Safe Haven (film)

[Manuela]

Ihad no plans to see Safe Haven. I wasn't covering the movie for any particular reason, and it seemed, from the trailer and word of mouth, like one I could safely skip. Then I started hearing vague references to its twist ending. Then Matt Singer at IndieWire wrote a piece arguing that maybe some movies should be spoiled in advance -- since knowing that a given twist ending is this ludicrous might convince you to spend money on Safe Haven. After researching what this twist ending actually was, I spent money on Saturday to see Safe Haven.

Let me start by saying that I am not at all disappointed with my decision -- the ending was just as bizarre as advertized. Though, I'm fairly certain my fellow audience members who were there to see a well-constructed story do not share my sentiments. Walking out, I overheard a woman who looked to be in her late 60s ask her husband, "Can you believe it was that bad?" (In response, he shrugged.)

As you saw in the title of this post, we are going to discuss the ending of Safe Haven at length. I suspect you are in one of two camps at this point: (a) you are a Nicholas Sparks fan and you've seen Safe Haven, or (b) you have no intentions of seeing Safe Haven or, if you do, it's only because you're being forced to see it. If you are in the latter group, you may want to stick around.

Julianne Hough plays Katie, a woman on the run who finds, yes, safe haven in North Carolina. What she is running from, we're not sure at first. It appears that she's on the run from the police and, through some misleading flashbacks, it does appear that Katie killed someone -- there's even an APB out for her arrest on murder charges. But, you see, there is a twist! (Not the twist, though.) It turns out that the police officer obsessed with finding Katie is her husband. And it turns out that Katie didn't kill anyone, she only slightly stabbed her husband in self-defense because he's an abusive drunk.

It's funny, when I first started hearing about "the twist," I assumed it would turn out to be the false murder rap. (Like the husband at the movie theater would later do, I shrugged.) Boy, I was wrong.

So, once Katie gets to North Carolina, she befriends a widower named Alex, played by Josh Duhamel. She also befriends her new neighbor, Jo, played by Cobie Smulders. For 80 percent of the movie, it's just scene after scene of Typical Movie Romance -- there are floor painting and conversations about kale. All the while, Katie confides her feelings toward Alex to her new friend, Jo. (This is your last chance to stop reading before we get to the twist.)

So, Jo is a ghost. And not just any ghost; she's the ghost of Alex's dead wife, who wants to make sure that Katie is a serviceable replacement. Now, again, I knew this before I saw Safe Haven, but knowing didn't make the movie any less absurd. (During the reveal, the crowd let out an audible groan.) I couldn't help but wonder what supernatural rules govern the universe of this movie. I mean, the first time we meet Jo, she's peering into the window of Katie's home and seems genuinely startled when Katie sneaks up on her from behind. (Is this possible? Can a living human not only sneak up on a ghost but startle a ghost?) I suppose some clues are there: Jo seems very interested in Alex, Joe never participates in any group events, Jo watches passively (or dickishly) as Katie paints her floor with no help.

This is one of the most insane twists that I've ever seen in a movie. Not because it's a great twist, but because it's so out of left field. Actually, the rather pedestrian notion of "left field" doesn't do this justice. It's more out of left of left field -- you know, where the ball boy sits waiting for foul balls to scoop up and toss into the stands. It's as if that guy all of a sudden came up with this twist. I mean, there is nothing about the tone of Safe Haven that would ever make you think that one of the main characters is a ghost.

Aside from those totally true examples, Safe Haven has the most absurd ending to a movie that I can remember. Adding to this, when Katie realizes that she befriended a ghost, it does not faze her in the least. The look her face seems to say, Huh. Wadd'ya know?

I am not suggesting that you see Safe Haven based on this twist alone -- but I am kind of suggesting that you see Safe Haven based on this twist alone. It's weird. If my mindset had been, "I want to see a romantic movie that made me cry," I would have walked out just as disappointed as the woman I mentioned earlier. But! Going in with the mindset of, "I want to see this batshit-crazy ending for myself that I've been hearing about all week," well, Safe Haven delivered beyond my wildest dreams.

