Will You Make a Choice?

Knock at the Cabin

Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Cast:  Dave Bautista, Jonathan Groff, Ben Aldridge, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Rupert Grint, Abby Quinn

Released: February 3, 2023

Picture it: you're vacationing with your family in a charming rustic cabin in the woods. There's a lake nearby for swimming and plenty of beautiful nature. You're only there for a few days before you hear a knock at the front door and it's four strangers. They tell you that you must sacrifice one member of your family in order to save everyone else on the planet. If you don't, the world will end. Sounds pretty crazy, doesn't it? Well, this is the premise to this movie 

We first meet Wen, a seven-year-old girl who is collecting grasshoppers to study in a large jar just outside the cabin in rural Pennsylvania. While she's doing this, she notices a large, tattooed man (Dave Bautista) walking towards her. She looks a little suspicious, but stays put. When he comes up to her, he tells her he's not around here and is looking for some new friends and asks if he can talk to her. She replies that she doesn't talk to strangers. He tells her she's smart and that she shouldn't, but he's here to be her friend, so hopefully they won't be strangers for long. (Which is exactly something a stranger would say!) They introduced themselves to each other and we learn the man's name is Leonard. 

Wen must have missed the Stranger Danger discussion in school because he offers to help her catch grasshoppers and soon she's opening up to him. She tells him that she wants to take care of animals when she grows up and that "Daddy Eric" taught her how to catch grasshoppers. When he questions why she refers to her dad by his first name, she tells him it's so they know which dad she's talking to: Daddy Eric or Daddy Andrew. She tells him that nobody in her class or anyone on the Disney Channel has two dads. I'm kind of surprised about the Disney Channel; I would have thought they would at least have one show with same-sex parents. Aren't they supposed to be pretty progressive? Also, does the Disney Channel even exist anymore with Disney +? 

Leonard has a flower and wants to play a game where they will take turns pulling off petals and each time they do, they can ask the other person a question and "by the time [they're] done, [they'll] know each other better." Wen asks him why he's here (love how she gets to the point) and he tells her he's there to make friends with her and maybe her dads and maybe catch some more grasshoppers. Hmm, Leonard, something tells me you're not telling her the whole truth! He asks her how she got the tiny scar on his lip, then quickly realizes he may have overstepped and that question might be too personal, but she tells him her lip was "broken" when she was born, but the scar was left when the doctors fixed it. He tells her that he doesn't have a physical scar like she does, but that his heart is broken. When she asks him why, he replies, "Because of what I have to do today." Of course this prompts her to ask, "What do you have to do?" It's at that moment Wen (and the audience) hears footsteps approaching and we see three people in the distance. Wen asks him if they're his friends and he tells her that she's his friend and "No matter what happen, I want you to remember that." He compares the people who are coming towards them "more like people I work with" and that the four of them "have a very important job to do; in fact, it might be the most important job in the history of the world." You would think he might be a bit hyperbolic, but, well, I'll guess we'll find out soon enough! 

The people are getting closer and they're carrying homemade weapons - wooden sticks with spikes and chains, that kind of thing. At this point, Wen is getting very concerned and stands up to leave. Leonard tells her it's not about her or her dads and she hasn't done anything wrong, but her and her dads "are gonna have to make some tough decisions. Terrible decisions. And I wish with all my broken heart that you didn't have to." Before she leaves, he tells her, "Your dads won't let us in. You have to tell them they must. Otherwise, we're gonna have to find our own way in." This poor seven (almost eight!) year old girl. That's a lot of information to take in. 

Wen runs back to her cabin (which wasn't at all that far away from where she was catching grasshoppers) and goes to the back porch where her dads are sitting. The vibe is very different. We just went from something super serious and ominous, and now we're just chilling with Eric (Jonathan Groff) and Andrew (Ben Aldridge) who are relaxing on the back porch while listening to music without a care in the world. They're more than a little bemused when Wen demands that they come inside right now and that "There's strangers and they want to come in, and they're scary!" They obviously don't believe her, but they humor her and come inside and ask her to explain what has her so frightened. She tells them how "the big one, Leonard" told her that she and the two of them have "the most important job in the history of the world." The guys thinks it must be Jehovah's Witnesses that she came across. 

After Wen tells them they have weapons, we get the titular knock at the cabin. Eric and Andrew decide the best way to handle this is to be polite and they ask Leonard if there's something he needs. He replies that he needs to speak to them and asks if they could open the door because it would make it a lot easier to have this conversation face to face. 

Eric tells him they weren't expecting visitors and he does't want to sound rude, but they would like to be left alone. Leonard says that he understands and that he never thought that the four of them would be here asking to talk to him. While Andrew looks through the blinds, Eric asks who else is out there and Leonard tells him he's with Sabrina, Adriane, and Redmond. He also adds that they're there "trying to save a whole bunch of people." Andrew beckons Eric to come over and they look through the blinds and see that they are carrying weapons. Andrew tries to call the police, but there's no dial tone. They try not to let that deter them and they tell their visitors that they're calling the police, but we hear Adriane tell them they had to cut the phone lines so they know the people in the cabin are NOT able to call the police...or anyone. They can't even use their own phones because cell service doesn't work where they are out in the boondocks. 

Again, Leonard asks them to open the door so they can have a conversation. Wen asks why do they have the "scary weapons" and Leonard tells her they're tools. Hmm, I would say they're 50% tools, 50% weapons! Andrew tells them he has a gun, but whispers to Eric that it's in the safe in the back of their SUV. 

Leonard gives them one last chance to open the door, then the door knob starts rattling and you know that a creaky wooden door is not going to stop four people who really want to get in (and when one of them is Dave Bautista; I forgot to mention a humorous moment when either Andrew or Eric sees him out the window and comments, "One of them is really huge!"). 

Eric and Andrew quick barricade the front and back doors with furniture while Wen goes around and shuts all the windows. There were a couple windows that were wide open, so while Leonard was talking to them, one of the other intruders could have easily gotten in that way! A couple of them go down through the cellar doors (guess those weren't locked) and through the basement while Redmond breaks the glass of the back door with an axe and tries tries to unlock the door from the inside. Eric grabs a couple of fire pokes and they try to fight him off. This is when they realize that some of them are in the basement and they decide to make a run for it to the car. As soon as they open the door, Sabrina appears from the basement and tells them, "It doesn't have to be like this." There's an altercation between her and Eric with their weapons and he ends up getting hit in the head with her tool/weapon of choice. This makes Andrew very upset, but Sabrina is a nurse and wants to help Eric. By this time, Redmond has pushed the couch away from the back door and enters, followed by Leonard so now all the intruders are inside the cabin. Andrew had been fighting off Redmond, but quickly stops when he sees that Leonard is holding Wen and tells him, "That's enough." 

In the next scene we see that Andrew and Eric have been tied up. Eric was unconscious when he was tied up, so that would make it easy for them to restrain him, but I'm surprised Andrew didn't put up much of a fight. I guess he felt he didn't really have a choice with their weapons/tools and the fact that a huge guy is among the four that are holding them hostage. Andrew thinks they're being targeted and that that is a hate crime because he and Eric are a gay couple. Leonard and Sabrina are quick to tell them that is not the case; that they are not homophobic and Leonard tells them they didn't know they were a same-sex couple until they got there. I believe him because he did look surprised when Wen told him she had two dads.

Leonard gathers everyone together because it's "time to talk". He wants his colleagues to introduce themselves to the cabin dwellers. Sabrina (Nikki Amuka-Bird; she was also in Shyamalan's previous movie, Old) is from SoCal and has been a post-op nurse for five years. She used most of her savings to come out to Pennsylvania just to talk to them. 

Leonard tells them he's from Chicago where he's a second-grade teacher (I feel like he would be better suited as a high school teacher; I bet none of the students would talk back to him!) and he runs the after-school program. And when he's not a second-grade teacher during the day, he's a bartender at night which I find humorous. 

Redmond (Rupert Grint aka Ron Weasley!) sarcastically says he likes long walks on the beach and beer. (Well, I think he was being genuine about liking beer!) Leonard tells him to take this more seriously, that this family deserves to know who they are. With agitation, Redmond tells him they wasted time waiting for Eric to wake up and states that "this get-to-know-you stuff doesn't matter at all; doesn't change what we have to do or what they have to do." Leonard tells him when he says stuff like that, he'll just scare them and he makes it "less likely that they'll believe us or cooperate." I love that they're having this conversation in front of Andrew and Eric and Wen (who's not tied up, but usually standing near one of her dads). Remember, they have no idea why these four random strangers have come to their house and technically, neither does the audience, but if you've watched the trailer, then you probably do. But if I were one of the hostages, I would definitely be more than a little concerned after hearing that! So Redmond continues and tells them he lives in Medford, Massachusetts and works for the gas company. He's "done some time" because he did a lot of "questionable stuff" when he was "young and stupid." I've heard a few people on movie review podcast say they didn't think Grint do a good job with the accent, but I thought it was fine. Never once did I hear his English accent. 

Before Adriane (Abby Quinn) can do her introduction, Eric speaks up with his own thoughts. He thinks they are a cult who are trying to fix things and wants to recruit them or try to change them or make them different and if that's so, this is not the way to do it. The only thing we learn about Abby in this moment is that she's a line cook at a Mexican restaurant in D.C. Later, she will reveal she has a young son, but Andrew won't believe her. 

It's finally time to see what the hell is going on. Leonard simply tells them, "The four of us are here to prevent the apocalypse." Okay, cool. He tells them that everyone in this cabin (all seven of them) can stop it from happening, but only with their help: "Ultimately, whether the world ends or not is completely up to you three." That's a lot of weight to put on three people, especially when one is a child! Obviously, Andrew and Eric aren't buying any of this. Eric tells him that he's having "a psychological break of some kind." Leonard pretty much ignores him and continues with his instructions which is that they must choose to "willingly sacrifice" one of the three of them to "prevent the apocalypse." Let's just think about this for one second. There's only three of them which doesn't make great odds and one of them is just a seven-year-old girl, you know that they wouldn't consider her for one second, so now it's just a fifty-fifty chance between Andrew and Eric. Leonard realizes that this is an impossible decision (ya think, Leonard?), but if they fail to choose or follow through with the sacrifice, the world will end. The three of them will live, "but the rest of humanity will perish." They will also get the added bonus "to witness the horror of the end of everything and they will be left to wander the devastated planet alone." Well, when you put it like that! 

Eric tells Leonard they haven't done anything wrong and Leonard agrees with him and he doesn't think they deserve this burden. He tells them they're "the family chosen to decide for us in this time." He makes it clear that they need to make the decision and one of them can't kill themselves. Andrew tells them they're not choosing anyone to sacrifice. Sabrina asks him, "Even if it means the death of everyone else in the world?" He tells her yes, but says he doesn't believe it's true. 

