The Luring-- My take on the movie with spoilers!

PLOT SUMMARY: Garret tries to piece together his childhood memories so he can learn why he had to be institutionalized. 

Red balloons are probably the most preferred by kids. It’s bright and signifies cheer.

Of course, horror writers need to turn something that kids like into something that represents the presence of evil nearby.

And usually, if there is a red balloon around, a creepy clown is also lurking by.

The Luring isn’t about clowns. Nope. It’s just the red balloon that lurks. Will the red balloon eventually get its vengeance and be free?

THE LURING Movie Plot 

The Luring begins with a realtor showing a family a fully furnished house. The parents are going ooh and aah while the boy doesn’t care where his room could be or if there is a garden he can play in. He’s more interested in the door that leads to the basement.

There he finds an old truck that he wants to play with. The parents come in and see the basement serves as a TV room as well. The little boy is cold and tired and so his mother decides that rather than him sleeping upstairs where she can keep an eye on him, it’s okay if he sleeps in the basement while she talks to the realtor.

The boy sees a red balloon in the closet and reaches for it.

The realtor is obligated to tell the parents what really happened in the house. A boy was at a party and later found hanging. The mother demands to know where he was hanging. The basement, of course.

The father doesn’t seem to care much and is interested to know if the prices will be lowered. Reluctantly, he goes down the basement. The mother follows too, sure her husband is incapable of checking up on his son alone.

Sadly, the parents arrive to late and find a hanging body behind the door.

The truck the boy was playing with is back on top of the cupboard.

Elsewhere, a man named Garret seems to have trouble piecing together his childhood memories as he has experienced something traumatic. There is a red balloon involved and a girl screaming.

He is at the psychiatrist’s and going on about an incident that left him institutionalized and how he can’t remember anything.

He decides to go back to his vacation home where he experienced the traumatic incident. His extremely supportive girlfriend Claire joins him too.

Now it is the same house the couple was being shown in the first scene. So did that happen after Garret’s visit, or was the realtor duping families by showing them houses belonging to other families who used it as vacation homes?

Or was that scene added unnecessarily to show how menacing red balloons can be?

It isn’t long before notes are left around for Garret to find. The notes are written in childish handwriting and drawings and are all about how happy they are that Garret is here.

Garret is here only because one woman had reached out to him and seemed to know all about him.

Garret, already tired of his sweet girlfriend, wastes no time in flirting with the woman who breaks into his home one night. She introduces herself as Jennifer and keeps doing a fake laugh that is supposed to be enticing.

Claire, meanwhile, feels a haunting in the house but being the supportive girlfriend that she is, she goes on and on about how peaceful everything around here is.

Even to the man who just wants to hand her the bowling shoes. She receives a rude reply and she is no longer smiling. Clearly, not everyone is nice or peaceful here.

While Claire is nursing her hurt feelings, Garret is approached by the man in gray hat, who is supposed to be the realtor. He plants seeds of doubt in Garret’s mind about his girlfriend who has an ulterior motive. Garret doesn’t care a stranger is saying mean things about his girlfriend. He’s sick of her, brainwashed by Jennifer and is ready to dump Claire.

Claire keeps whining and eventually, Garret has to tell her to shut up. He mocks her for saying everything is so nice and peaceful. He tells her she sounds stupid for repeating one dialogue over and over.

Poor Claire has received only one dialogue to utter. Even when she starts to cry, she tries to defend herself by saying that everything is so peaceful around here.

Garret leaves in a huff, the realtor poisons him further, and Claire sees a red balloon.

Now that she’s seen a red balloon, it means her death is imminent. Garret returns from the bar in a bad mood after the realtor has poisoned him against Claire.

Claire runs away and gets into the car. Unfortunately, she can’t escape Garret and after her car crashes because she’s crying too much, Garret gets behind her and chokes her to death.

Feeling liberated after getting rid of his girlfriend for good, he goes to Jennifer who starts choking him. He thinks it is a kinky move, only to realize too late that she is actually choking him.

But she does tell him why.

When he was a kid, he was just as much a jerk as he was now. He had returned from New York and was celebrating with the kids here and thought he was better than them. In fact, he was sitting on a chair while the kids sat on the floor waiting for him to open their gifts and be praised.

Garret threw insults at all of them, especially Tom, the mentally challenged boy who gave him that rusty truck. Garret made a fuss about getting a used toy but is reprimanded by Tom’s sister Jennifer who tells him her brother was being nice.

Tom wants the red balloon behind Garret, but Garret is in his ‘everything is mine’ phase.

When Jennifer and the other kids cheer up Tom for being ridiculed by Garret, the birthday boy decides that it would be the last time anyone would take attention away from him.

THE LURING Ending Explained with Spoilers!

While everyone is playing in the garden, Jennifer realizes her brother is missing and asks Garret about it. Garret has a red balloon in his hand which he lets go.

Jennifer realizes the significance of red balloons in horror movies and knows something ominous has happened. She searches for Tom and finds him hanging in the basement.

Garret’s parents realize what he must have done and are shocked.

Jennifer concludes her story by telling Garret that he has to pay the price for her brother’s death. She hangs him on the tree and leaves as a mist comes over.

Sometime later, a kid is at the playground while his babysitter is yakking away on her phone.

She spots the boy holding a red balloon and inquires where he got it. He tells her a man gave it to him.

Yup, the realtor is at it again, giving red balloons to everyone. Is he supposed to be the devil?

Possibly, because he seems to know the babysitter is having an affair with a married man and tells the boy this. The boy also tells her that things won’t end well for her. Then he runs, right into the middle of the road.

The babysitter screams while the red balloon floats away peacefully.

Everything is not nice and peaceful in this town where an old man in a gray hat is intent on gifting red balloons and killing kids.

The message of the movie is simple: stay away from red balloons. In fact, pop one every time you see one.

Scare scale: 1.5/5