Point of the black boy in the beginning?

I would love an answer to this.





"That is terrible advice, Ant1238."

[deleted]

These are all great points. Another one to add is that she actually saved the boy from the beginning, but she was not able to save her own. She compared her ability to save the boy that reminded her of her own (baseball connection, young dying boy) and maybe felt angry and jealous of this fact. She clearly didn't care about kids that aren't her own.

I've got to say, that whole opening scene seemed like a non sequitur to me. Like other commenters I've seen around the net, I spent a good portion of the movie waiting for the tie-in, which IMO never came, which is why I'm here, searching for answers.

It did seem to me like the editing was conflicted. There seemed to be two different stories that were sort of fighting each other to be told. The first one was the childrens' story - straightforward and nicely done (if a bit tame, even with the twist). But then there was the random opening scene that didn't appear to tie in anywhere else, and, most of all, I got the feeling that the director really wanted to tell a deeper more psychological horror story through the father's character, but for some reason was prevented from doing so. Every scene that Michael Shannon was in made me feel oddly uncomfortable in a way that's hard to pin down. He was ... off, somehow. Not like the mother, who was in full-blown Kathy Bates mode. Shannon just gave that slightly off-center tinge to his character that, if allowed to develop, could have really changed up the whole movie. Even his relationship with the medical supplier - what was up with that? Strangeness. Of course, if the director had gone with the father's POV, then the kids' story would have become almost a distraction. So instead of one or the other, we got a mash-up of both, which to me feels disjointed. Michael Shannon's characterization was too good to be background!

Anyway, still looking for the final answer on the opening scene. The movie is streaming on Netflix, so I guess I'll go back and see if I can pick up anything more from it.

Lethe

This is what I think:
It looked like a dream sequence to me.
And Katherine, the insane mother is the one who's having a dream.
She says to the black woman that your son is going to be ok. That's her fantasy as well. That her son will get better. And in the dream she's trying to convince herself that Andy is going to be ok.