This scenario reminds me of a question I would find in a book I have called The Book of Questions that asks such philosophical questions. I think one of them was similar to their dilemma: you have the option to save a couple of your loved ones or you can save thousands of strangers. (There was nothing about the world ending!) It also reminded me of the Trolley Problem, which is something I learned about in an episode of The Good Place. Wikipedia defines it as:

The trolley problem is a series of thought experiments in ethics and psychology, involving stylized ethical dilemmas of whether to sacrifice one person to save a larger number.

This is exactly what we have here. One person has to be sacrificed in order to save the rest of the world. Now you're probably asking yourself why does it have to be one of only three people out of the entire world's population of eight billion people? It's because of the visions Leonard and the other three had. Visions that were "so strong, so specific, and so real." They have been shown what will happen if they don't make a sacrifice and it does not look good. For anybody. The visions led them to each other and that led them to "this exact cabin." He has no idea why this family in particular was chosen. It's interesting that this cabin was chosen because Eric and Andrew found it online and obviously they are only there on vacation. Leonard describes what will happen: the ocean will swell and drown cities and drag everything out to sea, people will get sick from "a terrible plague", and an "everlasting darkness will descend over humanity." Andrew tells them that they need help and if they let them go, they can get them help. Leonard is adamant that what he just told them is going to happen and only their sacrifice can stop it. 

So if this had been an original Shyamalan screenplay, I would be wondering if the twist would be that the world is actually ending or if these four people are just playing a cruel and terrible joke on them. This is based on a novel called Cabin at the End of the World, which I had never heard of until I saw this movie. 

Before I continue on, I'm going to put on my spoiler warning because I'm going to spoil something about the book (I haven't read it, but heard a huge spoiler on a movie review podcast) and I'm also going to start talking about major plot points of the movie that could be considered major spoilers and since this movie is only a year old, I want to make sure you get a chance to see it before continuing reading on!

If you have not seen this movie and would like to see it spoiler-free, I would advise you to stop reading at this point! Major spoilers ahead for both the movie and the book! You have been warned! Spoilers ahoy! 

So I read through the Wikipedia summary of the book and while there are a few changes from the film, there is one major one (this is the one I heard about on a podcast; I guess on movie podcasts they're not too worried about giving away book spoilers! Oh, well, I was never planning on reading the book anyway). So in the novel, Andrew has gotten his gun and there is a struggle between him and Leonard and the gun accidentally goes off and kills the young girl! To make matters worse, her death won't count as saving all humanity because she was accidentally killed and wasn't sacrificed. So basically she was killed for nothing and her death didn't mean anything. It's clear to see why they didn't go that route in the movie! The little girl is adorable and I don't think it would go over well with the audience if they had killed her off, accident or not. This movie is already dark enough and I think this would take it into a whole new level of darkness. So Wen survives the movie! Who else survives? Well, read on and find out. Now let's get back to the movie!

Andrew and Eric still refuse to make a decision on who to sacrifice. They get very scared when Redmond steps up before them with his scary-looking weapon/tool. They tell him he doesn't need to do this and that they told them they wouldn't hurt them. The strangers are true to their word because Redmond gets on his knees and puts a cloth over his head. Before he completely covers his head, he tells Andrew and Eric, "I'm scared" and wants them to keep looking at him. (Luckily the seven year old isn't required to do this!) Now I knew this movie was rated R and was a little nervous about how much gore they were going to show, but luckily (at least for me, I know some people were disappointed that more gore wasn't shown!) you don't really see when an axe is put into his skull. You just see him fall over with blood dripping from his head. I guess the R rating was more for the language. You'd probably drop more than a few f-bombs if you were in this situation! 

While Leonard and Adriane take Redmond's body outside (after wrapping it up), Sabrina cleans the floor. Leonard turns on the TV because there's something he wants Andrew and Eric to see. The channel the TV is turned to is a home shopping channel and we see Shyamalan in his cameo as a guest host of the show, shilling air fryers. The show is interrupted by a special report and a news reporter announces that an earthquake that erupted in the Aleutian Islands four hours ago has caused a huge tsunami that is making its way toward Hawaii. Honestly, I'm surprised Shyamalan didn't cast himself as a news reporter! His role in this movie is significantly smaller than other cameos in his movies. Leonard wants them to keep watching until they see what was shown to him and the others in their visions which is a massive tidal wave that hits Cannon Beach in Oregon due to a second earthquake that registered as an 8.6 on the Richter scale. 

So I guess at a certain time if they haven't decided on who to sacrifice, the intruders sacrifice one of their own (and they seem to have an order of who will be sacrificed when) and it will also unleash something horrible.

Leonard tells them, "Tomorrow morning, you can make the difficult, selfless choice of sacrifice and save the world...or you can choose to let the clock move another minute closer to permanent midnight. For the rest of today and tonight, we'll tend to your needs within reason." He lets them "be to reflect and talk it over."  

Sabrina takes Eric into the bathroom to bandage his head and tells him he probably thinks she's a "religious fanatic", but admits she hadn't been to church since she was a little girl. She says when her visions started, she "didn't believe it at first, either" and that he will believe and that they are all on the same side. He just replies that he's on his family's side. 

After she brings him back to sit in the chair next to Andrew (and is tied up) and she and the others are out of ear range, Andrew starts whispering to him and tells him how the earthquake happened four hours ago and that "Leonard's checked his watch a thousand times." He surmises that they've been timing all of this. 

Wen hasn't had too much to do at this point so we see her sneak down to the basement and escape through the cellar doors. She hides behind a tree and Leonard immediately comes outside, calling her name. It doesn't take long before he finds her and brings her back. No, they do not tie her up, but he firmly tells her she cannot escape. 

So throughout the movie we've seen little flashbacks of Eric and Andrew in everyday life situations that help build their characters. When Andrew is still accusing them of being targeted because they're a gay couple, we have a flashback where he was in a bar with Eric a few years ago and off screen we hear a guy telling them to be quiet (when they're not being loud at all) and Andrew gets a little smart with him and the guy walks away, but walks back and assaults him by smashing a bottle on his head. He suddenly realizes that Redmond was the guy who did this and he did go to jail, but remembers his name being O'Bannon. This incident will also be the catalyst for Andrew purchasing a gun, the one that is in their car, which will come in play a little later. 

Andrew thinks this is some "sick scam" to get them to hurt each other, but Leonard denies this and Sabrina tells them, "We don't know why each of us is here. Andrew asks, "It's a coincidence the man who attacked me and had me in years of therapy is one of your group?" He wants to get his wallet so he can prove his name isn't Redmond. Leonard tells him it doesn't matter what his name is and Adriane brings up the fact that Redmond was the one to tell them about the cabin on the message board first, then they had the visions, but Leonard says the visions of the cabin came first.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. I have so many questions. These four strangers met on a message board? I mean, I guess that makes sense since they didn't know each other before and had to meet somewhere. I wonder what this message board was called? Was it for people who believed in the apocalypse? How did they know the others weren't just trolling them? I would have so many red flags if I heard this information if I were Andrew and Eric (and they will). It does seem a little sus that Redmond, who may or may not be the person who attacked Andrew (oh, wait, we're already in spoiler territory so I can confirm that it WAS him) just so happened to mention the cabin where they would be. Although, how would he even know that? Also, Leonard mentions they had visions of this particular cabin? This is a nondescript wooden cabin in the middle of the woods. That cabin could be anywhere! How did they know it was this particular cabin in rural Pennsylvania? Maybe they saw a house number, I don't know! I'm sure things are more explained in the book, which is usually the case.

It's now the next morning and Andrew whispers to Eric that he feels he can almost get out of the ropes that have his hands tied to the chair. To the intruders, he brings up them meeting on a message board and tells them they're having a "shared delusion" and that they took it as evidence that they got online and found "random people with random visions." While he and Leonard are talking, Wen, who had been in the kitchen, is now behind Eric and we see her hand him a small knife and stands behind him so nobody can see that he's trying to cut the rope. He whispers to her that when he nods at her, he wants to her to start having a tantrum like she did last Thanksgiving. 

This is when Adriane tells them she has a son. If they don't make a choice soon, she will be the next to go. (I wonder how they decide the order? Did they draw straws?) She tells them she has had to see her son die over and over in her visions and pleads for them to make a decision, but they still refuse. She is killed in the same way as Redmond and Leonard tells them they've "unleashed a second plague." 

Sabrina turns on the TV and there's a news report about a new virus, the  X-Nine virus which is "proving particularly fatal to children" and "is highly transmittable." Too soon, Shyamalan! Eric whispers to Andrew that he thinks he saw a person or a figure. Leonard and Sabrina hear this and Leonard questions where he saw this. Eric tells him he saw it in the light and reflection in the mirror behind him when he was standing behind Redmond after he was killed. Andrew takes this as him being extremely stressed, having a concussion, and being sensitive to the light. He also thinks the show was programmed and they knew when it was going to be on because they kept checking their watches.  

It's now time for Wen to put on her performance when Eric nods at her. She starts screaming about wanting to watch a cartoon and while Leonard and Sabrina are trying to calm her down, Eric unties himself and tips over the chair. Now Leonard and Sabrina are distracted with him and Andrew has freed himself and sneaks outside to the car. He doesn't make it very far until Sabrina starts following him. Before he can get in the car, she clubs him in the knee with a metal bar, telling him with regret she only did it so he wouldn't run away. He throws dirt on her and gets in the car, locking the doors, and unlocks the safe the gun is in. Just as she's smashed a back door window open with the metal bar and unlocked the door, he shoots near her (barely missing her) and tells her to drop the weapon. She does and backs up until she's far enough away so she can run away. This is when Andrew notices that the tires of the car are flat so their visitors thought of everything.

Back in the cabin, Leonard is telling Eric that he thinks this family was chosen because their "love for each other is so pure." As he's saying this, Eric sees Andrew come in through the door with the gun pointed at Leonard. He tells Leonard to move away from Eric or he'll shoot him. Leonard tells him it's time for the next sacrifice and asks if he's willing to make a choice. At that moment, Sabrina comes running in through the back door, screaming, and, startled, Andrew turns and fatally shoots her. I wasn't exactly sure why she was screaming like that. Maybe she had a vision and it terrified her or maybe she knew she was the next to be sacrificed and better to have a bullet to the chest then an axe to the head.  

While Leonard is taking care of Sabrina's body, Andrew retrieves Redmond's driver's license and shows Leonard that it was the same man who assaulted him in the bar. The name is shown as Rory O'Bannon. (He probably chose Redmond as his alias because he has red hair.) Andrew thinks this is proof that none of this is real and that they are being targeted. He gives his hypothesis: "I always look for motive. How about a crazy bigot meets a bartender somewhere, and they find a woman from a small town who has extreme religious beliefs, then they come across a young woman who can be persuaded of anything." The only thing that doesn't make sense with this is that Sabrina had told Eric that she hadn't gone to church since she was a kid, so I'm not sure where he's getting she "has extreme religious beliefs"; in fact you could argue they all have this because of why they're there. He tells Leonard that since he's not a murderer, he's going to lock him in the bathroom. 

