WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Wounds, now streaming on Netflix.
Netflix's Wounds is as much a psychological thriller as it is a horror, focusing on Armie Hammer as Will, a down-and-out bartender in New Orleans who's just trying to keep his life together, even as his relationship with girlfriend Carrie (Dakota Johnson) grows rockier.
Their lives take a turn for the worse when Will finds a phone left behind at his bar by a couple of high school students. However, this isn't a case for lost-and-found, as the phone brings literal hell to Will's life.
WHAT'S ON THE PHONE?
Will fiddles around after unlocking the phone, much to Carrie's dismay, as each believes the other is being unfaithful. Shockingly enough, Will finds evidence on the phone of murder and the occult, but chalks it up to pranks, and perhaps the students taking a special-effects class. But when Will turns down a request for help by the phone's owner, Garrett, the situation becomes harrowing.
As Will inspects the phone, he receives messages from Garrett, who says he's afraid and that something from the "tunnel" is following him. Will initially laughs off the messages, but when Will finds photos of a corpse and of a decapitated head surrounded by cockroaches, it gets weirder, because he's been seeing the insects in real life. When the head moves and a hand briefly emerges from inside a wound in the skull, it's then that Will becomes freaked out, along with Carrie, who insists he turn the phone over to the police.
But while driving to the police station, Will spots one of the college kids following him, and receives messages from another member in a chat that indicates he "has been chosen." Will suddenly hallucinates that the phone transforms into a cockroach, and throws it out the car window, only for it to be picked up by one of the kids. What he doesn't know is that Carrie is at home, investigating the ritual using a book she saw in the photos called The Translation of Wounds. She's convinced they're facing supernatural forces and believes the book holds they key.
WHAT EXACTLY IS THIS DEVICE?
Will tries to tell the cops about the demonic phone and what he believes is a cult, but without the device or any evidence, there's not much they can do. But when he arrives home, he finds Carrie pale and entranced after exploring wounds and rituals online. He realizes she's been infected, not knowing it's due to the call to Garrett. Apparently the phone is a medium for transference, and the first step is for Carrie to become infected and then stare at an image of a special portal online for so long that she soils herself.
Will breaks her free and draws a bath. He begins to believe the phone is merely a catalyst to direct people to the website, where their life essence can be drained. If he didn't intercept Carrie, she would be dead. It becomes obvious to Will that the device is preying on depressed, broken people and, in so doing, it infects their loved ones, so the owner can become the avatar for something from another dimension.
As he digs through Carrie's findings, Will realizes the phone really is a portal. In an hallucination of Garrett, the young man throws up teeth and confesses he and his friends summoned "something" through a rift while fooling around with the occult. It possessed them, took them out, one by one. Now Will has brought it into his own home, where it views him as "the perfect vessel for more." When he dives deeper into the concept of wounds, Will discovers a series of Gnostic rituals which state that a wound is a portal for higher beings to enter the world and so, this phone is simply the first gateway, cracking you open mentally before you break physically and let these beings in.
Written and directed by Babak Anvari, Netflix's Wounds stars Armie Hammer, Dakota Johnson and Zazie Beetz. The film is now available to stream.