrified, she moves on to the next room where she sees Claire lying face-down on the floor behind a rack - half-naked as well, of course. Casey whispers "Claire, let's go". Claire moves a little and looks up at Casey in abject misery, unable to speak. She's snatched away and it's immediately clear that her abdomen is being devoured. There's a real likelihood that she's still alive and, perversely, we can only look at her face hoping for an indication that she's not still suffering a slow death. It's clear that she doesn't have a chance. It's been vilely arranged.
The Beast comes for Casey and literally starts climbing the walls (pointlessly). Casey says Kevin's full name (as prescribed on paper by Dr. Fletcher before her death), and The Beast is briefly exorcised as Kevin resumes (recalling an INTERESTING childhood scene where his mother comes after him with a bent wire hanger to inflict extreme MISERY on him for making a mess). He tells Casey where the shotgun is and instructs her to kill him, but he's swiftly overcome by weaker personalities insisting on their innocence. Then Hedwig returns. In despair, Casey says "Stop it Hedwig!" but Hedwig stops nothing; he's where it begins. He'll give Patricia and Dennis the light: "No one's allowed to make fun of me anymore." He's a stupid boy.
Patricia takes the light. At Patricia's insistence, The Beast begins to re-emerge - but not before she declares the typical Serial Killer Escalation Vow that it'll be 10-12 young victims next time (the higher number isn't impressive; it just makes her that much more of a repulsive coward). Casey finds the shotgun. She's shown running through the service tunnel in her skimpy shirt then she's shown rolling around on the ground as The Beast bites a chunk out of her calf and rips her (last) shirt apart at the front. It hides when she loads the shotgun and she runs to the end of the corridor.
Little Casey sits sadly in the playground. Dad died prematurely of a heart attack and burly Uncle John will be her guardian. Interestingly, she'll be miserable for years now.
The Beast yells "Only through pain can you achieve your greatness..." and Casey locks herself in a cage, firing and missing as It bolts toward her. As she loads the last two shells her torn sleeve becomes a nuisance. She says "F-!" (but that's very unlikely to be what she wants to invoke); she must tear it off.
Casey fires, hitting It twice at close range to little effect. The Beast has already simply insisted that It is "more" than human, so It just stands back up and begins to bend the bars of her cage. Luckily though, she has many meticulously placed scars on her body, exposed due to the calculated elimination her of her clothes. When It sees her scars It says she's "different from the rest" and she should "Rejoice". It simply walks away then; she is 'saved' by the unbelievable transformation of self-abuse injuries into a survival mechanism (made possible by the incidental 'benefit' of being progressively undressed).
Casey is later found and when she's notified by a police officer that her uncle is there to pick her up she looks like she may object. So, maybe this miserable experience was 'good for her'. Incidentally.
In a new (old dilapidated) hideout, The Horde converse among himself about how he came away unharmed, people will have to believe they exist now, and the thing to do is to trust in The Beast: "Let him show the world how powerful we can be". By bolting around, climbing the walls, and getting angry. Etcetera.