His plan is for him, Eric, and Wen to find the vehicle that the intruders came in and get away in that. Once they have Leonard locked in the bathroom, they start to head outside, but they hear glass shattering. They have a quick discussion and want to make sure he's still in the bathroom because they're worried he could be waiting outside for them. Andrew opens the bathroom door (first warning Leonard that if he sees him, he's going to shoot him) to find the room empty and the circular window's glass has been broken. (And it would be a tight fit for Leonard to get through.) The shower curtain is closed around the tub and Andrew shoots once at it. Nothing happens and a few seconds later, he starts to reach for the curtain to open it, but before he can, Leonard jumps outs and attacks him. There's a fight for the gun and Leonard manages to grab it and points it at Andrew who tells Leonard that he thought he wouldn't kill them. Leonard says he won't, be he will shoot him in the leg to keep him from leaving the cabin. He tells him to turn on the TV and now we see that 700 airplanes from around the world have plummeted to the ground without any warning or without issuing distress calls. (Literally my worst nightmare!) 

While the news anchor is talking, Leonard starts reciting everything she's saying at the same time. Andrew still thinks this must be coordinated. He demands Leonard to give him the keys to the car he came in and he wants to leave with his family. Eric asks Andrew if he thinks everything they've seen today is "all just a coincidence?" and Andrew replies "yes". He says he has to believe it's either a horrible coincidence or a trick.  

Now it's time for Leonard to sacrifice himself and he wants to do it outside so he asks them to come out to the back porch with him. He sits in a chair, holding a huge knife and tells the others, "When I'm gone, you'll only have minutes to stop everything. After that it'll be too late." Eric tells Wen to take her headphones and listen to her music in the tree house and to wait there until one of them comes to get her.  

Before he kills himself by slitting his throat with the huge knife, Leonard begs Eric and Andrew "to make a choice and save the world." You would think he would want to use the gun instead of the knife to kill himself. I'm glad that they sent Wen away so she wouldn't have to see that! After he's gone, the sky gets very dark and stormy and we see a plane fall out of the sky in the distance. 

The two of them go back inside the cabin and Eric tells Andrew they still have a few minutes. It's clear that he believes that Leonard and the others were telling the truth and probably has believed them for awhile now. Andrew wants the three of them to leave, but Eric has other ideas. He tells him, "Maybe this is the way it's always been. Maybe families have been deciding this all through time." Andrew basically tells him that he doesn't care if all of humanity ends and the three of them can walk the Earth." Eric asks, "What kind of life is that for Wen?" Eric believes that this was not a home invasion and that they weren't targeted. The four of them came to spend time with him, Andrew, and Wen and get to know them. He says they are the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and "they remind us of all aspects of humanity: Redmond, malice; Adriane, nurturing; Sabrina, healing; Leonard, guidance." Andrew questions why them, that they're "nothing special" and Eric replies, "Because I know what I felt when we first saw Wen in that orphanage and we were together for the first time." He tells Andrew it would be "a sacrifice for them to give up something so beautiful to us for everyone else." Andrew still doesn't believe them, but Eric does. He gives the gun to Andrew and tells him he's at peace with his decisions and tells him "to do it now before [they] run out of time." Andrew begs him to kill him instead. Eric tells him that he's thinking about their daughter in the future and that "she's living her life exactly as she wanted to." She has her own practice (so she did become a vet like she wanted; how adorable!). As Eric is telling us this, we see a flash forward of a grown up Wen with Andrew as they're coming out of her office. It's just a normal day as they get in the car to go to dinner. Eric tells him "she found someone who loves her and who she loves just as much." Now is Eric really seeing the future because he's granted this gift because he's about to sacrifice himself for the greater good of humanity or is this just what he wants to see? Also, this guy deserves to have the planet named after him since he's saving it! Yes, Leonard and the others were right all along: the world was ending and the sacrifice of one of these three people will stop it. 

We hear a gunshot and Andrew is crying uncontrollably. He comes up the tree house to get Wen who asks, "Did Daddy Eric save everyone?" He hugs her and they both cry. 

They walk down a gravel road until they come across a car that their visitors had drove up in. The door is unlocked and Andrew finds the keys sitting on the center console. (I guess since the world was ending they weren't too worried about their car being stolen...plus where they were, there aren't too many people around.) 

They begin driving. It's raining and there are fires sporadically along the way, but the sky doesn't seem as dark as it was before. They stop at a diner where the TV is on with survivors recounting their stories. Things are starting to seem better. Water has stopped rising, planes are now landing safely, there hasn't been a death in the ICU for the past hour and they're coming up on their second hour of having no deaths. (I guess it's already been almost two hours since Eric was sacrificed.) Andrew hears a conversation of a woman on a phone telling someone that "Everything's gonna be okay." 

They get back in the car and when Andrew starts the car, "Boogie Shoes" starts playing on the radio. It's obviously a sign! He turns off the radio, but Wen turns it back on after a few seconds. She turns it off after the chorus is played once and this time Andrew is the one to turn it on and they drive off.

In the car, we see items that prove their visitors had been telling the truth. There's a photo of Leonard with the kids from his after school program, there's Sabrina's ID from her work, and there's a photo of Adriane's son

Are You Ready For It?

Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour 

Director: Sam Wrench

Released: October 12, 2023

Viewed in theaters: October 20, 2023

Since I'm deprived and Taylor Swift didn't bring her Eras Tour to my city, I had to settle for going to her concert movie. But that's okay because I hate crowds and even if I did get tickets to her show, I would be in the nosebleed section. That's what I keep telling myself! I felt like everybody in my theater had already been to her concert. Now, I don't have any proof of that, but it just felt like everybody knew all the little inside moments. Most likely they could have just seen these moments on Instagram or Tik Tok. 

I do know that a lot of people who did go to the (actual live) concert did appreciate the concert movie, because, depending on where you're sitting, you're not always seeing everything and with the movie you are able to see these details much better. 

So, for some idiotic reason, I was thinking the concert movie was spliced together with the different cities she visited. I thought they would do that so it would be "fair"; surely they wouldn't just film the movie at one concert. In my mind, they would show a different era from a different city. But when I saw the movie, it appeared to be filmed on one night towards the end of her U.S. tour when she performed at SoFi Stadium in L.A. Then I saw an Instagram video of someone who was at her concert when the movie was being filmed and you could see some guy on stage with her, following her with a camera. Haha, that sounds so stalkerish and weird, like some guy just jumped on stage and started following her with a camera (like they would let that happen!). No, this guy is clearly supposed to be there and he's obviously filming her for the movie. That's when I realized....duh, of course. The way the movie was filmed, OF COURSE there was someone on stage with her with some of the way the angles were shot. There's no way they could have filmed the movie the way they did if they just stuck a few stationery cameras around the stage. Let me give you a few examples of what I mean: 1) When she's performing "The Man" and she's at the top of that scaffolding prop they use for that song, there's a close up of her looking into the camera; 2) there's a 360 degree shot at one point. Unfortunately, I cannot remember what song this is during, but I love a good 360 degree shot. It's just so cinematic and epic! 

I was listening to the podcast Every Single Album: Taylor Swift (the best TS podcast in an ocean of TS podcasts, IMO!) where the two hosts were talking about the movie and from them I learned that the movie was filmed at SoFi more than one night and that there were cameras everywhere. (At least one of them was at one of those shows!) We do get some audience reactions during the movie and while that would be cool to be immortalized in the Taylor Swift Eras Concert movie, I do have to wonder how distracting that would be. Not just with all the cameras around, but also with the cameras that are on stage with her at all times too. I wonder if your experience is diminished in anyway. Not that I would know! So I looked up online to see when the concert was filmed (which is what I should have done in the first place instead of just assuming!) and found out they were filming the first three days of the six days she performed there. So they must have just used the best footage they had from each of those three concert and spliced that together. 

Okay, enough of this boring technical stuff! Let's talk about the good stuff: the music and the fashion! 

So as you may or may not know, the concert is divided into her different eras (i.e. albums) and she sings about 3-5 songs from each era. Yes, this is why it's called the Eras Tour! She does not perform each era in chronological order (because that would be boring!) No, I'm sure there's a logistical reason for the way the show is structured the way it is. This is the order she performs each album:

1. Lover

2. Fearless

3. Evermore

4. Reputation 

5. Speak Now

6. Red

7. Folklore

8. 1989

(secret songs)

9. Midnights

Now, you may notice that her debut self-titled album is missing and, honestly, that's fine with me. There are a few songs I like from that album, but I hardly ever listen to it. Technically she does sing a song from it during her secret songs and I think they did that at least to have one song from her debut album in the movie. At least, that's my theory! I'll explain more when I talk about that part of the concert/movie.

Starting with Lover makes sense because that was what should have been her previous concert, but was cancelled because of Covid. Just think, if Covid never existed, neither would have Folklore or Evermore and this would have been the Midnights Tour. That seems like such an odd alternate universe!  

Okay, you know how when you're eating dinner at a fancy restaurant and they serve you a palate cleanser between courses to get you ready for the next course? (BTW, I've only had this experience once: at a restaurant when I was in NYC a million years ago). I kinda feel like the Evermore and Folklore sections are the palate cleansers of this concert. I don't know if that's even a great anaglogy and it sounds like I'm dissing those two albums and I'm not because I love those albums. I even ranked Folklore as my favorite TS album. I did love the performances from these two sister albums, but it is my theory that she strategically placed them where they are in the setlist so people could sit back and relax. Hell, I've ever heard jokes that people used that time to go to the bathroom. (This is during the four hour live concert, not the two and a half hour movie!) I feel like I got major whiplash from going from "Tolerate It" (was that the last song in her Evermore set?), then pretty much going straight into her Reputation set with the booming bass sounds from "...Ready For It?" 

I remember listening to the Every Single Album: TS right after she announced she was going on tour and the hosts were speculating on what she would perform. They thought she might do her huge pop hits in the massive arenas and her stuff from Folklore and Evermore in smaller venues. While I feel like that would make more sense, logistically it just wouldn't work, and besides, it is called the ERAS tour and not having two of her albums (and one that won a Grammy) would be blasphemy. Like, people can live without her debut album, but NOT the sister albums! 

When she performed "Tolerate It" from the Evermore set, I felt like I was watching a play with the table and one of her male dancers "acting" in it. I really liked it, but I have a feeling this worked much better being filmed for a movie than watching it at a live concert. "The Last Great American Dynasty" from her Folklore set also had a theatrical play element to it. I liked that one of her dancers played Rebekah Harkness and that moment where she and Taylor exchange a knowing glance when Taylor sings "and then it was bought by me." Again, this probably shows up better for the movie than a live show. I know a lot of people thought it didn't make sense that "Cardigan" was cut (about five or six songs were cut from the movie), especially since she sang "Betty" and "August" and they thought "TLGAD" should have been cut, but I am so glad that they did not cut it because, hot take, that might be a top five Taylor song for me and "Cardigan" is just okay to me.

