Killer Date

Drop

Director: Christopher Landon

Cast: Meghann Fahy, Brandon Sklenar, Reed Diamond

Released: April 11, 2025

This is a fun thriller, but there are some things that really don't make much sense why the bad guy would go through all this trouble. 

Violet (Meghann Fahy), a single mother and psychiatrist, is going out on her first date in quite awhile. She's a victim of domestic abuse and her ex is dead, though it's unclear whether she killed him or not. (We'll find out the truth later.) For the last three months, she's been talking to a guy named Henry on a dating app and they're meeting to have dinner. Her sister will be watching her five-year-old son, Toby. 

The restaurant they choose to have their first date at is a bit much for a first date. It's on the top floor of a tall building in Chicago so if you sit by a window, you have this amazing view of the city. It's clear this is a high class place just by the decor and the food they serve. This is the kind of place you would go for a special anniversary, not a first date. 

Violet has taken a taxi and after she's dropped off, before entering the building, she looks up and tells herself, "It's just a date." On the way up in the elevator, she gets a text from Henry telling her he's going to be ten minutes late. 

She decides to get a drink at the bar. The restaurant is set up so the hostess stand and restrooms are separated from the bar and the dining area by a long tunneled hallway you have to walk through. When she enters the dining area, she immediately bumps into a guy. Now if you already knew the premise of this movie, you might think he's the one sending her the drops (we'll get to that soon if you have no idea what that means, i.e, you have no idea what the plot of this movie is), but I knew it wasn't going to be him because it would be way too obvious. They bumped into each other because they were both looking at their phones. She had just gotten a text from Henry telling her he was on his way. Duh, Henry, you already told her that with your first message! 

While at the bar, she chitchats with the bartender, a young woman who's also a single mother. An older guy in a suit asks her if she's Diane and introduces himself as Richard. She tells him she's not Diane and learns he's on a blind date. While they're talking, the piano player interrupts them and starts flirting with Violet. The bartender tells him to knock it off, that she's waiting for her date. When he asks her is she has any songs she likes, she asks him if he knows "Baby Shark" because that's her son's favorite song. Yep, it might be time to get out if the only song you can think of is "Baby Shark." 

Diane arrives and it's clear by the look on her facer, she's not thrilled about Richard. Why would she even agree to go on this date? Why would anyone agree to go on a blind date? Richard follows her to their table and when he turns around, Violet gives him a thumbs up sign. While still waiting (I feel like it's been more than ten minutes!), Violet texts her sister to see how things are going. Her date hasn't even started yet and she she's already texting home? But this is mainly used as a plot device because while on her phone, she received a "digiDrop" from someone with the username Lets_Play who wants to share a photo and she can either accept or decline it. She declines it. A digiDrop is like an AirDrop. (I'm guessing they didn't have the rights to use AirDrop.) We'll get a little more information how it works later. I would be a little freaked out if I were her and was receiving an digiDrop from some random person in a restaurant. If there were someone you knew there, wouldn't they just text you (or, come up and say hello)? I would be wondering why someone random person was sending me a pic, and I too, like her, would decline it. 

She starts looking at pictures of Henry (who is very good-looking) from the dating profile and I thought for sure he was going to come up and see her looking at pics of him and I would have been so embarrassed for her, but instead she gets another digiDrop that she declines. She looks around the restaurant and literally, almost everybody is on their phones. 

Henry, who is a photographer, shows up with his camera. He says he brought his camera with him because if he left if in the car someone will take it. I mean, I get him being cautious, but having him bring the camera is for the sake of the plot. Another thing that is for the sake of the plot is Violet leaving her phone on the table. She asks him if it's okay she leave her phone there just in case her sister needs to get in touch with her and he says it's fine. 

Now if you're wondering, is Henry the one sending her the digiDrops, that is something I never considered because the summary on Peacock is about how she's receiving messages from someone that wants her to kill her date, so why would those come from him? (Hope that wasn't a spoiler!) 

