It’s like death – but with a safety net!” Lily the therapist [If you’re looking for my 4-star review, it’s here]
Normally here I would list who dies, and the generally horrible ways this happens, and I will do this; though in ClearMind people never really die as it’s a simulation. And one person – Shelby – turns out to be an NPC anyway.
Why is Nora killing everyone?
As she electrocutes Tom, Nora quotes Lily’s line that you can’t use old wood to make a new nest. Lily had said this in reference to Nora’s first experiences of ClearMind, which was watching birds. It means Nora feels she must get rid of her old group of friends, friends she believes are all culpable to some extent in Hannah’s death. They can’t all just carry on as they are.
For Nora this is about three things: being able to move on herself; a need for retribution, triggered by everyone else compartmentalising Hannah’s death and carrying on with real life; and also bringing them all back to where she remains stuck in her grief-soaked reality. Why should they all get a pass, particularly her ex-husband?
(Nearly) everybody’s running from something…
…which makes Nora‘s use of the ClearMind facility not so strange after all, especially as she and ex-husband Michael at least have a genuine reason to run from reality. Despite Nora’s belief that their lives are continuing as normal, early every character in ClearMind is trying to escape both the horrors and mundanities of their existence.
Lily dashes from one career to the next, forcing friends into being NPCs in her own real-life game. So far she’s gone from providing an access route to her brother’s excellent weed to teaching yoga to, now, grief therapy, while getting reassurance by flirting with everyone’s husbands along the way. Michael looks to a future with a new girlfriend who almost certainly won’t stick around, something Lily points out to him: “she’s 25 Michael, you’re not her last stop.” Kate gets sloshed at every opportunity; she once drank vodka from a sippy cup at her own child’s birthday party. Shannon keeps the irregularities of life at bay by trying to maintain a firm hold on every detail so there’s no opportunity for things to go wrong, even though those demands at the pool party added to the general distraction as Hannah drowned.
And why are the men so wet! Michael tries to escape by channelling his Viking forebears but it doesn’t ring true (though I suppose conceivably there might have been a scattering of Very Nice Vikings back in the day, in the manner of Viz Magazine‘s Pathetic Sharks comic strip). Tom is nice and funny and laid back, letting life wash over him as Shannon micromanages the cheese plate. David is off shagging either his soon to be ex-wife or strangers on the internet, surely the ultimate distractions.
How they die (but it’s okay as it’s not real)
As night falls the group are playing games in the lake house. Nora has appeared, uninvited and unwanted, and now interjects every few minutes to stop her friends feeling too comfortable. Michael goes off into the woods to chop down a tree for firewood, with Nora as his unwelcome helper. Out in the forest, Nora requests the axe from him.
Shelby goes to look for Michael, and is found by Nora who still has the now-bloody axe. She advises Shelby to leave the gathering now as reunions can get so boring. She’s also furious that Michael can shut off part of his brain and life continues near-normal for him. Shelby tells her he’s going to be a father again; Nora retorts that Shelby will be a great mother but Michael won’t be around to see it.
Back at the lake house Kate has been sick and her nose is bleeding.
Tom goes to the hot tub to look for the hose to clean up the vomit and Nora finds him there. Shannon’s phone is going off and he realises it is in the hot tub. He climbs in to retrieve it and Nora switches on the tub, which has a known electrical fault – he is electrocuted.
The others find Tom slumped in the tub, and Dave, Shannon and Kate get him in the car to take him to hospital. They realise Nora is standing behind the car, wielding the axe. They rush into the house and lock the door – Lily is already inside, high on gummies. David rushes off to find his phone (it’s been a “wireless weekend”) to call for help.
There’s a knock at the door; it is Michael covered in blood, weeping that Shelby has left, before sinking to the floor and dying.
Lily spies Nora through the window and tries to calm her, but she stalks off.
Lily explains to Shannon and Kate that this is all a simulation – Nora can release aggression in a safe space – but also admits that this game is taking longer than expected and Lily herself is out of her depth.
Lily says that this could all be finished if the others would take some responsibility for Hannah’s death at the pool party, but Shannon points out the cold truth that they all know: Michael wasn’t watching Hannah in the pool as he was flirting with Lily.
Nora appears behind, wielding a shotgun. She agrees it was Michael’s job but also everyone else’s to watch Hannah that day.
Kate is on the floor still bleeding and Nora admits she has poisoned her with a very high dose of Midazolam.
Lily and Nora reminisce about their school days together, and Nora seems calmer; until Lily laughs and it triggers a memory in Nora of her laughing with Michael as Hannah drowned.
Nora admits to Lily she has disabled Host Mode in the game. She then explains the process and timing of drowning – several minutes, far longer than for a gunshot wound. She aims the gun at Shannon but David is behind her and whacks her, knocking her out.
Nora is tied to a chair while Shannon checks on Tom, who is still in the car. She thinks he might still be alive but the car keys are gone and the tyres are flat. David runs around outside in a loop repeatedly, as if he is stuck in a part of the game. Lily explains to him that they need to get rid of Nora as she is Player One and the game can’t end until she’s out.
Lily also explains that Shelby isn’t a real person – she’s a non-playing character (NPC) which came included with some of the game add-ons.
David and Lily go back in the house and find Kate lying dead on the floor.
Lily calls her assistant Gary and leaves a message asking him to reboot the system.
David is taking pills in the bathroom but Nora is behind him – she injects him, he passes out and she leaves him in the bath with the shower on.
Nora finds Shannon hiding in a cupboard and takes her outside – Lily find’s them and explains they will have to ride it out as she can’t find help outside of the game.
Nora shoots Shannon in the abdomen with a crossbow, who soon dies.
Nora points the crossbow at Lily and explains she has now seen it was Lily flirting with Michael at in the pool that day. Lily begs her not to, saying she will lose all her memories of Hannah, but Nora says she’s wiping the slate clean for everyone. They fight and Lily finally manages to push Nora off the pier into the lake.
Underwater, Nora sees Hannah’s body sinking down through the water.
Back in the real world…
Nora is sagging in the harness in the ClearMind lab, while Lily berates her assistant Gary for not helping them when the game went awry and Nora started murdering people. He claims he had been monitoring Nora’s cortisol emissions “but not the kill ray”.
Lily tells Nora she went 30 minutes too long over the end of the session and her co-pay insurance probably won’t cover it. Nora asks if she slept with Michael.
Lily dismisses the just-completed, blood-soaked game as simply “a bunch of 3D ultrasound images gathering in space” – Nora replies with an ominous “For now”…
Gary is impressed Nora killed Tom first, and Nora explains she also let Shelby escape.
They talk about the next level of the game, and go back in to ClearMind to look at the birds, but the nest has gone. Gary tells her it fell out of the tree and turned out to have a dead hawk inside, its eyes pecked out.
Lily is talking about the next session but Nora is finished with ClearMind. She’s trying to tell Lily she will be moving this to real life but Lily is oblivious, and hears only that she won’t get her hours in to get her certification. She is furious and mocks Nora as a sad person, a bird in a borrowed nest with no control over her life. Nora retorts that it might be time for her to make the nest her own, and stomps out.
She sees her beautiful ClearMind flashbacks with Hannah again but also relives the day Hannah died, as Michael flirted with Lily in the pool.
…was the game just a rehearsal?
Everyone is back at the lake house – for the real weekend away – and Nora appears, holding a still-clean axe. She explains to Shannon and Kate she isn’t staying, but she also refuses all requests to take her weapon from her. Then Lily comes in, looking shocked, which indicates this must be real life, and not a simulation (as does Nora’s earlier “for now”).