My favorite set was the Reputation Era. It just got you so pumped, which was why it gave me major whiplash coming after the more subdued Evermore set. I personally would have swapped the Reputation and Red sets. They are only separated by her one song from the Speak Now era, but it would make more sense for Reputation to come a little bit later. I wonder if the ten minute "All Too Well" is exactly at the halfway mark of the concert and that's why they had it that way. The only thing that would have made the Reputation set complete perfection is if she had sung "Getaway Car". I have a hard time trying to figure out which song from the Reputation setlist I would swap out for that one, so in my mind, I would cut "Lavender Haze" from her Midnights set, but only because that's a song I'm pretty meh on. Like, give me "Getaway Car" over that song any day! 

The Red set was a lot of fun too. She sang "22", "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together", "I Knew You Were Trouble", and, of course, "All Too Well." If she had swapped "IKYWT" for "Starlight", she would have sung all my favorite songs from that album. During "22" she gives the hat she's wearing to someone her mom has picked out from the audience (usually a little kid, but sometimes it's someone older.) When I saw the very young girl who received the hat in the movie, I knew it was Kobe Bryant's daughter. I only knew this because I had read that Taylor gave her hat to her at one of her concerts at SoFi. I did double check to make sure I was right and I was. She is only six years old! She is so young! I think showing this little girl who tragically lost her famous father and older sister at such young ages receive the hat makes more sense than showing a random kid receiving it. You see Taylor talking to her and give her a big hug after she gives her the hat. When I saw her give the little girl a hug, I had a feeling it was Kobe Bryant's daughter because I don't know if she gives all the other hat recipients hugs, but maybe she does. It is a very sweet moment and just seeing the joy on that little girl's face almost brought a tear to my eye. 

She sings her "secret songs" after the 1989 set. These are two songs from her catalog that she sings that aren't part of the show. In the movie, she sings "Our Song" followed by "You're On Your Own Kid." I think that was strategic because with "Our Song" you're getting at least one song from all her albums, so all her eras are truly represented in the movie. "YOYOK" is immediately followed by her last set, the Midnights era, so it easily falls into the right set and this is the song with the "make the friendship bracelets" line and Taylor knows about the exchanging of friendship bracelets at her concerts. Having this song be in the movie was no coincidence, especially with the dedication/thank you to her fans at the end being in the style of beaded friendship bracelets. 

Speaking of which, the friend I saw this movie with invited me over to make bracelets and it was simultaneously fun and a pain in the ass. One bracelet in particular I had to do four times because I dropped all the beads twice, I had a letter backwards, and I had too many beads between letters. I made three: "Wildest Dreams" (ironically, that was my nightmare bracelet!), "Delicate", and "Bejeweled". Here is a photo of them:

This is a movie where it was encouraged to sing and dance along, so on a scale of one to ten with one being nobody singing or dancing and ten being over the top chaos, I would say my theater was about a 4.5. There were people singing along to some of the songs, but it wasn't so obnoxious or overly loud that you couldn't hear Taylor (though the movie was pretty loud). Nobody was dancing in the aisles, but a lot of young kids were dancing at the front of the theater and they were throwing and waving their little light-up batons. They were even dancing to the Evermore set...which was weird. This one little girl was singing her little heart out along to "August" which was hilarious and adorable. 

I was singing along too...internally! 

Now for fashion corner because she never goes out of style (ha, ha, ha). I loved most of her ensembles; my favorite being the sequined t-shirt dress she wears when she performs "Lavender Haze" and "Anti-Hero." There was one particular dress I did not love, but everybody seems to go gaga over: the humungous lilac gown she wears when she performs "Enchanted". I hate this dress! She looks like a freaking wedding cake! Yes, I realize it's supposed to be like that, but it's just too much for me. I've seen the other ballgowns she's worn while performing this and I like all the others so much better. Also, I chose that moment to use the bathroom, heh! I'm sure people were judging me for leaving during this song.

She also has each nail painted a different color and I'm not sure if she did this for every concert or only for when the movie was being filmed because it would translate better on screen. Each of her albums represents a different color. She has ten albums and she has ten fingernails, so therefore this was the perfect time to do this! Some of her album/color combinations are pretty obvious, like the color for Red is, wait for it...red and indigo blue for Midnights. Usually the color for the album is whatever color dress/outfit she's wearing on the album cover: yellow for Fearless, purple for Speak Now. She's going to be running out of colors pretty soon (she has orange and white left for the basic colors) and will have to pick colors like fuchsia or chartreuse or persimmon. She better get the Pantone site open! 

Overall, it's a fun movie to watch if you didn't get to see the concert. I have no doubt it doesn't even come close to seeing it live. I do wish she had just released it to Netflix instead of making it a theatrical release, but I get she wanted to make it an "experience" so people could dance and sing. Maybe it will be released to Netflix in the future and it will include the deleted songs. 

Part of Your World

The Little Mermaid

Director: Rob Marshall

Cast: Halle Bailey, Melissa McCarthy, Javier Bardem, Jonah Hauer-King, Daveed Diggs, Jacob Tremblay, Awkwavina

Released: May 26, 2023

Much like Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King, this is another remake of a Disney animated movie from the '90s. (Okay, so technically, The Little Mermaid came out in 1989, but, close enough). Much like the others I just named, it pretty much follows its animated counterpart, but with a few exceptions. There are added songs and there are more fleshed out scenes for character development and to explain some things a little more better that perhaps wasn't so clear in the original. The animated Little Mermaid is a little under an hour and a half and this movie is two hours and fifteen minutes! Yes, there are added songs (about three news ones, I believe) and some scenes are extended, but it seems shocking that it's almost 45 minutes longer! 

Okay, let's start with the new songs first. As I already mentioned, there are three new songs, plus a new reprise to "Part of Your World". The new songs...are not that great. Two in particular are really bad. Okay, to be fair, I've only listened to the new songs about four times: once when I watched the movie the first time, once when I watched it a second time to take notes, and I've listened to the soundtrack twice. One of the new songs is called "For the First Time" and despite it reminding me of the song from Frozen (well, the title reminds me, not the actual song), it's definitely the best of the three new songs, but nowhere as good as any of the original songs. Ariel (Halle Bailey) sings it when she becomes a human and she's being brought to the castle, but since at that point, she has given up her voice to Ursula, she's singing in her head. Luckily, they cast someone with a great voice for Ariel and she does justice to Part of That World, probably one of the most iconic Disney princess songs out there. However, I can't say the same for Prince Eric (Jonah Hauer-King). Yes, Prince Eric has his own song. It's called "Wild Uncharted Waters" and he sings it after he's been rescued by a girl with a beautiful voice. You know how they gave Princess Jasmine a song in the live action Aladdin? Well, I guess they thought they needed to give Prince Eric a song too? For some reason? Jasmine, I understand, because at least she IS a Disney Princess and never had her own solo song. And then there's the last new song, which, thankfully, is only a little over a minute. It's called "The Scuttlebutt" and it's sung by Scuttle (Awkwafina) and Sebastien (Daveed Diggs) when it's been announced that Prince Eric is engaged. Of course, they think he's engaged to Ariel, but he's not! Look, I love Awkwafina. I think she has some really funny line deliveries in this movie (one of my favorites is how she says "Yessss-ahhhh!" when Sebastien asks Scuttle if she's listening to him), but singing is just not her forte. Yes, I realize that Scuttle is supposed to be a bad singer, but this song is just terrible. I feel like it's only in here because it's near the end of the movie and they realized they haven't had a song (aside from the second reprise of "Part of Your World") in awhile. 

There are a couple of songs from the animated movie that didn't make it into this one. First of all, and this really doesn't surprise me, "Les Poissons" is not in this movie. It is a bit cartoony and I understand why they didn't include it. I'm not terribly upset about it because I would rank it last of the original songs. (Although I still love it: "Les poissons, les poissons, how I love les poissons!") 

Another song (although much smaller) that isn't in the movie is "Daughters of Triton". I mean, it's not a totally big loss although I do like the song (or ditty, really). They most likely excluded it for two reasons: 1) Triton's daughters don't have the same names as the ones in the song. (So no Aquata, Adrina, Arista, Attina, Adella, or Alanna. Obviously, Ariel is the only one who kept her name cuz she can't change her name!) Do I remember the names of his daughters in this movie? No; no, I do not. There was no catchy song to help me remember any of them. And, 2), There's a Coral Moon ceremony that Ariel misses, she's not singing in her debut.

However, they do keep the four main songs which we all know and love (at least I hope everyone knows and loves!) from the animated film. I'll add my thoughts on each one when I get to those parts of the movie. 

This Ariel is a little more well-behaved than animated Ariel. She is forbidden from going up to the surface and keeps her word...until a certain point. Animated Ariel was also supposed to not go to the surface, but she did anyway. For instance, in the animated movie, when Scuttle is showing Ariel and Flounder the fork (ahem, I mean, dinglehopper!) that he found, Ariel goes to the surface where he's on some small rock formation in the sea. In this movie, Scuttle swoops down into the water to show Ariel and Flounder (Jacob Tremblay)  the "dinglehopper" and this bird is underwater for quite a few minutes! They do make a joke out of it after Ariel realizes she's late for the Coral Moon and swims off, Scuttle says she's gotta go too and get some air.

One thing they touch on in this movie that they didn't in the animated one is how mermaids have a siren song that lure men to their deaths. (Somebody read The Odyssey before they made this! I remember reading that in my ninth grade Lit class with Mrs. Bradley as my teacher.) While Ariel (and I'm assuming all mermaids) have beautiful voices, it's not like they're using them to lure humans to their deaths even though King Triton (Javier Bardem) believes that all humans are barbarians. We do learn that Ariel's mother was killed by a human, so I suppose Triton's disdain of humans is justified! 

Speaking of family dynamics, Ursula is Ariel's aunt; Triton is her older brother. We find this out when we first meet Ursula and she's able to see everything with her magical orb. When she sees the Coral Moon ceremony, she mentions how they "forgot to invite Auntie Ursula to the party." I wonder how that works, though, since Triton is a merman and Ursula is an octopus. Yes, she does have the upper body of a human, but how did she get eight tentacles? I wonder if she transferred herself that way when she went to the dark side. We need an Ursula origin story! 