Their waiter comes to take their order. It is his first day and he just wants to chat about how he's an improv actor and he's writing a sketch for Second City where he plays a hat on top of Allison Janney's head (that is the most random thing!). He is clearly the comic relief of the movie. When he leaves to get their drinks, Violet receives another digDrop. Henry sees the concern on her face and asks if everything is okay and she shows him and tells him somebody keeps sending them. He thinks it's probably just a bunch of dumb kids messing with her because it happens to him all the time on the L train. She doesn't think this is the kind of place where someone would do that, but when they look around they see a bunch of high school kids having dinner before prom and assume it must be one of them. 

She places the phone face down on the table and it beeps again and she picks it up just in case it's her sister. This time it and she she's sent a cute photo of her son eating ice cream. As she's holding the phone, another digiDrop appears (this guy is a relentless (and yes, I'm going to presume its a guy!)). So when she gets these drops, there are memes and this one in particular has her name on it. I'm not really into meme culture so none of these meant anything to me. I think there was only one meme I was familiar with and it's probably the one you're thinking of. 

This makes her very concerned, but Henry isn't concerned at all. He explains to her (and the audience) how the digiDrop works: erveryone who has the app (wait, it's an app?) can see her name and photo (as well as the names and photos of the other people who have the app. Is it me or does this app seem kinda intrusive? Like, what kind of f***ed up app is this? Why would I want why my name and photo out there for everyone to see? I would never download this (fictional) app. He thinks you have to be within fifty feet to send a digiDrop so he uses his phone to record how far away fifty feet is and discovers the lobby and kitchen are out of range, so it's coming form somebody in the dining room. Thanks, Sherlock! 

While the waiter is going on about the specials, Violet receives a message from this Lets_Play character, but this time he wants to send a message, not a photo. And this time she accepts it. So why is she accepting messages, but not photos? Perhaps if he had started with a message in the first place, he wouldn't have to send her 15 unanswered digiDrops! The message tells her to check her home security cameras, which she does and she sees a masked man with a gun in her kitchen looking at the camera. She scrolls through the other cameras and sees her sister reading a book to Toby in his bedroom. I've never seen someone with so many security cameras; she must have ten around the house! Something tells me when her son gets older, he's going to ask his mother to take away the camera in his room! I get that this is done for the plot of the movie, but that seems like an extreme breach of your child's privacy, but since he's only five, we'll let it slide for now. 

Needless to say, she looks visibly upset and Henry asks her if she's okay and before she can say anything, she gets another message from Lets_Play which says, "Keep your mouth shut." 

Okay, the first time she received the message, it appeared as "Lets_Play sent you a message" and she could either click accept or decline, like she did with the photos. But with the "Keep your moth shut" message, she can can read it on the screen and didn't have to accept it. Maybe since she accepted the first message, she now has unlocked all incoming messages from him? IDK? And yes, this is the stupid stuff I ponder about. 

I watched this scene about three or four times to try to make sense of how this app worked (I don't know why I was so obsessed with figuring out how a stupid fictional app worked!) and while the waiter is talking about the specials you're so focused on Violet who is focused on her phone that you're probably not really supposed to be listening to the waiter, like she is, but after watching this four times, I caught it the fourth time and what he said made me laugh. He's telling them about the "lemon oyster soup" and I laughed when he says, "it sounds weird...and it is! But it's good!" 

Violet tells Henry she needs to call home and gets up. While she's walking away from the table, she has dialed 911, but before she connects the call, she gets a message saying her phone has been cloned and "I can see everything." This mystery person tells her if she calls the cops, leaves the restaurant, or tells anyone, then her son will die. At that moment she runs into the same guy from earlier before and I'm more convinced than ever that he is a red herring. He is just too obvious. 

She goes into the bathroom where some of the high schools girls are putting on makeup. Before she can say anything to them, she gets a warning text not to tell them anything. She asks one for eyeliner and tries to write "Call 911" on her palm, but the girl is confused because the writing is all smudged and she thinks it says "Cal". She gets another warning text. After the girls leave, Violet discovers there was a small camera behind a decorative vase. When she comes back to the table, she tells Henry she's emotional because she hasn't been out "like this" since her son was born. She notices a small camera at the end of the table, much similar to the one she found in the bathroom. Whoever's doing this has sure gone to a lot of trouble! 

She makes up a story, telling Henry that her son can't find his stuffed animal and acts like she just realized where it is. She starts texting, pretending it's to her sister, but she texts her new friend, asking, "Who are you?" and he tells her he could be anyone. Helpful, but of course he's not going to reveal himself to her. 

