*Premise spoilers.*
This film intrigued me when I first heard about it, although I didn’t get around to it until a while after it came out. Some of the turns it takes bring it a little far from the movie I was hoping it would be, but it’s still a neat concept and the film features some strong performances.
Chloe’s world has always been small, largely confined to her home, her mom, and her mom’s strict but loving rules. Growing up with multiple disabilities, her life has been a string of doctors, physical therapy, and meds, and while Chloe has enjoyed her highly-structured homeschooled life at home with her mom, she’s champing at the bit to go to college and waits for acceptance letters in the mail every day. But a chance discovery makes Chloe suspect that her mom is keeping a secret from her, and with her world so rigidly controlled by her mom, unraveling the mystery will be no small task.
I really love the setup here, a disabled teen with an overprotective mom whose overprotectiveness appears to be running the show at the expense of her daughter’s independence. Chloe is smart and resourceful, and her efforts to uncover what her mom might be hiding call for more for than the usual detective skills that might be needed to solve a mystery. For Chloe, she also has to get past layers of inaccessibility to find the clues she needs. Her home environment may be designed to keep her inside and “safe,” but it also keeps her dependent, and when the person Chloe depends on is the one hiding something from her, that makes it extra difficult. She can’t check her own prescriptions because all her meds are on a high shelf that she can’t reach, and her snooping for clues can only go so far when there’s an entire floor of her house that’s cut off from her because there’s no stair lift going to the basement. And in the wider world (which she needs her mom’s help to even get to,) everything from a high sidewalk curb to a patch of gravel can be an obstacle for her wheelchair.
I love the idea of creating a thriller out of someone trying to carve out independence for themselves in an inaccessible world. If this was the main theme the film stuck with, I probably would’ve come away loving it. But as it is, some of the directions the plot takes move the film from a unique subject into something I feel I’ve seen before. To me, the twists don’t feel particularly earned and make the film less interesting than it could’ve been.
But despite that disappointing turn, the film still has quite a bit to recommend it, chief among them being the characters and the performances. Kiera Allen, in her first feature film, does a bang-up job as Chloe, determined and intrepid in the face of incredibly-stacked odds. Her honest performance keeps pace with Sarah Paulson’s carefully-controlled work as Chloe’s mom, and the dynamic between the two fluidly shifts as Chloe’s understanding of their relationship changes and the thriller aspects of the story come to the forefront. Both actresses are excellent, and they play wonderfully off of each other.
Warnings
Violence, disturbing images, and strong thematic elements (including gaslighting.)
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