Has anyone...

It's available on iTunes now.

I know I'm pretty late to this conversation. I just watched it a while ago and came across this page and wanted to elaborate on some of the things that were said. I feel like in movies where there's a sense of ambiguity and where the director specifically doesn't have an answer for you, it's in the movie itself and the content within that's supposed to give you your own personal answer. Which is what I'm seeing a lot of good comments here and I think that's awesome. In my opinion it's sort of like in a big Blockbuster film like Inception where the ambiguity comes a lot more towards the end and what you end up leaving the theater thinking. The director doesn't want to give you the answer. The director doesn't want to hand you or spoon feed you the answer. They want you to look at the bulk that is the film and then make up your own decision. These type of movies that I speak of -- whether they are indies or bigger films are my favorite types of films. As an example in this film we are left to our own information that we got from the film to decide what happened to the young girl. In a bigger film like Inception we are left at the end to try to figure out for ourselves what the ending means for our protagonists. When in reality it's not really about the ending in movies like Inception. I would give my thoughts specifically on this film but I won't in case within the last six years there are somebody out there who hasn't seen Inception. Thus not wanting to spoil them. There are many other movies out there like this that are small. Movies like 'Enemy' with Jake Gyllenhal, just about everything David Lynch has ever done, Donnie Darko, and so on.

Now back to the movie in question. From what I gather the older sister Samantha attempted to kill herself and succeeded by slitting her wrists in the shower. Now we were seeing a flashback and a current point of view at the same time back and forth. Then we see the actual incident occur. From what I remember of the flashback and the current point of view are sort of entwined together. In current times we start off seeing the mother and father fighting at the doorway she is clearly drunk because he accidentally butt dialed her while he was having sex with another woman. Which was then caught on voicemail for all to hear. The mother and the father get into a pretty serious series of fights around the house ending in the bedroom. The mother is clearly belligerent and she's angry. They say things that they may or may not mean, but they're definitely angry with each other. During this argument the mother makes a comment about how the family lost the father when Samantha killed herself. She says something along the lines of "we also lost YOU 6 years ago!!"

Now intertwined with this current time fight we see a flashback of the couple coming home happy looking like they're coming back from an event or something. They're laughing they take off each other's coats. They then hear the shower running run upstairs to find Samantha dead. Now at some point in the current time I do believe and it might have happened in the hospital but I do believe that the mother also says something about how he had cheated before with someone and now he's just cheating again. Basically implying that even back then when Samantha killed herself this was still a problem. Which as many people know families who lose children at young age usually end up having serious problems and a large majority end up divorced or resentful. In this case it wasn't just *that*, but he was cheating beforehand. Now when we are fully returned to the current point of view. The dad is getting ready for work and the mom runs up to his bag grabbing his phone and runs back to bed as he leaves. What I got from this was that she found out exactly who he was having sex with as she says so at the hospital. She ends up in the hospital due to alcohol poisoning. Which from what I saw seemed to be about how when she found out who he was sleeping with she was just so out of control that she drank everything in the house and ended up in the hospital.

As far as the daughter and the son there is a definite affect that Samantha's death took on both of them but in seriously different ways. I personally could say that my opinion is that their sexual relationship. The one between brother and sister is because of the chaos in the house and that the brother is still seeing the sister even though she's not there and all this messed up family dynamic which has drawn them close. They both feel misunderstood, and sort of keep others at a distance (her bf that ends up hurting her during sex), and the brother with just ALL his confusion and worried about leaving them at home when he goes off to college. So they find the solace between the two of them and they're both very much lonely. And sometimes when you're lonely the only person that can understand you as much as possible, is the people that you weren't through a traumatic event with. Especially when it's family situations.

I didn't personally have an answer to why she killed herself. What I do think is important though instead of knowing why she did it - is knowing how it affected the people around her when she did it. In a way it's a movie about grief. Some may say it's a movie about incest or that it's a movie about teenagers getting worried about going off to college. Or teenagers who are extremely confused about life. Which is basically what every teenager goes through and in every plot about teenagers. So my overly long and most likely obnoxious post is basically saying that I think that this is more about what happens to the people around us who love us when we are taken away from them. Whether it be by Suicide. Whether it be by freak accident. Whether it be by health problems. It's all about grief and how people deal with it. That's what I got out of it.

Kind of OT. Though I do have to make the comment that recently the show 'The Leftovers' on HBO wrestles with this exact type of theme.
When two million people just out of nowhere disappear into thin air. The show is much more about what it's doing to the people who are still on the earth and how they are affected by it not about the actual event itself. Just some thoughts. Please correct me if I'm wrong. It has been a bit since they've seen the film.

- Rand