Violet tells Henry she would like to move tables because heights make her nervous. The waiter secures them a different table and as they're following him, she gets a couple messages: "Do not switch tables", followed by "Toby's dead in one minute if you don't go back." Of course she insists their old table was fine and she wants to go back. She says they they came for the view and she's going to get over her fear. The waiter is a little annoyed, but tries his best to remain polite. 

Once they're settled back at their original table, the hostess comes over to make sure everything is okay with the table and reminds Henry that he specifically reserved this one. He says he didn't so we know the person behind this called the restaurant and used his name. 

The mystery digiDropper sends Violet his first demand: "Get the SD card from this camera." He doesn't even offer her a few hints of how she can do this; he just expects her to figure it out on her own. While Henry is ordering (I swear they already ordered in a previous scene?), Violet discreetly slips off her watch (please, what kind of thirty year old still wears a watch in this day and age?) and puts it in her purse (which is under the table). After their waiter leaves, she "realizes" her watch is missing and says it must have fallen off because of a faulty clasp. She knows for sure she had it on when she entered the restaurant because the hostess had complimented it. She asks Henry if he would mind asking the hostess if anyone has seen it or brought it to her. While Henry is doing that (and remember, he has to walk through the tunnel to get to the hostess stand), she gets the SD card from his camera. I gotta be honest, I would have no idea how to do that. I would have to Google "How to retrieve SD card from a camera" and I would 100% get caught because I would be taking too long to do it. It gets pretty tight, but she manages to get it before he gets back. 

She gets a text for her to go to the restroom. She tells Henry that she's going to look for her watch there. When she gets to the ladies' room, she gets another message telling her to smash the card and flush it down the toilet, which she does. 

She thinks this is all she has to do (HA!), but she she gets another message to open the towel dispenser and when she does, she finds a vial of what is presumably poison and is told to "pour it in Henry's drink and that will be "quick. (Spoiler alert...it won't be that quick!) 

When the hostess stand is empty, she goes behind the counter to use those computers. Now I've never been a hostess at a restaurant, but I didn't think you can get online on those computers.  Don't they just have a program set up to take reservations and times and table numbers, like I doubt you can search the web for a domestic abuse hotline like she does. She enters the chat and starts typing about how her son is being held hostage. Before she can push enter, she gets a message telling her she better not send it. Before

Violet suggest to Henry that they take a shot and at first he's hesitant because he has to work the next day and she apologetically says she was trying to lighten the mood and he relents, replying, "A shot never killed anybody" to which she just laughs nervously. 

They both agree on tequila (Hey! I had a shot of tequila a couple months ago!) and she insists on going to the bar to get them. While she's getting up to leave, her foot catches on her purse and her watch spills out. You would think this would mean the end of the date, but it doesn't. If anything, it will almost bring them closer together. Also, I don't know why she just didn't "find" her watch when she went to the restroom to "look" for it. I suppose she was just too distracted to think about that since she had just been told to kill her date. 

While ordering the tequila, the bartender she had talked to earlier asks if she's okay because she seem "kind of on edge" (that's an understatement!), but Violet tells her it's just "first date jitters". She takes the vial out which seems like a stupid thing to do. You're in a crowded room and taking out a vial. Surely she's not going to pour it in the drink right there! That would make her look totally sus. But before she can do anything, she gets a text telling her to "do it at the table." Ha, even the deranged psycho knows that's a stupid move. Plus, I guess he needs to see her do it, but if he's texting her to do it at the table, doesn't that mean he saw her take the vial out? I don't know...there's a lot of things about this movie that don't make much sense as you already can tell. Violet is about to take the drinks back to the table and when the bartender asks if she wants some limes, she hesitates for a minute before saying, "No thanks." Aren't limes a necessity when taking a tequila shot? But she has a plan! 

Back at the table, Henry hands her the watch and she tries to play dumb (girl, please!) asking him where he found it and he tells her it spilled out of her purse. You would think this would be a dealbreaker, but it isn't. He tells her that she's distracted and he knows something's happening because she keeps looking around and texting. Yeah, even the bartender across the room knows something is going on with her. She's making it pretty obvious. This is when they have a heart to heart conversation and he tells her he messaged her because she seemed like a genuine person. As a viewer, you like these two together and you hope that she doesn't actually kill him, even though her son's life is in danger if she doesn't. Plus them having a connection is just going to make it all the more difficult for her to kill him. 

