Privilege plot summary
Privilege feels like a bunch of terrible clichés and tropes thrown together and crammed into a German film. The story follows a young boy named Finn who is haunted by memories of his older sister's death after being possessed.
Something seems to be going on in town, some strange pills he's prescribed are characterized by supernatural occurrences that begin to trouble both him and his friends. So what's going on here? Is Finn just losing his mind? Or is there more to it?
What happened to Anna in the past?
In order to understand the present situation, it is necessary to study what happened in the past. While Finn's parents are with his other sister Sophie, Anna has a strange ghost that we see haunting the family from afar.
Finn hears snoring in the house and sees Anna, who follows their origin, holding a bloody knife and bleeding from her mouth. She thinks something is following them and goes with Finn to a large bridge.
Anna tries to convince Finn to jump with her, but he refuses, and when he pulls her sister's leg, she kicks him in the face and is devastated.
What happens to pills?
Finn soon learns that the origin of his hallucinations and visions is due to pills prescribed by Dr. Steinke. After finding a strange parasitic worm inside the pills, he takes it to a scientific laboratory and conducts some research.
This creature looks like a thread mushroom transformed into a pill form. Necrofungus is known as psilocybelis and usually grows on dead bodies. It was also widely used by witches and shamans in the Middle Ages due to its hallucinogenic properties.
With this knowledge, Finn is encouraged to visit Eliska Novak, a woman who is an expert in the field.
Why does Eliska have a session?
After visiting Eliska, he senses something in the boy and experiences the same visions of Anna falling that have haunted Finn for years.
Eliska believes that Sophie is in danger and goes home with special spirit equipment intended to exorcise the demon she believes is inside of Sophie.
Eliska is sure that Sophie will suffer the same fate as Anna. Before that, Sophie was acting weird throughout the movie, like she moved a cup with her mind, had a nosebleed at school, and just generally acted really weird.
Unfortunately, Finn's parents return home before the ritual is complete. Shortly before this, Eliska is attacked by a demon, with visible cuts on her face. When the ceremony goes awry, the demon is still there, holding the fate of this family in the balance.
Got a cult?
Yes. As the film moves toward its finale, we learn that Finn's parents, his sister Sophie, and several other parents in town are part of a larger cult. Finn's earlier visions of his parents wearing a robe and walking down the hall weren't entirely false.
The cult itself is protected under the umbrella of Trondthal, which has existed for centuries and worships malevolent spirits. Their human bodies are mostly used as vessels for evil spirits, which come in the form of swirling, monstrous black goo.
The pills Finn takes are actually meant to aid in the transition process so that souls can move between bodies more easily.
Finn learns all this when he returns home and finds himself beaten and tied up by his parents. They take him to the basement where his late grandfather happens to be. Finn is the vessel that replaces the demonic spirit that lives inside the old man.
What did Lena find?
In a separate subplot that runs parallel to this, Lena manages to get into a company presentation for Trondthal, pedaling her new pills and getting them ready for mass market consumption.
Anyway, Lena manages to sneak into the basement where she sees the operation with her own eyes. There are numerous corpses with fungal remains sticking out of their mouths and several workers in hazmat suits removing plants to use for their pills. Among the dead is Eliska.
How does Finn escape the cult?
As the film reaches its climax, Finn is at the mercy of the cult. That is, until Lena shows up and saves the day. After dousing all the adults in gasoline, he lights a match and burns them all alive. She frees Finn and they head outside and towards the bridge, running into a half-burnt Sophie in the process.
Just as the three teenagers appear to be safe, their car crashes off a bridge, killing Anna, and they breathe a sigh of relief. It's gone. They're finally safe...or are they?
How does the privilege end?
As the movie ends, the teenagers step forward and see a billboard advertising pills. They understand that it has become global. They're determined to stop it no matter what...but there's a problem.
As Samira walks away from the others, she turns to the camera to show that she is in fact possessed by a spirit. He has made the switch and unfortunately there is no turning back.
There were clues about this, although it was related to the previous passage of dialogue between Finn and Samira. He also found out he was adopted, and although he checked Finn's mouth for parasites, it was too early for that to show at the time. So teenagers aren't safe after all, there's still the threat of pills being released, and the evil spirit is still rampant. The ending leaves a lot of unresolved questions and a lot of potential for a sequel.
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