Also, speaking of mermaid anatomy, don't mermaids need to go up for air? Aren't they, like dolphins? In that they can stay under water for a few hours at a time, then come up for air? Okay, I just looked up how long dolphins can stay underwater at a time and I was way off. It looks like they can hold their breath anywhere from five to ten minutes, maybe even twenty minutes, but not hours at a time. Maybe I'm thinking of whales. Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that since mermaids are half human, you'd think they would need to come up for air too! But I guess they are part fish too, so the question is, do they breathe with lungs or gills? Mermaids are effing weird if you think about it. 

"Part of Your World" is the first big song we hear and I think it's the best song in the movie and the one that translated best to this new film. Halle Bailey has a phenomenal voice that suits a Disney princess quite well. It still has the essence of the original, but she adds her own touch to it. I do love that when she later turns into a human, we see her reacting to a fire that's burning in the castle's fireplace and she reaches out to touch it, before recoiling from its heat. That's a nice callback from the line, "What's a fire, and why does it, what's the word? Buuuuuurrrrrrrrnnnnnnnnn!" 

After she sings this, she sees fireworks coming from the ship above the surface and goes to investigate. This is the first time she actually goes to the surface. Of course this is the ship that Prince Eric is on with Grimbsy and the rest of his crew. A big change to this movie (that desperately needed it) is that we learn a lot more about Prince Eric. Pretty much in the animated movie, Ariel falls for him because she thinks he's attractive and he thinks she's attractive and they fall in love and live happily ever after. They try to give him a little more depth; they're not just having Ariel looking at him with googly eyes and deciding she's going to give up the only life she's ever known just to follow a guy because she thinks he's hot. She very boldly hoists herself up on a lifeboat on the side of the ship to see what's going on. Of course, this is the part of the movie where a huge storm will capsize the ship and while the other men get on the lifeboats, Ariel will save Eric from drowning. But before that, she will hear Grimsby telling Eric that now that he's become of age (21), his responsibilities are at home. Eric replies, Yes, trapped inside the castle in isolation and fear." He tells Grimsby he wants to be "a different kind of leader" and that "they need to stay open to what's out here, that's the only way [their] island can grow" and also adds that he "feels there's something out there, calling to [him]." 

A difference between both movies is how much both species hate each other. In the animated movie, Triton is very anti-human, telling Ariel she's forbidden from going to the surface, but I don't remember the humans being so vitriolic towards the mermaids. If anything, they're just curious about them. After their boat has been capsized, the Queen attributes the shipwrecks and hurricanes to the "sea gods" and believes that "they are eroding our land from under us, stealing it back into the ocean." On the other hand (fin?), when Ariel is helping her sisters clean up the wreckage from the shipwreck, they all pretty much act like the humans did this on purpose. WTF? At least Ariel is like, "I don't think they intended to have a shipwreck." I could understand the mermaids being angry if they found trash thrown overboard by the humans, but that isn't this case at all. One of the mermaids says, "They'd kill us if they had the chance" which echoes what the Queen says about them. So both species thinks the other wants to kill them. This reminds me of Romeo and Juliet. Wow, I'm just name dropping all the literary greats! 

Ariel has now become smitten with the prince and is humming to herself. Triton thinks this means she is in love, but he thinks it's with a merman. When he asks Sebastien about it, the little crab is so flustered and spills the beans that it's a human man, not a merman Ariel is in a haze about. Honestly, I'm kind of surprised that Sebastien was so nervous about it because Triton is joking with him because at this point he thinks it's a merman that has stolen the heart of Ariel, that Sebastien could have just denied the whole thing or tell the King he doesn't know who it is. But he lets it slide that Ariel is in love with a human and Triton is pretty upset about this. After he forbids Ariel from going to the surface and destroying the statue of the prince, Ursula appears in her magical bubble and Ariel asks who she is and Ursula replies, "You must not remember me. I'm your Auntie Ursula." There's a funny moment when Ariel replies, "The Sea Witch?" and Ursula drops her sickly sweet voice and deadpans, "The what?" I loved Melissa McCarthy's delivery there. She convinces Ariel to come see her, telling her she can help her and Ariel does, escorted by the two eels. Now the eels in the animated movie are named Flotsam and Jetsam, but I don't think they're named in this movie. They also don't talk like they did in the '89 movie, although they don't talk often in that one if I remember right. 

So Ariel swims to Ursula's creepy underwater lair (okay, to be fair, I guess everything is under water!). As she goes through it, there's a skeleton of a mermaid, lots of mermaid skulls, creepy aquatic plants with eyes, fire that blows out of holes when she passes by, and weird sea plants that look like claws and grab at her when she swims by; one even grabs her around the throat. If I were her, I would have a lot of questions and concerns! I'd also be like, hell no, I'm getting out of here! Ursula calls it her "aggressive garden" and she calls her relations with with Triton "squidley rivalry". 

So of course this is when Ursula tells Ariel she will create a potion for her to become human for three days and before the sun sets on the third day, she and the prince must share a "kiss of true love" and if that happens, Ariel will remain human permanently. If she doesn't complete this task, she'll turn back into a mermaid and will belong to Ursula. If were Ariel, I'd be asking, What do you mean I belong to you? What exactly does that entail? Ursula also adds that Ariel won't have her "siren song because that wouldn't be fair", which, okay, I get that, but why not at let her least talk? I know, I know, they're going by the animated movie and, also, Ariel could just basically tell Eric what's going on. Okay, that was a stupid question. Forget I asked it! 

This is when we get "Poor Unfortunate Souls", another great song, although it doesn't have the oomph that the original did. You could tell that Melissa McCarthy as Ursula was channeling Pat Carroll (the original Ursula). I have stated before that "Be Prepared" (from The Lion King) is my favorite Disney villain song, but this is in strong contention for my second favorite.

When asked if she wants to go through with it, Ariel is hesitant and replies, "I don't know." I feel like the animated Ariel was also a little hesitant, but more ready to take the plunge (or opposite of plunge in this case!) while this Ariel seems to be weighing the consequences. Honestly, I think both options are pretty horrible. Yes, if she manages to kiss Prince Eric, she can remain human, but she'll never see her family again and even if she does come back as a mermaid, she's basically Ursula's little mermaid. I don't think I'd want to depend on Ursula to make the rules for me! But, of course, Ariel signs the contract (which includes plucking a scale from her tail and giving a drop of blood) and she gives up her voice to become a human. 

Okay, before I continue, I forgot to mention "Under the Sea" which comes after "Part of Your World" and before "Poor Unfortunate Souls". It's the song that's probably the most popular from the movie, but it just isn't the same. The main issue I have with it is that Ariel harmonizes along with Sebastien, singing "Under the Sea" (uh, I mean those literal words, she doesn't sing the entire song with him, just to be clear!) In the animated film, she does humor him and bops her head a little at the beginning, but then towards the middle, she's barely paying attention anymore, and by the end, we see her swim off with Flounder. In this movie, she still swims off with Flounder, but it makes no sense that she's singing along with Sebastien and dancing to the music. 

So Ariel becomes human right there in the depths of the ocean. You would think Ursula would let her swim up to the surface first, but this is Ursula were talking about. She's pretty deep underwater, wouldn't she get the bends? I don't think Ariel really thought this through because when she does surface (complete with the hair fling - which I know is an iconic moment from the animated movie, but I don't think it translated as well to the live version, but I do understand why they felt like they had to have it), she's completely in the middle of the ocean. Now in the animated movie, she's near land and she meets the prince within, like, five minutes, which was pretty convenient. Here, she (and Flounder and Sebastien) get caught up in the net of a fishing boat. Obviously, she is naked, but the nets and seaweed are covering her up. I'm sure this is one of the reasons why they changed it. This is when Scuttle scoops down and lands on Ariel's knee and makes a comment about how there's something different about her and Sebastien gets so irritated with her and says, "She's got legs, you idiot!" I love how frustrated Sebastien gets with Scuttle. Before the fisherman notices Ariel, Sebastien tosses Flounder back in the ocean and hides in a crate with other crustaceans. When the fisherman does notice her, he thinks she's a victim of a shipwreck and gives her something to cover up in. 

 

They added a little twist to the plot when we get a scene of Ursula talking to her eels, telling them that she made sure Ariel won't remember she needs to kiss Eric. Wow, that's way harsh! I don't think this plot point was in the animated movie and not sure why they changed it. I guess this Ursula thought this Ariel would be able to make it happen and just wanted the security that it wouldn't. 

Ariel is taken to the castle (I can't remember why she's taken there) and the maids give her a bath and when she tries to eat the soap, they just think she's really hungry. I laughed at the look Ariel gives one of the maids who tells her "Let's get that seaweed stink off of you." 

I mentioned earlier how I thought it was way convenient how Ariel just comes across Eric at the beach in the 1989 version, but in this one, as the maids are dressing her (and they're giving this poor girl who's literally just learning to walk high heeled boots!), she hears them talking about him and how he won't rest until he finds the girl that saved him. As they say this, they realize that the girl in front of them might be the one he was talking about and they retrieve him. When Eric asks her what her name is, the maids tell him she doesn't speak and he realizes it can't be her since his mystery girl was singing to him. He tells her she's welcome to stay at the castle for as long as she needs. 

 

Sebastien makes his way up to the room where Ariel is staying and at first he wants to get her back to the King and see if she can be a mermaid again, but he also doesn't want Ariel to be miserable for the rest of her life, so he agrees to help her kiss the prince. He realizes that Ariel doesn't have any recollection of this, that she just gives him a blank stare. As he later tells Scuttle when Ariel is out, "the thought jumps clear right out of her head". We get a funny moment (and perhaps a nod to the original fairy tale?) when Scuttle tells Sebastien that Flounder has filled her in on what's going on and asks, "Has Ariel killed the prince yet?" 

In this version, they basically make Eric into a male human version of Ariel. Seriously, it's a little too on the nose. When Ariel is at the castle, she finds a huge room that is just filled with lots of paraphernalia from the ocean. So just like Ariel likes to collect human things from land, Eric likes collecting things from the sea! He has a little figurine of a mermaid that he found off the coast of Cartagena that he calls his "little mermaid" and tells Ariel that he "never believed all that lore about mermaids luring sailors to their deaths." He gives Ariel the mermaid as a gift since he has so much stuff from his voyages. He also shows her a huge fossilized sea stone and when he gives it to Ariel to look at, he's horrified when she smashes is on the ground, but then when she reveals a beautiful gem inside the stone, he's amazed. He's also amazed when he shows her a large conch shell and she blows into it, making a sound like a horn. 

We see them bond as Eric shows her a map of some of the places in and around South America he's visited. He also shows her a map of the island they're on and offers to show her around the next day. They take a carriage ride and come across an outdoor market. There's a fun Easter egg where a woman gives Ariel some fruit with a fork and when she receives it, she starts combing her hair with the fork and is given weird looks by everyone. While that is a shoutout from the animated movie (Ariel uses the fork to comb her hair during dinner!), the woman is played by Jodi Benson, the original voice of Ariel. I didn't know this the first time I watched it because I have no idea what Jodi Benson looks like now (or 30 years ago!), but I read it somewhere and I knew it was her when I watched it a second time. 