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Safe Haven weaves together powerful stories of U.S. war resisters who sought refuge in Canada during wars in Vietnam and Iraq. This award-winning film shows how Vietnam era resisters participated in a movement to support the younger generation of U.S. soldiers. Safe Haven exposes realities and myths of Canada as refuge.

Safe Haven weaves together powerful stories of U.S. war resisters who sought safe haven in Canada during wars in Vietnam and Iraq. The film shows how Vietnam era resisters participated in a movement to support the younger generation of U.S. soldiers fleeing war in Iraq. Safe Haven exposes realities and myths of Canada as refuge.

This award-winning film is timely on both sides of the U.S./Canada border. Few Americans know the history of what happened to war resisters who emigrated to Canada during the war in Vietnam. Fewer still know the more recent stories of the resisters to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who also went to Canada seeking refuge. The Canadian audience knows the history of migration during war in Vietnam, but less about the more recent generation. As war continues around the globe, the question of what kinds of roles governments will play in relation to these wars is crucial: will they participate? Will they provide safe haven? Our film shows that these roles change historically and can never be taken for granted, making this a timely resource and platform for dialogue.

Read about the film's Producer/Geographer Alison Mountz: Alison Mountz is professor of geography and Laurier Research Chair in Global Migration at Wilfrid Laurier University. She moved to Canada from the United States and has spent much of her adult life crossing and researching the border between the two countries. Her work explores how people cross borders, access migration and asylum policies, survive detention, resist war, and create safe havens. Dr. Mountz's books include Seeking Asylum: Human Smuggling and Bureaucracy at the Border (University of Minnesota, awarded the Meridian Book Prize); Boats, Borders, and Bases: Race, the Cold War, and the Rise of Migration Detention in the United States (University of California, co-authored with Dr. Jenna Loyd); and The death of asylum: hidden geographies of the enforcement archipelago (Minnesota, awarded the Globe Book Award). Mountz edits Politics & Space, hosts the podcast Displacements, and directs Haven, a lab designed to preserve and share migration-related data. She is a member of the College of the Royal Society of Canada, held a Canada Research Chair in Global Migration, and the William Lyon Mackenzie King Visiting Professorship of Canadian Studies at Harvard University.

Lisa is a Peabody Award winning filmmaker and Fulbright scholar who produces and directs social justice documentaries across North America. Many of her recent films (Soledad, Missing in Brooks County, Safe Haven and The Cleaners) focus on immigration and immigrant communities. She is a recent recipient of the Yale Poynter Fellowship in journalism and is working on a documentary about an archaeology project in Tucson, where she has been living for the past 10 years.

Over the past two years, The Salvation Army in Europe has implemented the Safe Havens project to strengthen transnational co-operation, with the aim of providing 'safe havens' for (potential) victims of trafficking. This project has been co-funded by the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund of the European Union.

Part of the EU-project has been the production of the Safe Havens film. This film takes us on a road trip across Europe to discover what The Salvation Army and its partners are doing in the fight against human trafficking. The film can be viewed below.

The film is part of a sustainable training programme for officers, staff and partners of The Salvation Army to learn about prevention, protection and reintegration programs for (potential) victims of trafficking, and about transnational cooperation between EU and non-EU countries in Europe.

In the film we travel with Madeleine Sundell, a Swedish human rights lawyer, and Galina Chetroi, a Moldovan expert on human trafficking and The Salvation Army's liaison officer for Eastern Europe. Both are working in anti-human trafficking prevention and repatriation projects. They take us on a road trip to Moldova, Sweden, Romania, the Netherlands, Poland, Ukraine and England where they meet practitioners involved in anti-human trafficking and discover specific ways of fighting trafficking in these countries. It demonstrates various ways that trafficking takes place across borders and boundaries.

The Safe Havens film appeals to all of us to take a stand and speak out on behalf of the thousands of (potential) victims of trafficking. So that together, as an Army, we can challenge the evil of modern slavery in our societies!

The Salvation Army (TSA) is deeply committed to establishing 'safe havens' for victims of trafficking, where their lives can be restored and where they can receive the support they need for rebuilding their lives. The main objective of the Safe Havens project has been to (re)integrate particularly vulnerable victims in the local community by making optimal use of the existing infrastructure of TSA's Europe anti-human trafficking (AHT) network.

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