An invisible plot that you could only see near the end.

I don't completely dislike this movie. It's one of those that I may buy just to have on the shelf, for the memory or a moment of something of inspiration. Because this movie did have it's moments. But when the good moments were put together with the less than good moments, it just didn't make for a good movie.

At first, it's intriguing. A girl's sister goes to another country and never returns. I've never read the book so I can't really compare. But hearing that was really all I needed to give this one a chance. Finding out her sister was a hippie, trying to make a difference, just added to the interest I had in the movie. And I was right with the movie up until Jordana's character sees Cameron's character in the window of a shop. Then, I was a little lost.

Jordana's character is haunted by the ghost of her sister. But not in the way that her sister is haunting her. But that Jordana's character is letting her sister haunt her. She's looked for her all her life, even though she knows she's dead. When she sees her in the window, one can only assume that being in the country where she died and at the same time, in an unfamiliar place, was overwhelming for her so she imagined her sister pushing her to tell her to continue. I did like this scene, but as I kept watching the movie I was confused just how that scene fit in with the rest of the movie. Once the boyfriend mentioned that he saw her before getting on the train, it fit some better. They were both haunted by not wanting to let go of her. The boyfriend because he let her go without meaning to and the sister because she never had a chance to let her go when she never came back.

I had no problem with Cameron in this movie. In fact, this is the first-ever movie I've seen where I've found Cameron likeable and worth watching. I found myself wondering why she doesn't embrace serious roles more often. Jordana wasn't as bright as she should have been, at times she fell so dim that I could hardly connect her with the movie. Especially in the voice-overs. There was no spark, and no reason for the spark to be lacking. Other than that, casting was fine. The boyfriend matched well with Cameron, Jordana has a little something that makes you want to keep lacking even when dull. It was fine.

The real problem I had with this movie was the script itself. The affair with her dead sister's boyfriend was unneeded, a filler for a movie that can't tell where it's going and a predictable cop-out that I've seen OVER and OVER in movies that run out of things to do. The worst thing you can do to a good movie is hook up the main male and female role for no reason, and yet movie makers and script writers jump to repeat this same mistake just for the pairing. It's too bad to see. Especially over and over again. There were long moments where nothing was really happening and it became hard to care or focus. One scene that stands out is the one where the sister first stays with the boyfriend, while he has someone over. It wasn't awkward in the way it was meant to be, but it was definitely awkward in that the scene held little point and the acting was off. It could have been cut to make room for another scene to make this movie a stronger one but that just didn't come about. This could have been a wonderful movie if it had better direction, a destination. But the one it had was hazy. Foggy, almost. It took you a while to piece parts of it with other parts of it and decide what it was really about.

To me, the end saved it from being a poor movie. After Cameron's character has failed attempts at trying to make a difference, she ends in the same way her father did. They brought up more than once that she followed her father, whatever he said. Which was another hazy part of this movie, but to me it felt that the father was brought up continuously to further justify why Cameron decided to jump. Her father hated his job, so he got sick and just let it take him. His dreams of wanting to paint didn't work out. Cameron's character was much the same way. Her dreams weren't working out in the way she wanted to, her life wasn't very good, so she let it beat her and ended it herself.

The best scene was at the end of this movie. Where her father are looking for the two young girls as they hide behind a bush, and Jordana's character leaves her sister behind. Being her own person, no longer behind the shadow of her sister's death, having finally dealt with her sister's death and answered the unanswered questions -- she comes out of it. With closure, her zombie-like state done. That scene saved the movie, tying it all up without putting a DONE sticker over it. Which was the point of the movie. Jordana's character coming into her own adulthood, without her sister's dark weighing down her life.

It was alright, it could have been better if the movie decided earlier where it wanted to go rather than later on. The casting wasn't so much the problem as the foggy plotline and lack of real direction. Some scenes should have been cut, more should have been added to confirm a stronger plot. It's a shame it wasn't better or else there would be more to rave about. Moments worth watching for and some worth keeping in your head to think about for a couple days. But you might end up wishing things would have been made more visible.