Amulet-- My take on the movie with spoilers!

PLOT SUMMARY: Tomaz, an ex-soldier with a dark past, offers a job as a handyman for a woman taking care of her ailing mother. But there is something odd about the woman's illness. 

Given the current situation, where everyone is required to spend more time indoors, and the blame on the pandemic rests on bats, do we really want to see a movie where there’s a weird phenomenon going on in a house, and there are weird bats found around?

Well, that is what horror movies are. Inciting fear in things and places you would otherwise find comforting. Not that it is comforting encountering a bat.

Amulet is a story that goes a lot back and forth. It’s disgusting in places, nauseatingly so. There are some shocks and surprises, but the proceedings are so slow you might be considering skipping to the end or simply stop watching altogether.

AMULET Movie Plot 

The story is about Tomaz who used to be a soldier in some European country and was tasked with guarding the border.

One day he finds an amulet that looks like a woman with a mushroom crown on its head. He pockets it, perhaps because he has an inclination of what it could be or he likes to collect odd things he finds in the forest.

Sometime later, he sees a woman coming running toward the border. He yells out a warning but she doesn’t stop. He has orders to shoot and is about to pull the trigger when the woman collapses. He takes her in and learns she wants to find her daughter who is across the border. Her name is Miriam.

The movie jumps to present times where Tomaz now has a beard and is homeless working odd jobs in construction. A fire breaks out one night and he barely makes it out before collapsing in the alley. Before he faints, he sees a nun.

He awakens to find Sister Claire taking care of him. She gives him back his things but doesn’t know anything about the money. Tomaz wonders if he should suspect a nun of stealing. She wouldn’t really steal his money, would she? She’s a nun after all. Or is she?

She does sympathize with his situation and simply asks if he would help her with a problem.

She knows a young woman who is taking care of her ailing mother, but the house is decrepit and needs a fix. He gets free food and room.

Tomaz cannot challenge the nun anymore regarding his missing money, so he agrees to help her. He meets Magda who looks weary and shows him around the house that has mould and cracks everywhere. Tomaz doesn’t have much of an appetite but Sister Claire insists he tries Magda’s cooking. He does and pretty much gobbles his food. The nun gives a weird look and we’ve seen enough horror movies by now to be wary of people giving you food. There’s always something in it, isn’t it? Or some bad intention.

A flashback shows that Tomaz discourages Miriam from crossing the border and that it would be safe in only a couple of months. There’s something about the way he offers her a stay with him. He’s too casual, too eager to have her stay with him. Miriam thinks he’s just being kind. Time passes, and Tomaz likes her enough to give her the amulet he found in the woods.

Tomaz has a beard in the next scene so we know it’s sometime later after he met Miriam.

There’s something odd about the house but Magda keeps serving him food that he slurps and gobbles. To pay her back, he offers to fix the backed-up toilet and is about to put his hand into a hole where there is mould, when Magda stops him and tells him to be content with just staying here and eating her food.

Tomaz grows curious about the house and asks if it belongs to them. Magda replies that it belonged to some man that never returned so she and her mother just took over it. There’s probably an unspecified war going on which caused people to leave their homes and other people simply taking over houses and calling them their own.

Tomaz watches Magda and hears her mother scream insults at her. He even sees Magda applying first aid to a bite mark. Tomaz believes Magda’s mother hates her and asks why she does it. She replies that it is her duty to do so.

Tomaz feels sorry for her and decides that at least he would try to fix the toilet for her. He tinkers around with the toilet, and when the black water flushed away, sees what is really blocking the pipes, a weird bat that doesn’t seem to have an outer skin. It attacks Tomaz who proceeds to step on it repeatedly. Magda sees it and asks him to take it out of the house.

Tomaz gets curious afterwards, especially since he’s seen Magda wash bloody bedsheets which he thought was due to her menstruation.

The flashback scene where Tomaz is clean-shaven comes, and we see Miriam making a run for it in the woods. She wants to cross the border and find her daughter. Tomaz goes after her and we see him assaulting her.

Tomaz isn’t a good guy after all.

In the present, he has met with the mother who is unrecognizable. He’s attacked and then sees the sickening way she gives birth to barely alive bats.

AMULET Ending Explained with Spoilers!

He gets knocked out and wakes up to find Sister Claire, no longer in her attire. She has her hair styled, is wearing classy clothing and heels. She admits to Tomaz how difficult it is to play a nun and that she never got the walk right.

She explains to Tomaz why he’s really here. He did a very bad thing by sexually assaulting a woman and must now pay the price by being the next one in line to give birth to demon bats. He could, however, choose a companion as he disintegrated into misery. He chooses Magda and Claire tells him she’s taken. Once the creature above dies, and its time is near, Magda is free.

The creature is not Magda’s mother but a man whose house it was. He had killed his wife and done terrible things to the daughters. He needed to pay the price. The amulet was a protection goddess who taunts Tomaz in a vision.

Tomaz goes upstairs and kills the man.

He wants Magda at all costs. But he is weak and his stomach starts to swell. Blood gushes out of his nether regions. He’s about to give birth to demonic bats that are supposed to signify the bits and parts of his evil self-purging.

Sometime later, Magda is in a car, all dressed up and looking happy. She stops at a gas station where Miriam and her daughter her. Magda sees Miriam is okay and is relieved. Miriam advises her against buying Ragu, but Magda states she hates cooking.

She gets into her car and tosses the Ragu at the pole under a blanket who is Tomaz.

The movie tries to celebrate the punishment men who hurt women receive, but its execution is haywire and you don’t really want to pick sides. There should have been more scenes where we are encouraged to support Sister Claire.

Otherwise, just one scene toward the end, when throughout the movie we are made to sympathize with Tomaz, feels confusing.

Perhaps that scene should have been brought forward sooner to show us why Tomaz was suffering from PTSD. Maybe this could have been a story of a man trying to make up for his regretful actions. We could hate him, see him trying to reform and be a helpful person, and so when the truth is revealed, feel like he should be punished because no matter what, his actions were unforgivable.

Scare scale: 1.5/5