Ariel and Eric join in dancing to calypso music and Ariel picks out a straw hat for Eric. This hat will come in play later when it's becoming dusk and she and Eric are heading back to the castle. Scuttle nabs the hat and flies off with it and Ariel and Eric chase after the bird and end up at a lagoon where Scuttle has dropped the hat in a row boat. Eric sees that Ariel is interested in the boat, so they get in and start paddling. Scuttle tells Sebastien and Flounder (who are also there), "I think it's time for a little vocal romantic stimulation" and proceeds to do a "bow chicka wow wow" routine. I love how Sebastien just simply says "Please, no." If you haven't already guessed, this is when we get "Kiss the Girl". While I think it is so much better in the animated movie, I think it's really cute in this one. For one thing, in the animated movie, Sebastian has a whole orchestra of animals (fish and flamingoes among them) singing along, while in this one, it's only Flounder and Scuttle singing along with Sebastien so it's not as epic. When they sing the chorus, Scuttle screams "he's gonna MISS THE GIRL!" and Sebastien tells her, "pull back, Scuttle, pull back." 

During the song's interlude, Eric shows Ariel the different constellations and tells her what they're called and mentions he still doesn't know her name and starts guessing random names. In the animated movie they just have Sebastien whisper her name in his ear, but in this one she pointes to the Aries constellation and when he says it, she puts her finger over his lips on the second syllable and I guess tries to make him say the "L" sound? I'm not really sure, but he gets Ariel and she nods enthusiastically. At first, I was wondering why she just didn't write it down on a piece of parchment, but then realized she probably doesn't know how to read and write. In reality, she probably shouldn't know English as if mermaids DID exist, they would probably have their own language. In the animated movie, there is some slight criticism because Ariel signs her name on the contact Ursula produces for her so it would make sense for her to just write down what's going on....although maybe she only knew how to sign her name? I don't know, but that's probably why they changed it to Ursula binding the contract with a scale and and a drop of blood. Anyway, the song continues and they are about to kiss, but their boat is tipped over and you see the two eels swimming away. 

We see Ursula witnessing this with her magical orb and she says it was too close and she can't "let that happen again" and she decides to take "matters into her own tentacles." Obviously we know that this means turning into a beautiful human herself with Ariel's angelic voice.

While Ariel and Eric were out, carriages had been sent out to try to find the "mystery girl" and when they return from their outing and Eric has said goodnight to Ariel and she's gone to her room, Grimsby tells Eric that they didn't find his mystery girl. He asks him if they should continue the search for her. Eric seems unsure so Grimsby offers him some advice: "Don't be held back by what you think should be. Think only of what is." In other words, he's telling him he's obviously smitten with this girl he's already met and has gotten to know her and why would he bother looking for another girl who may or may not exist? 

We see Eric outside on the beach, contemplating, I guess, when he seems to have an epiphany and starts running towards the castle. He stops suddenly when he hears the same singing voice that he heard the day he was rescued. He sees a beautiful girl with dark hair just standing on the rocks in the ocean like she just appeared there. Now in the animated movie they give her the name Vanessa, but I don't remember anyone ever calling her by a name. 

The next morning Ariel finds out that Eric is getting engaged (through that horrible song I mentioned earlier!) and she thinks she's the lucky girl, but soon discovers that she's NOT the lucky girl he's engaged to. Of course, this devastates her and she runs away. She doesn't even seem to notice that Eric seems to be in a trance. (Because he's being brain-washed, that's why!) It's Scuttle who discovers that Vanessa (I'm just going to call her that) is actually Ursula and she goes to warn Ariel and the others. When she does, Ariel heads back to the castle and Sebastien tells Flounder to tell King Triton what's going on (we did get a scene of him earlier with his other daughters discussing how they've searched all seven seas and no sign of Ariel anywhere) and he tells Scuttle to fly him to the castle. There's a hilarious scene where Scuttle is getting close to the castle (she's holding Sebastien in her beak) and he tells her that he'll let her know when he wants her to drop him. He dumbly asks her, "Got it?" and when she replies, "Got it!", she drops him and he falls into the ocean below. Oh, man, I was laughing so hard at that part. I love how he screams, "You idiot!" as he's falling. 

In this movie, it's the engagement party that they crash, not the actual wedding that they have in the animated film. I guess they thought it was a tad too early for Eric to get married to a girl he literally just met the day before! Scuttle starts attacking Vanessa, and Max, Eric's sheepdog, also joins in. There's a lot more creatures in the animated movie (I remember seals being there) that go after the disguised sea witch, but this one they keep the chaos down to a minimum. I also like how in this film it's Ariel who grabs the necklace around Vanessa's throat and just rips it off her and smashes it on the ground and regains her voice. In the animated movie, the necklace comes off during all the pandemonium and breaks on its own and Ariel's voice finds her way back to her. Eric seems to snap out of his trance when he realizes that Ariel is the girl he was looking for all along, that she was the one who rescued him and sang to him on the beach. They are about to kiss, but of course the sun goes down and it's too late - the curse has been broken and Ariel turns back into a mermaid as everyone gasps. Even more alarming, Ursula becomes her sea witch self again and she grabs Ariel and they both dive into the ocean where King Triton is there to meet them. Ursula tells him that if he gives himself and his trident up to her, she will let Ariel go and he takes that deal. She turns Triton into a small, pathetic part of her garden and takes his trident. Now I'm not sure exactly how far deep down they are in the water, but Eric swims down with a harpoon, trying to puncture Ursula, but misses. Ursula sends her eels after him and points the trident at him, but Ariel grabs her arm and she accidentally kills her eels with the trident instead. 

Ariel is able to escape (although it's not like she was restrained) and she swims to the surface with Eric, telling him he needs to get out but he tells her he's not going to lose her again. This is when Ursula becomes a giant version of herself and creates a huge whirlpool. In the animated movie, it's Eric who saves Ariel by impaling Ursula with the bowsprit (I had to look that up on Wikipedia) of his wrecked ship, but in this movie they flip the script and have Ariel save Eric by doing the same thing. Since Ariel is still a (little!) mermaid, she can't exactly walk to the wheel and steer it in the direction it needs to go; instead she sort of slithers towards the wheel and it's very uncanny. It honestly kind of creeped me out and made me think of this book I read a few years ago called Into the Drowning Deep which is about creepy, murderous, bloodthirsty non-English (or any known language) speaking mermaids with grotesque bodies. It's a super gory book, but I loved every second of it and there is a shoutout to The Little Mermaid in it when one of the characters calls one of the mermaids "Ariel". If you don't mind your fairy tale image of mermaids being ruined and can handle a bit of gore, I highly recommend it. 

So Ursula is killed and Triton and the other merfolk that Ursula had captive are released and returned to their natural size. Triton sees how much his daughter wants to be with Eric, so he transforms her into a human so she's able to be with him. I really liked her wedding dress with the relaxed, beachy island vibes. 

Overall, I think this movie was pretty good. Yeah, the songs just weren't the same, but at least they tried with making Ariel's and Eric's relationship based more on physical looks. 

More Clues

Missing

Directors: Will Merrick and Nick Johnson

Cast: Storm Reid, Nia Long, Ken Leung, Joaquim de Almeida

Released: January 20, 2023

This movie is set in the same universe as Searching and I will forever be getting them mixed-up! They each could be called either title as they're both movies about people who are missing and loved ones searching for said missing person. In Searching, the missing person was a teenage girl and her dad was searching for her; in Missing, a teenage girl is the one searching for her missing mother. Both movies also follow the same format of being told through screens: laptops, iPhones, security cameras, etc. 

This movie is definitely better viewed at home where you can pause it rather than watching it in a movie theater. There's just so many texts, e-mails, posts, etc. that sometimes I had to pause the screen to read everything. Now some of them are important to the movie, and some of them are just fun little asides. When I watched the movie a second time, I was often pausing it to make sure I caught everything. 

It's going to be hard to write the movie without spoilers, so I will tell you when I get to anything spoiler-y, but it would probably be best to watch it before reading this if you don't want to be spoiled about anything! It is also not necessary to watch Searching to know what's going on. They're set in the same universe, but the stories have nothing to do with each other. 

Our protagonist is an eighteen-year-old girl named June (Storm Reid) who easily gets annoyed with her mom, Grace (Nia Long) and basically thinks she treats her like a baby. We get some backstory when the movie starts with a video clip from 2008 where we see a toddler-aged June with her father at "grandpa's house." We're barely five minutes into the movie, but right away, I'm like, I bet it's the dad! I bet he's behind it! Grace comes in the room just when young June notices her father's nose starts to bleed and he claims it's because of the altitude. The video stops and we see that someone is trimming it and making it into a file called "Last family trip". After seeing bookmarked pages such as "brain tumors and aneurysms" and "Helping Your Child Process Grief", it is clear that June's father is dead and there goes my theory about him being behind this whole thing. Obviously this is Grace's computer and we also see her delete her Google account and that they have moved from San Antonio to Los Angeles. 

Cut to the current day and we see teen June watching a Netflix series called Unfiction (what a terrible name) about true crime cases that have been made into one-hour drama shows. We see she is watching episode 3, titled "The Disappearance of Margot Kim" which is a nice tie-in to Searching. When watching this the second time, I paused my own screen and saw that June had a site pulled up called "Fact vs. Fiction in Unficiton." One of the "facts" says "Real David Kim is [fire emoji]. (Uh, isn't that an opinion?) "Anyone else thinks he looks like that actor from Breakout (2020)??" So I thought this was a John Cho Easter egg, but when I looked at him filmography, he's not in anything from 2020 called Breakout, so I don't get it. The article also talks about how Debbie Massey is the actress who portrays Detective Rosemary Vick which is an obvious nod to Debra Messing. Yeah, so it's a fun little moment of the movie if you've seen Searching.

There is some foreshadowing when June pauses the movie and we see a summary of the episode which reads "After his 16-year-old daughter goes missing, a desperate father breaks into her laptop to look for clues to find her" and this is what June will do when her mom goes missing. Perhaps she was inspired by this faux Netflix series?

But before her mom goes missing, the movie sets up a few things: Grace is always using Siri for everything and it annoys June greatly; Grace calls June "Junebug" and it annoys June greatly; and Grace is always asking June to clear her voicemails in case she needs to leave a message. 

Grace has a new boyfriend named Kevin (Ken Leung) and they're going to Cartagena, Colombia together. I don't know, if I were going away together for the first time with someone, I might make it a lot more local. June will be staying by herself, but the overprotective Grace has left a key with her friend and lawyer, Heather, and tells her daughter she's supposed to call Heather if she needs anything. We get some more foreshadowing when Grace tells June, "Do not open the door for strangers. Keep your location service turned on the entire time I'm away." After arguing with her mom about Heather being a "baby-sitter", Grace tells her, "You do not understand the sacrifices I made to get you the life that you have." You think its just a throw-away line, but it's actually not. When you watch the movie a second time, it makes you go, "Aha! I totally get why she said that now!" 