Of course she deliberately forgot the limes so she could ask him to grab them. While he's gone, she takes out the vial and allegedly pours the liquid in his drink. I say allegedly because how the scene is set up, the camera tilts up so you can't really see the drink in the shot. She sees the red herring guy sitting at a table and glares at him.  

Henry returns to the table with the limes and they toast to hope. Violet watches him as he brings the drink closer to his lips, then right before he takes a sip, she spills her glass of wine, getting all over his shirt. As he goes to clean up, she gets a message: "That wasn't smart." 

Okay, I'm about to go into spoiler territory so if you don't want to know who's been sending her the drops, don't read any further.  Spoilers ahoy! 

The bartender comes over and tells her she's been acting skittish all night and thinks Violet doesn't feel safe with her date and offers to help her get out of there. Violet tells her that's not the case here. The subject turns to Richard, the guy with the blind date that left in a huff, and the bartender tells Violet she doesn't blame his date for leaving because "he's been staring at you all night." Aha! Violet walks over to him with the two tequila shots. She offers him a drink, telling him she thought he could use it. He calls her by her name and says, "One drink is my limit for the night." She says she doesn't remember telling him her name and knowing he's been caught, he snarls, "Sit." My question: did he call her by her name on purpose? 

Okay, so I left some information out when Violet and the audience are first introduced to Richard when he first asks Violet if she's Diane, his blind date. He tells her that his date didn't have social media and thus he didn't know what she looked like. I can maybe believe this if his date is around his age, which is probably mid 60s. But why would he think his date is a woman in his thirties? Of course, he knew all along who Violet was and that probably should have been my first clue that this guy was sus. 

Once she's seated, he tells her to pick a shot and drink it and she does. This guy isn't even going to try to pretend he's not the one sending her the drops. He tells her he picked this table to watch her from because "it's the only one in the blind spot of the camera." 

So why has Richard gone through all this trouble to threaten Violet's son and sister, to place cameras all around the restaurant (how did he even do that without being noticed?), to call the restaurant as Henry and reserve that special table (well, that was the easiest task he had to do), to poison the piano player and somehow sneak back into the kitchen and place the twenty dollar bill under her food (how DID he do that?)...why has he done all of that just for the hassle to have Violet kill her date? 

Well, turns out Richard works for the mayor who's corrupt and Henry had some information on his camera that could hurt the mayor if it ever got out in public (I don't remember what it was...some scandal), hence why Richard had Violet destroy the SIM card. Henry had received a call from the FBI asking him to meet them tonight and hand over the SIM card. But if it's already been destroyed....why does he want Violet to kill him? That seems a bit extreme. I understand he's an informant for the FBI, but if he doesn't have any evidence, how is he going to help? Maybe I missed something. 

When she tells him she's going to tell the police about the drops, he reminds her that they're untraceable and there's no way one can detect who they came from. He tells her he chose her because she killed her husband. But she didn't. The real story is that he shot himself. But, honestly, would anyone blame her if she did kill him? He had just beaten her and at one point, threatened their baby with the gun. If she did shoot him, I would call it self defense. 

His waiter comes by with his panna cotta which he raves about. He tells her that the camera above her table recorded her spike the shot with "Sertraline laced with a little fentanyl" and that he chose that because he knows she prescribes Sertraline sometimes to her patients so it would look like it came from her. He boasts about how he's playing chess and that he's two steps ahead of her. In fact, she's not even in the same league as he is because, according to him, she's playing a totally different game. She's playing Yahtzee. It was at this moment, that I knew she was going to somehow poison his dessert. I knew this because 1) he was making such a big fuss over the dessert and how beautiful and delicious it look, and b) he kept bragging about how he was "winning". 

