Lyla Movie Explained- Who Killed Lars, What Was Real, Is Lyla Dead, And Who Was The Man In The Diner?

I’m a sucker for mind melters. I don’t know what that says about me, but the more ambiguous something is and the harder I have to think about what it all means, the more I love it. David Lynch is naturally a favorite of mine. Feminist technicolor nightmare Braid is a more recent film of this same ilk. Gordon Cowie’s feature debut, Lyla, is cut from the same surreal cloth as Lost Highways and Twin Peaks.

A writer takes his family to a remote cabin on the lake to write his novel. He blames constant distractions for his inability to finish it. The film opens with a seemingly disconnected series of events. Twenty-eight years before the events in the cabin, a boy watches as his mother tells him she loves him and then slits her throat. We next see a series of vignettes, which may or may not be real, that reveal several violent crimes.

The nonlinear nature of the story makes it very difficult to determine what is real and what is imagined. Hugh constantly shifts back and forth between obvious fantasy(that may not be fantasy) and confusing events that might explain everything. There is also the question of who is actually telling the story and who is the real antagonist. Here is everything you need to know about Lyla: who was having an affair, who killed who, did Hugh kill his family, and who all those extraneous people were.

There is no real point in discussing the ending of Lyla, as the beginning is the end and vice versa. After the harsh opener, Hugh is sitting at a diner when a strange man with a cell phone sits down and begins talking to him as if they know each other. He is menacing, and Hugh is unnerved. The man tells Hugh he knows who he is and stirs his coffee, pinging the spoon against the side of the mug incessantly. He tries to give Hugh the phone, and we next catch up with Hugh at a gas station, then a phone booth, and later a motel. None of it makes much sense until later when jagged pieces begin stitching themselves together. Clues tease at the corners, though. Several news reports explain an eight-year-old boy was found dead. The boy was last seen with a woman in a boat.

Who is the man in the diner?

The man in the diner who hands Hugh the phone he later uses to hear his wife speaking to someone she is having an affair with is potentially Lars’s biological father. At least Hugh thinks so. This is why both the boy and the man in the diner stir their coffee mugs and why it is so upsetting to Hugh. Hugh may have found an extra phone at some time in the past and heard messages proving his wife was having an affair. A possible but not plausible explanation is that demons walked the Earth, destroyed Hugh’s family, and drove him mad.

Who killed Lars?

There are not any definitive answers, but it is inferred that Lyla was having an affair, and her son had a seizure while she was in her bedroom. Another plausible explanation is that her son saw her having her affair, and she silenced him by taking him out on the lake and killing him. When Hugh dreams of the older man cutting off his tongue, and later we see Lyla cut off Lars’s tongue, it is metaphorical.

Lyla did not literally cut off Lars’s tongue. She silenced him by killing him. Hugh feels guilty for not being around more. Likely, he is having an affair of his own and blames himself for being unable to save Lars. That is why he probably continues to see his dead wife and child. The blonde woman in the gas station, in his car, and in his mind when he is in bed with his wife is who Hugh is having an affair with.

If the news report can be trusted, Lars was last seen with his mother on the lake. We see a scene where Lyla takes her son out on the lake in a small boat. The boy appears slumped over, and we can assume he is already dead. An out-of-sequence scene may answer how Lars died. We hear from the other room Lyla tell Lars to open up and swallow after catching him with some pictures. She likely poisoned or medicated her child, who Hugh now imagines having a seizure. The seizure could be what he imagined happening or something that actually happened. Hugh’s guilt prevents us from knowing what is real and what is imagination.

Is Hugh dead?

Hugh could be dying, and everything we see are fragments of his memories and imagination. He could have attacked Lyla and died of the stab wound she gave him. In this reading of Lyla, neither Lyla nor Lars are dead. They are simply dead to Hugh, and his guilt over his abuse of them, his affair, and leaving them have mixed all of his memories with nightmares.

I think more evidence points to Hugh being alive but insane. He probably did kill Baxter and Lyla after finding out she killed Lars. Too many views of the shed at night and Hugh digging something make it clear he was out at night covering something up. The phone ringing and a bizarre phone call telling him no one blames him echoes what his mother said before killing herself in front of him as a child. Perhaps Hugh is trying to absolve himself of the guilt of killing several people. Something happened to Braxton.

This was an unhappy family. He was never around and was probably abusive, and she was neglectful and having an affair. It proved to be a deadly combination for at least Lars and probably Lyla as well. Hugh imagines strangling her, but he probably didn’t kill her until he caught up to her on the beach and bashed her head in with the rock. It’s also possible that everything we see from the beginning to the end was a fever dream from a dying mind.

Did anyone actually cut off Lars’s tongue?

Largely symbolic, it is doubtful anyone actually mutilated the boy. Hugh sees the older man with scissors because he made Lars lie for him about Baxter and anyone else he may have killed, and he sees Lyla with scissors because she was asking him to keep her affair a secret. In Hugh’s mind, the boy was too feminine but innocent. Lars is almost certainly dead, but the mutilation did not happen.

Who is the man at the diner?

Hugh remembers Lyla cheating. It appears with the man at the film’s beginning in the diner. When we see the scene of Hugh leaving and returning quickly to their vacation home, Lyla says she thought he would be gone longer and suggests a walk. This is when Hugh finds out about Lyla’s affair. The man she was sleeping with was hiding in the closet, and Lyla wanted to get Hugh out of the house so he could sneak out.

Hugh is the ultimate unreliable narrator. That may be because he is losing his mind and doesn’t realize it or because we have been looking at the film all wrong from the beginning. It is called Lyla, after all. Perhaps she is the narrator of the story and Hugh’s tormentor. Like The Tell-Tale Heart, maybe it is her voice from beyond the grave taunting him. He may think he can block the memory of what he did out, but his conscience won’t let him.

Because nothing we see can be trusted, it is also possible that Hugh thinks Lyla killed his kid because she was covering up neglect or an affair or because she wanted to protect him from Hugh. She may have thought she had no way out and wanted to spare Lars from a lifetime of abuse. Since we have no context, it is impossible to know for sure.

The Shakespearean quote at the beginning clarifies that there are no good or bad guys here. Hugh probably beat his wife and killed Braxton in a psychotic state of grief. Lyla probably cheated on Hugh and wanted to get him committed or arrested. Hugh makes several comments about Lars dancing, and the focus on Lyla doing dishes seems to frame a narrative that Hugh was an abusive man with firm ideas about traditional gender roles. She was a typical housewife and mom after giving up her dancing career, and he was an unfulfilled writer who constantly felt insecure and small. Likely, he was awful to both of them.

In the end, Lyla is another story, albeit a trippy one, about grief and guilt. Just because you are paranoid doesn’t mean everyone isn’t out to get you. Hugh could have been a terrible husband, and Lyla could have been a bad mother and wife. All of these things could be true at the same time. The only truly innocent person is poor Lars, who, at the very least, has lost a parent and, at worst, lost his life.

The optimist in me wants to think Hugh left his family for the young blond girl he is with at the end of the film. Combined with his childhood trauma and guilt, he is slowly losing his mind. The pessimist, however, believes Lyla killed Lars to cover up her affair because she was so scared of Hugh finding out and hurting her. The darkly religious bedtime stories add credence to this bleak possibility.