Because of the way this movie is shot, June's laptop camera is always on so we can always see footage if she's talking to anyone in the same room. I don't know how realistic this is, but I guess it's needed for the movie. We see Kevin is there the day of the trip and he tells Grace that he loves her mom and that he planned this trip for a "very special reason", but before he can say anything more, Grace appears and he stops talking. It is June 11th and they will be coming back on the 20th. June is supposed to pick them up at the airport.

During the next week, we get a montage of June partying with her friends and she receives texts and photos from her mom and Kevin. They are both using Kevin's phone because she tells June that her texts aren't going through. This is another thing that makes more sense when you're watching it the second time. This is definitely a movie that benefits from watching a second time! 

The day before she's supposed to pick up her mom and Kevin at LAX, she has a party at her house. Is she that stupid or did she just forget? The movie explains she's sad because it's Fathers Day and she never got to know her dad and she's having a party to forget about her sad feelings, but you would think she wouldn't have the party at her own house. 

Of course her laptop camera is left on, so you're seeing the party. I still don't buy that people leave their cameras on for absolutely no reason, but they need to give us exposition and foreshadowing, like when we see one of the guests asking people if they've seen his Smartwatch. Believe it or not, this SmartWatch will come back later in the movie. 

Her alarm goes off at eleven the next day and when she signs on to her laptop, she gets a notification about picking up her mom at eleven. Oh, dear. She's already way late. And I don't even know how far the airport is from where she lives, but I'm guessing it's not a simple five-minute drive! And to make matters worse, her house is a MESS. Her mom is gonna be so pissed. And I'm sure from the nightmare June will soon endure, she would rather deal with a pissed-off mother than a missing one! 

June goes to TaskRabbit and hires somebody to clean up for her. She writes, "Key's under the mat. Please don't steal anything haha". I love that she added that "haha"; also I wouldn't trust some rand-o to clean my place, especially if I were gone. Luckily, her mom gave her some emergency money (probably not the kind of emergency she had in mind) so she's able to pay with that. 

When she arrives at the airport, her phone camera is on and that's where we're viewing her from, but c'mon, who leaves their camera on like that? She's gonna waste the battery. I once accidentally had my camera on and was so annoyed because my battery was way low.

She waits and waits, but there is no sign of her mom or Kevin. (Are you surprised?) She calls and texts her mom, but gets no replies. When she tries to FaceTime her, she gets a "FaceTime unavailable" message. She returns home, dejected, but I have to say she does some smart things. The first thing she does is call the hotel where her mom is staying. The man she speaks with doesn't speak any English, so June pulls up good old Google translate. I don't know how she could translate what he was saying. He does slow down when she asks "Que?" She must have a better ear for foreign languages than I do. I'm terrible with understanding a foreign language when it's spoken to me, but I can read it well enough. Of course, this is only if I know a fair amount of a foreign language and in this case, it's French for me. Heh, I was in Quebec City recently and when I was at the reception desk at the hotel, the first thing out of my mouth was, "Parlez-vous anglais?" But, anyway, through what the guy is telling her and Google translate, she finds out that her mom and Kevin left their suitcases at the hotel and nobody saw them leave. She's looking at the Google Maps Street View image of this hotel and sees cameras and ask if he can check them out, but in order to do that, she would need to go in person. He tells her the footage is reordered over every 48 hours. I don't know if this is an actual law, but you would think if this young girl's mom is missing and she's in another country, they could make an exception for her to check out the video (spoiler alert: even though June will eventually get someone to get the tape, it will have been too late by then). 

Even though she is upset, she seems to be pretty calm during this whole thing. She's not missing a beat, doing all the necessary things. She calls Heather who calls the U.S. Embassy in Colombia, but they're closed. They need to fill out a report and the embassy will call them tomorrow when they open. So June does that and the next morning she gets a call from the embassy. While on the phone, asking about the security tapes, she gets a reply back from the missing persons form she filled out saying they are not able to process it because she was missing a signature. That's gotta be so infuriating! 

At this point, they have six hours left before the security cameras override. Detective Park, the detective she's been talking to, tells her the "FBI doesn't have jurisdiction to investigate in Colombia, so it may take some time while [they] work with local authorities." This is another thing that's gotta be infuriating. A woman is missing and this hotel is the last known place her daughter knows where she was...they can't break the rules a little to review the tapes to see if they can find any clues to her whereabouts? 

The detective asks her questions about her mom like if she said or did anything unusual, but June can't think of anything. She tries to get into her mom's Google account, but the passwords she tries don't work. After updating her friend on what's going on, her friend suggests she check out live cameras in Cartagena. She flips through touristy spots and apparently you can go back and look at videos from a previous day. That seems kind of pointless to watch a "live" stream from days ago, but it will play a part in the movie later on. 

She decides to see if she can hire someone in Colombia so they can get the security footage and through GoNinja, which is Colombia's equivalent to TaskRabbit, she hires Javier (Joaquim de Almeida). She doesn't have much money left in her emergency fund and at $8 an hour, Javier is about the only one she can afford. He only has a rating of 2.8
out of five stars and one of the reviews we see made me laugh: "It took five hours to get my tacos, but Javi's a nice guy." 

So it was bugging me when we meet Javi because he looked so familiar. He reminded me of Geoffrey Rush and I remember thinking this of an actor awhile ago and when I looked at his IMDb, I go, "Ohhhh! It's Salazar!" If you watched season 3 of 24, you know what I'm talking about! 

Even though he doesn't do what she's asking of him, he agrees to help her. He gives her the idea to try to get into Kevin's phone since she can't get into her mom's phone. The only problem is how is she going to figure out Kevin's password? Well, luckily, her friend has come over to help. She can imitate a good deep voice, so they call Kevin's professional website and she pretends to be him and act like "he" lost "his" password. She needs to verify a few thing such as Kevin's date of birth and his mother's maiden name, which is easy enough to find on his Facebook. They also need the name of his elementary school and that proves to be a bit more difficult since it's not on his Facebook profile (I mean, why would it be?). So June quickly googles the name of the town he grew up in (luckily he had that listed) and there are two elementary schools there, so she has a fifty/fifty shot of getting it right, and of course she does. 

Once June gets into Kevin's Google account, she looks at his location history and notices he has none for June 12, which I think is the day they left for Colombia. 

Javi calls back to tell her the footage is gone. What a surprise! He talked to the cleaning lady who said she saw two American tourists leave on Friday. They were dressed up and she asks them where they were going and Kevin tells they're going to a hardware store. June looks up Kevin's credit card history (luckily he uses the same password for everything.) When she does that, we get an amusing and very relatable (at least for me!) moment where she hesitates for a second when she's supposed to select all the images with a bus in it. There's one square with the tiniest piece of the bus and she's not sure if she should select it or not. This scenario has happened to me so many times and it's so aggravating when you don't get it right and you have to do it again! 

The only thing on his bank statement from that day is he bought something from Getsemani, which Javi informs her is the name of an area of Cartagena, not a store. (Why wouldn't the store be listed? That seems weird, but I guess it's just for the plot of the movie). She finds all the hardware stores in this location and sends Javi a list of them for him to investigate. When he does find it later, he will find out that Kevin had bought a lock. 

She next goes through Kevin's emails where she sees one about a security system camera being on its way. This will come back later, but right now she pays no mind to it. She does find an incriminating e-mail where a woman with the username "BunnyCakes310" sent a "sexy pic" to him and he replied with, "You're literally perfect. I'll call you tonight." Her friend gets the idea for June to check his blocked contacts since that's what they do on Unfiction. Honestly, what would they do without that show as a reference guide? 

She finds 27 blocked contacts and there are messages from those people where each one is calling him a different name and it seems he was scamming them and taking their money. After doing some research, she finds out that Kevin Lin is indeed his real name and he was sent to Eastham Federal Penitentiary for 3 years and was released last year. June mentions this to Detective Park who already was aware this. They don't think he's conncected because "he's never been involved in a disappearance" and he's using his real name. Uh, he was the last known person they know she was with and there's a first time for everything! At least he tells her they are looking for him. Park tells her that all the scams he did were before he went to prison and he's never violated his parole. 

June tries to get more information about "BunnyCakes" and goes to her Instagram (she uses the same username) and sees he real name is Rachel and she is an actress and a bartender. She sees a picture of the bar she works at and calls them, but they haven't seen her for two weeks. I would be a little concerned if I hadn't seen a co-worker in that long and they hadn't taken time off. The guy sounds more irritated than worried, but he admits it's not out of character for her. How the hell does this woman still have a job there if she's always bailing on them? Not surprisingly, June sees that Kevin has frequented this bar often. 

There's also another place he's frequented, but it just gives coordinates. She figures out it is five hours from her home and the address is in Mountain Springs, Nevada and is listed as a "private residence." She is able to see the owner is "Jim W." and finds the number to call it. June tells this Jim guy she's calling about Kevin Lin and is pretty accusatory when she asks him why Kevin was at his house. We find out that "it's a re-entry program for ex-offenders" and he was paired with him. June puts "Jimmy" in her contacts. It really makes no sense why she would keep this random guy in her contacts, but it does come back later, so it's done for the plot. Also, I guess you want to cover all your bases and keep in contact with anyone who has had any contact with Kevin recently. 

June realizes she doesn't know how her mom met Kevin (that seems surprising to me), so she searches her mom's name in Kevin's emails and this is how she finds out that they met through a dating app called Luvly where you can send video messages or written messages to the other person. Video messages seem like too much work to me, but this is coming from someone who hardly ever uses FaceTime. You have to make sure you look attractive, you might have to do several takes until you get your message just right, etc. But I get why they did it for the movie: it's just more cinematic for one thing. There are some long messages they leave for each other and having to read them wouldn't be the best way to get that across to the audience. June is able to read and watch all the videos they sent to each other. If I had a single parent, I sure wouldn't want to read/watch videos they were exchanging with someone they met on a dating site. That has got to be the most awkward thing. Luckily nothing is too scarring or scandalous! She sees this first started three months ago. Kevin sent her a video message asking who her favorite '80s band is on 10/23, then sends her a "just checking in" text on 10/25, and sends another video on 10/29 and admits a third message is lame. He sure is persistent! She does eventually send a message back and they strike up a conversation. 

June goes through their messages. They start off light, but get serious as Grace tells him how difficult it can be to a mother and how she worries about June. We see a text in March where Grace asks if she can call Kevin because there's something she wants to talk about with him. The next day, we see a text where she tells him "thanks for listening last night" and she's "only ever told one other person about [her] past." and "this has to stay between [them]". Now this possibly couldn't have anything to do with her mysterious disappearance! Even though we have no idea (at this point) what she told him, it doesn't seem like the smartest idea to tell someone you just met something that's obviously very important. But I guess they're just trying to convey that she trusts him.

