a reference to the fact that she heard him in the house when he was at the aunt's home earlier. He realized this and took off to go there.

Good point, but it would have been nice to have a flash back of that instead of some random girl (was that the girl from the store maybe) who picked her up. I mean, Hugh was drinking and all messed up during the time. Could he have been that on his toes to have figured it out so quickly?

first girl getting frightened of Jackman. When she started saying stuff like "you were there", I thought it was hinting that he had something to do with it. Perhaps he was getting obsessed with this whole survival stuff and had the girls kidnapped as a test. Gyllehnall seemed to be thinking something similar as well. They should have been more clear with that part. Also, do you think it was clear that Jackman was going to be rescued at the end? I think it was, but they just wanted to give the audience an "Inception" type ending.

They were speculating that maybe Gyllenhaal's character heard the whistle, possibly thinking it was Jackman, and still left him buried for his involvement in the torture of Dano's character. I know the ending is a bit open-ended but I thought that was a decent theory, especially when he tells Bello in the hospital that Jackman would very likely go to prison. Thoughts?

That's why I mentioned earlier that the ending went from being something that seemed so predictable to being really good. When he found the whistle and special attention was paid to it (the wife mentioning she bought another one for the daughter and that the kids found the one at Thanksgiving), you just know that will be what saves him.

Then when Gyllenhaal's character hears the faint whistle and acts so uncertain whether he hears anything at all and the credits start rolling, I have to believe that he's left down there. I hadn't really considered it being an intentional act.

Regardless of the intention, think about the irony. The guy goes to such extreme lengths to save his daughter, and he never even saw her to know for sure that she was alive. And as you mention above, he finds himself left alone to suffer, just as he did to Dano's character. Finally, the film paints him from the very beginning as one who was ready to survive no matter what happens in the world around him. We see the stash of food and supplies in his basement. And here, he finds himself below ground with no food/supplies for what might be several weeks (recall the workers indicating the ground was too hard to continue searching).

My brother saw this with me. He said he noticed at the candle light ceremony that Terrence Howard's character had leaned over coughing, almost identical to Jackman after he drinks the poisoned soda at the end. I don't remember that part. He wasn't sure if that had any meaning or connection.

He also thought the wife wanted Jackman to go to jail because of the way she was asking Gyllenhaal in the hospital. I don't remember exactly the tone of her voice there either.

From the moment Melissa Leo revealed herself to Hugh Jackman, her dialogue was almost entirely a "these are my motives" speech. It didn't seem like a natural stretch of dialogue, but rather dialogue that the plot demanded.

torture scenes with Alex

was one of the kids who was kidnapped a long time ago. He got away while drugged and didn't remember what happened to him. Because of this, he thought he was abducted by the 'invisible man' in the book he had been reading, and was obsessed with mazes (and snakes) because of what happened to him (by the man found in the church basement). He spent his life trying to recreate the crimes. He had nothing to do with the actual crime - at one point, the woman responsible for everything said that she had forgotten all about him.

if Gyllenhaal left him in the hole to die, that would be totally against his character. He would want Jackman to know that his kid was still alive, then face the music for what he'd done.

How would Gyllenhaal have known it was Jackman blowing the whistle? At the very least, he would want to make certain it wasn't another kid trapped down there.

Yeah, while the other idea is interesting to think about it would seem way out of Gyllenhaal's character to have just left him there. My guess is he heard it and got Jackman out or possibly dismissed the sound of the whistle for something else outside and didn't check if anyone was there (possible but seems unlikely).