Richard tells Violet the only way to save her son is to have Henry drink the shot and that it will be her "last chance." When Henry walks over to him, Richard tells him that he and Violet are "old pals." Violet gives Henry the shot and Richard is looking at him gleefully as he watches him drink it. Violet asks him to give her a few more minutes and once he's out of earshot, she tells Richard to call the intruder at her house and call off the hit since she did what he asked her to. He calls the guy and tells him, "It's done." He doesn't quite tell him to leave. The guy replies that he'll wait for confirmation. Isn't "it's done" the confirmation? Richard tells Violet he's going to eat his dessert while he waits for Henry to "keel over." 

As he's eating his dessert, she tells him about the time she went out to dinner with her late husband and he was eating panna cotta and she would "pretend everything was fine" like "tonight when I pretended to poison that shot." He looks very alarmed as he looks down at his half-eaten dessert. We get a flashback from two minutes ago when she poisons his dessert because he's looking gleefully and intently at Henry. Like, dude. C'mon. What an idiot. 

But Violet may be a bit of an idiot too. I get that she wanted to get the satisfaction of him knowing that she "won" (and it's really funny when she says "Yahtzee" when he realizes he's been poisoned), but she should have just left him to die because he has plenty of time to call his henchman back to tell him to kill Violet's son and sister. He also has time to take a gun out, but before he can shoot Violet, Henry pushes her out of the way and he gets shot in the arm. The bullet ends up hitting a window and Violet throws a hockey puck (which Henry had given her earlier in the date as a present for her son) at the window and it breaks and Richard ends up flying out of the window like he's being sucked out of an airplane. This poison that Richard told Violet would be "quick" was not quick at all! He was killed from falling out of a building before the poison killed him. Violet is also pulled towards the window, but manages to grab a curtain that's snagged on a nail by a literal thread. Right before she's about to plunge to her death, Henry pulls her back up. 

She uses Henry's car to race to her house and is able to stop the masked man from killing her son. Way earlier in the movie, when she was still at home and getting ready for her date, a guy had knocked on her window and asked her where her meter was, telling her he was here to check it. I had totally forgotten about him and when the intruder's masks comes off, we find out it was the so-called meter man. 

We get a cute scene of Violet visiting Henry at the hospital and they agree to go on a second date after having a laugh over their "hard core first date." Just think of the story they can tell their grandchildren about their first date!

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

Time Is Not On Their Side

Old

Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Cast: Gael Garcia Bernal, Rufus Sewell, Vicky Krieps, Ken Leung, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Alex Wolff, Thomasin McKenzie

Released: July 23, 2021

Before I dive into my review, a quick summary of my history with M. Night Shyamalan-directed films: Now I know he directed two movies before The Sixth Sense, but I've never seen them and I don't think many people have heard of them and I highly doubt either of them have his signature twist ending, and nobody knew who he was pre-The Sixth Sense, so that's why I'm gonna start with that one. So I, as many people, loved The Sixth Sense and I saw Unbreakable, Signs, and The Village. I really liked the first two (though not as much T6S), but I was pretty meh on The Village. That's the only movie of the ones I've listed so far that I've only seen once. I've seen the others at least three times. Then we have a bunch of his movies that came out that I didn't see, mostly because I heard they were pretty bad! This includes Lady in the Water and The Happening. Then after THAT, he did what I often hear are the two worst movies he's ever directed: The Last Airbender and After Earth. Even if those movies had gotten rave reviews, I wouldn't have seen them because I'm not interested in the subject matter. I know the former is based on some animated show that I know nothing about and the latter is a sci-fi apocalyptic movie with Will Smith and his son. The next movie to come out in his filmography is The Visit, which I haven't seen, but has gotten positive reactions for the most part. He can really go up from here and I have seen all his movies that's been released since then: Split, Glass, Old (obviously!), and his latest, Knock at the Cabin. 

I would say that what would normally be considered the twist in Old is not only revealed in the trailer, but it's also revealed in the title! (Not to mention the movie poster where you see a woman sitting on a beach and half of her is young, while the other half is old. Not exactly how it worked in this movie, but I understand what they were going for.) I suppose since you find out what's going on in the movie thirty minutes in, they didn't want to keep a secret from the audience, but they sure do give a lot away in the trailer! I don't think there's necessary a twist at the end of the movie, but more of a reveal. Of course, when I get to anything which I believe to be truly spoiler-y, I will give a warning! 