We see a video message from Kevin telling her about his past, but June already knows about that.

June looks up romantic destinations in Cartagena and finds the Walled City Love Lock Bridge which would make sense with the lock Kevin bought. She tells Javi about it and he finds a lock with their initials on it. He seems to find it in five seconds, but there's no way it was quick because there must be thousands of locks on the bridge. Wasn't this an Amazing Race task one season where someone from each team had to find a specific lock? 

June finds the bridge's camera from the day her mom and Kevin were there. I still don't understand why they would keep that, but again, we need it for the movie. She sees Kevin propose to her mom on the bridge. If anyone proposed to me on a crowded bridge full of tourists, I would be so pissed. But everyone around them is clapping. I've never seen a public proposal (thank God), but I honestly could care less about two people I've never met getting engaged. 

We get a huge lead when Agent Park calls June to tell her they found footage of her mom and Kevin being kidnapped in broad daylight by masked men who put them into a white van. Park thinks they just want money because they "flagged a withdrawal from [Grace's] bank to an encrypted third party account." Who kidnaps somebody in broad daylight? Though this is South America, I suppose. They received this footage from "an anonymous source." 

Something tells June to go back to look at all the pictures Kevin's sent her and while scrolling through them, she notices she never actually sees her mom's face. All the photos are live, so when she activates ones of them, she sees the woman's face and it is definitely not her mom, but rather Rachel Page's (aka BunnyCake) face. She figures Kevin hired Rachel to impersonate her mom, but why? 

The whole movies shifts and now the FBI believes Grace never left L.A. They think that whatever happened, happened on the drive to LAX. Kevin and Grace took an Uber to the airport, but Uber has no record of the trip and the car was using stolen plates. They're trying to find Kevin in Colombia because they know he's the one person who knows what's going on.

Rachel is found and she tells journalists that Kevin told her it was a reality show shot on an iPhone. (Yeah this all happens really quickly!) She says after the "kidnapping" scene she knew something was up, so she made a run for it. Uh, smart move! She cooperates with police and tells them when and where Kevin picked her up and when they check traffic cameras, they see her getting in the car, but Grace wasn't there. 

Detective Park asks June if her mom has gone by any other names, but she tells him no. This is asked because it's been found out that Grace Allen is an alias and that her "real identity lies locked behind a court-ordered seal." June asks Heather (remember, she's her mom's lawyer) if she can do anything, but Heather tells her it would "take at least a week to get a judge to lift it" and adds that she knew nothing about this either. 

This story is all over social media and everyone thinks that Grace staged this and ran away, making June upset and she goes on a rampage of down voting comments or reporting them. I don't even know why she's wasting her time reading these comments, but it's probably just supposed to represent, like no more than ten minutes (hopefully!).

She does some more sleuthing and discovers through Kevin's google history that he downloaded an encrypted text message program that have the messages disappear after they have been read. I like how the movie takes it time with June finding it, it does't happen in two seconds. She downloads it and types in Kevin's email and password, but the password doesn't work, but all she has to do is reset it. She sees that a message has been sent ten hours ago: "What did you tell June?" There is a reply from "NewUser": "I promise I didn't tell her anything. She still does't know."  

June types a message to NewUser, "Who is this?", but before she sends it, she changes her mind and types, "Are you home?" Smart move since she's on Kevin's log-in and that would raise red flags. She gets a reply that says, "Still at work. Is something wrong?" June, as Kevin, tells the person that "he" lost "his" phone and needs the number. After June gets the number, she cross references it and -plot twist - the number matches the lawyer's! At first, I was sure the lawyer was behind it, but she's kind of the equivalent of the Debra Messing character from Searching and I don't think they would have the same archetype be the culprit. Also, we will find out it was definitely not Heather when June sneaks into her office (using the SmartWatch left at her party to be the camera for the audience). While there, she finds there are files being deleted from the computer, and, most disturbing of all, she finds Heather's body. She learns from the detective that "based on the autopsy", Heather was killed minutes before she arrived. They sure do move fast in this movie! 

We see the camera pan back and now somebody is watching June on THEIR computer (creepy!) and all of her files she has up are on their computer, so somehow this unknown mystery person has a way of hacking into her account. The unknown person gets a message from Kevin telling the mystery person (well to us, I'm pretty sure Kevin knows who he's communicating with!) that he needs help getting out of Colombia and that he "planned all of this just so no one would suspect YOU" and "you couldn't have done this without me." Okay, so now it's confirmed that Kevin was in on this whole thing from the start. The mystery person don't care! 

Kevin won't be long for our story as June watches live footage of the police capturing him in Colombia. Well, shooting him dead would be more accurate because that's what happens, even though he puts his hands up in surrender, so I don't know why they shot him. 

Now that the last hope for finding Grace alive has faded, June is inconsolable, listening to voicemails from her mom as she cries. She realizes that her mom (as always) calls her "Junebug" at the start of every message and tries her mom's Google password again, this time with "Junebug" and it works. You think she would have tried that already because she was aware that her mom always calls her that, even though she hates it. I mean, it's honestly kind of dumb she didn't think of it before. 

She sees her mom has one blocked user and it's from one year ago with a message titled, "Found you Grace". When June clicks to read it, the message says, "She deserves to know." She brings up Kevin's Google account and notices he also has had contact with this same person who's email is "VMyQe12" - that's gotta be the worst email in history, right? Anyway, she notices that the security cameras she saw from Kevin's email and that he bought the cameras for this person. She signs onto the site and sees the different angles of the security camera set up around some random house in the middle of nowhere, it seems. She recognizes a room as the one from the last video of her and her dad before he died.

This might be a good time to put up a spoiler waring. I would definitely recommend to watch the movie before reading any of this, but this is when we're about to go into huge spoiler territory so read at your own risk. MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!!!!!!

At this moment "Jimmy" makes another appearance when he calls June, asking her if she's safe and if all the doors are locked. He tells her there's a lot to explain, but he doesn't know if anybody is listening and he doesn't know who to trust. This should be sending up huge red flags for her. She hears a car door slam and on the ring motion detector, she sees Jimmy (who told her it was him) coming up to her door. How the hell did he get there so fast? She tells him she's going to call the police, but he uncover his head and reveals it's...wait for it...her dad. I should mention that her dad's name is James, so he's just going by a nickname of his own name. This guy is not the most stealthy. 

It was at this moment that I knew he was behind this whole thing and I was kicking myself for believing he was actually dead this whole time! Remember, when I first saw him in the first five minutes of the movie, I thought he was the one behind the whole thing, but after the movie told us he was dead, I just sort of accepted it, but all along I was right on who did it all along! 

June still isn't sure if she should open the door. When I watched this movie a second time, Grace's command about not opening the door to strangers stuck out to me. I'm internally willing June to NOT open the door, but technically, this man is not a stranger to June as it is her own father, but she hasn't seen him since she was three or four, so how does she know if she can really trust him? (Spoiler alert (even though I've already put up the spoiler warning): she can't!) 

From behind the door, he tells her she deserves to know what happened and this prompts her to open the door. Maybe she should have gotten a little more information before she let him in? But once he's inside, he tells her his side of the story: that when she was little, he and her mom fought all the time and she never let him take care of June. We also find out her real name is Sarah, so that explains her identity being locked behind a court-ordered seal. He tells June that she doesn't know what her mother is "capable of" and that "she lied to a judge to have [him] put in prison." He then makes the stupid mistake of revealing that he was in Eastham for 12 years and June is quick to put the pieces together and realizes that's where he met Kevin and she knows something fishy is going on. I do wonder if he hadn't mentioned where he was in prison, if she would have believed him. I would hope not! Even though he is her father, she doesn't really know him and shouldn't trust him over her mother. Yes, obviously her mother lied to her about him being dead, but we will soon get the explanation. 

When June questions him being in Eastham, this is when he realizes he's made a mistake. Her FaceTime chimes a few seconds later and June can see it's her friend calling. They both pause for a a few seconds, then she runs to accept the call, but he is quicker and declines. He then takes a struggling June to his car and basically kidnaps her. 

Now we get the real story: her dad was abusive to her mom and she was looking for ways to leave him. He was also a drug user and that was the reason for his bloody nose in the video. Grace found hard-core drugs in the closet and reported them to the police and that's how he ended up in prison. He threatens Grace that he will find her and pretty much implies that he will kill her. This is how Heather, who we find out is with domestic violence and family law, becomes involved in her case and is pretty much the only one who knows Grace's real backstory. As we know, Grace is her new identity and she and her daughter move states as a result of this. There are hints of Grace wanting to tell June the truth, but she can never seem to get through to her daughter. Also, that must have been what she told Kevin (who it turns out she couldn't trust at all!) over the phone while they were talking on that dating app.

So June ends up tied up in a chair in a room that she recognizes as the one from the last video of her and her dad. Obviously, we're watching everything through the security cameras that are set up around this property. James goes to a shed, where, not surprisingly, Grace is being held. After finding out he has June, she hits him with something (I think she was restrained, but was able to get free) and runs to the house where she finds June and unties her. She tells June to call the police but June says her phone is at home (which makes sense...don't think her kidnapper would allow her to have a phone!). She does still have her Apple Watch and uses it to contact Javi. (Random sidenote: I didn't capitalize either letter of "Apple Watch" and it automatically did it for me, of course it did cause I'm writing this on a MacBook!...also didn't capitalize MacBook and it automatically did it for me.) She asks Javi to go on her Instagram and find the picture of her and her dad when she was younger that was taken outside the house. He repeats the house numbers for her when she asks him for them. Just as she's about to tell him to call the police, the line is disconnected. Her dad comes in the room, asking her if she made any calls, but she denies doing so. He knows she has a watch because he saw her using it on the monitor. He wants June to go with him, but Grace begs him not to take her. After a few more attempts of this and Grace still getting in his way to take their daughter, he shoots her in the leg and she collapses against a wall, breaking a mirror. While James grabs June and starts restraining her, Grace gets up and stabs him in the neck with a piece of broken glass. He manages to stagger out of the room, but dies while trying to type "hospital nearby" at his computer. 

I wonder what his plan was. I assume he planned to take June, hoping she would believe his story about her mom being the bad guy in the story he told her and make her believe that her mom left her while he killed her, but once June realized he was behind her mother's abduction, was he going to kill both of them? 

I guess the message to call 911 didn't get across to Javi and June gets the idea to look into the camera (which she knows is spying on her own computer at home, where her phone is right next to) and says, "Siri, call 911". The inspiration comes from her mother who uses Siri for everything. The police come and they are rescued and June and her mother have a much better relationship now. 

Their story is made into an episode for Unfiction and there's a cute moment where Grace tells June that she has friended Javi on Facebook.