Spoilers are unmarked in Headscratchers
Missing women?
How long was Alice trapped in Victory? Didn't anyone at the hospital raise the alarm about her going missing? Does she have no family or friends or even acquaintances who'll be concerned she's just dropped off the map? Not to mention, there's nothing the American news cycle loves more than a missing white woman. And what about all the other women in Victory?- According to the original script, Jack was able to fake Alice's death. Presumably the same occurred for all the other women in Victory, perhaps with the help of Frank.
- That doesn't explain anything away, though. How did he fake her death? If it was faked as due to an accident or a crime, was there no investigation whatsoever as to how this person died in an incident so dire it left no body to bury? "Missing white woman disappeared leaving no body in a freak accident" would have also raised eyebrows from her family and the media, in the current landscape. On top of that, Bunny explicitly warns Alice that Frank could "find her body and kill her in the real world", hinting that he may not have been that involved with the physical side of things, and Jack doesn't sound all that competent.
- It looks like Jack has the Victory interface set up in his and Alice's apartment. Does no one come by to check on Alice?
Where did the plane come from? Where did it crash?
The plane which overflies Victory at the start of the movie (and which appears to crash) and helps to kick off the plot is never explained. The reveal that Victory is a simulation helps to resolve the question of why there was no visible crash scene...but it makes the source of the plane all the more confusing.
- A lot of the confusing stuff that happens in the movie could theoretically be explained either by the simulation glitching (there's a scene where Jack is working on the Victory project at his computer and it's implied that all the men who participate have to do the same; with that many people working on a huge project like that you never know what might go wrong), or by Alice's subconscious fighting against the simulation and trying to point her in the right direction to get her out (no one else notices the plane; for all we know, it might have been a hallucination her brain came up with to push her to discover the truth about Victory).
What was with all the weird stuff that happened in the film?
The Earthquakes, Alice being nearly squished by the pane of glass, her wrapping her head in cling wrap and another woman dying... None of it is ever explained. Were they glitches in the simulation?
- Alice wrapping her head in shrink wrap was presumably self-harm as a result of her deteriorating mental state. The other woman's death was that woman's suicide for similar reasons. None of the rest makes any sense.
Jack's willingness to work
So Jack was too lazy to get a job and wanted his wife to take care of him. This is his motivation. So his ultimate solution to this is to make his wife an invalid which he needs to take care of in addition to himself, in addition to getting a job high-paying enough to support the process? This doesn't solve his initial problem, it makes all of his problems worse. How did this sound like a reasonable deal to him just because he can spend a couple hours or so in that fantasy land, when his primary real-world trait is that he is too lazy for basic tasks? If he could get a job anyway, why didn't he just do that to begin with?
- The job he got is probably some low-level, low-paying work that's incredibly easy and is just enough to pay his dues to the Victory simulation, not the kind of thing you can make a career or a whole life out of.
- This makes it more of a headscratcher, if anything. Even if we don't take into account that Jack is supposed to pay for their hotel and feed the both of them, there is no way the Victory simulation is cheap, as Frank doesn't seem the generous type. Apart from his own misogynistic beliefs, Frank would have no interest in running Victory if it wasn't making him at least somewhat rich, the simulation must be very expensive to run, and his only clients are about fifty men: all of that tells us the cost must be very high. How is Jack affording all of that with a low-level, low-paying job? Alice had to do 30-hours shift to support the both of them with a doctor's salary.
- Frank's motivation is probably not profit, since he spends so much time in Victory as its king. He seems more interested in expanding his perfect fiefdom, so he's presumably charging as little as possible. Jack is apparently able to afford it because he spends almost all of his time and money on Victory. He doesn't need to purchase anything else beyond the bare essentials to keep him and Alice alive while he lives it up in the simulation. If he spent the same money on living a normal life, he would not have access to a lavish home, cool car, and attentive wife.
Who feeds the women?
We're shown that Jack keeps Alice tied up in their apartment while they're in the simulation, and can presume similar conditions for the other women. How do they stay fed and hydrated, since they're obviously tied in to the simulation 24 hours a day?
- How are their other bodily needs taken care of? Even if there is a more advanced medical situation going on with catheters helping them stay fed and hydrated throughout the day, do the men work for the entire day and then go home and wash their "wives", take care of bed sores, empty out a urine baggie, etc? That kind of caretaker work seems kind of unrealistic for men who want so badly to go back to the good old days of housewives serving them.
Why do you die in real life?
Why build in a feature where if you die in the simulation you die in real life? And if it's not a feature but a bug, why not have a feature that saves your life? (e.g., kicks you out, or "resets" the situation moments prior to death)?
- Unlike other VR films, like The Matrix, the interface seems to just be a set of goggles that beam whatever the user is seeing into their eyes and the women are kept sedated and complacent through a presumably extensive cocktail of drugs. So how does dying in the simulation kill you in real life too?
- It could very easily be a bug, not a feature. After Jack dies, one of the other husbands starts screaming in panic about how they were told it was safe. Perhaps something about the simulation was known to be dangerous (the incredibly deep immersion, perhaps, sufficient to cause death by shock if something went wrong), but Frank claimed to have fixed it. But as with many business owners who risk their customers by cutting corners, he lied. And of course, he himself was too manly to worry about such things.