There are many characters in this movie, but our main focus is on the Cappa family who we first meet when they're taking a shuttle bus from the airport to the Anamika Resort where they're headed for a nice (so they think!) beach vacation. Guy (Gael Garcia Bernal) and Prisca (Vicky Krieps) are the parents and their children are eleven-year-old daughter Maddox and six-year-old son Trent. 

In just a few short minutes, we get many references to time: 

-Maddox is singing and her mom mentions she has a beautiful voice and she can't wait to hear it when Maddox is older.

-Trent asks if the resort offers scuba diving and how old one has to be to participate in it and his dad tells him he might be too young.

-Trent whines that their dad said they would be there in five minutes and it's been more than five minutes and asks when they're going to get there and his mom replies, "Stop wishing away this moment." 

They soon arrive at the resort where a bunch of people are waiting for them, waiting to serve their every need and the adults are offered a cocktail to welcome them. Prisca mentions to her husband, "This is much better than Cancun." Ha! Just give it a day, Prisca, and you'll be redacting that statement! We also find out that Prisca found this place online. We never find out where this place is located, but I know it was filmed in the Dominican Republic. I don't think we (as in the audience) are supposed to know where this place is geographically located. 

The resort has a candy station where Trent and Maddox meet Idlib, who is the six-year-old nephew of the resort manager. I guess he lives at the resort? I wasn't really sure about that. Since he and Trent are the same age they become fast friends and we see them playing together at the beach and going around to adults and asking them their names and what they do for a living. This is something only a couple of adorable six-year-olds can get away with. I figured this was going to come back in the movie and it does. Idlib tells Trent that he doesn't have any friends, but Trent tells him that he's his friend and they can FaceTime each other after he leaves and even suggests that they can go to the same college, then "become neighbors with mortgages." It's a cute, funny scene, but also a little sad in hindsight, especially if you know what's about to happen. (Which you might if you know the premise of the movie!) Idlib has also created fun little secret messages for Trent to decode. He has different symbols that represent a letter of the alphabet. We see one of the messages that Trent decodes says "Ice cream eating contest tomorrow." 

In their bedroom, Guy and Prisca are talking about how they would give the kids "one last vacation before telling them." There are only two things that they could be talking about: 1) they're getting divorced, or 2) one of the parents has a medical condition. Well, it turns out it's both! Geeze, with this kind of disparaging news, they should have taken the kids to Disney World! But it turns out that they were planning on separating even before they found out Prisca was sick (we won't find out what she was diagnosed with until later in the movie) and she doesn't want to tell the kids about her "irrelevant medical condition." 

The next morning, we meet more characters who will be going on this crazy journey. Charles (Rufus Sewell) is a doctor married to a woman, Chrystal (Abbey Lee), who is much younger than him. They have a daughter, Kara, who recently turned six and they are with Charle's mother, Agnes, and she has her small dog. Chrystal is gorgeous and in great shape and she knows it. Of course you need a character obsessed with her youth and beauty in a movie like this! 

Another couple who is important to this story is Jarin (Ken Leung) and Patricia (Nikki Amuka-Bird). We meet them when they're having breakfast outside and Patrica starts having a seizure. Charles, the doctor, who's also having breakfast with his family, goes over to help and Jarin tells him he is a nurse and his wife has epilepsy. It is not uncommon for Patricia to have seizures and after a few moments, she is fine. Now, I admit I don't know much about seizures, but when I googled them, the first thing that came up is that if someone has two or more seizures in more than 24 hours, it's called epilepsy, so apparently this a daily occurrence for this woman which is terrifying. 

Also having breakfast is the Cappa family. Before the epilepsy incident, the resort manager comes up to their table to recommend that they visit a private beach that is on the nature preserve side of the island. He calls it "a once-in-a lifetime experience." Well, he certainly isn't lying about that! He also tells them he only recommends it to certain guests. Ha! I bet he does! He tells them he can arrange a van to take them there for the day and they agree. Oh, if only they knew how this decision would affect the rest of their lives. Literally. While this is going on, Trent spots Idlib peeking around and his uncle quickly goes over to him and tells him he's not supposed to be in this area. Idlib goes to make another puzzle for Trent to solve because before they get in the van to visit this secluded beach, we see the piece of paper in his backpack. Also in the van is Charles, Chrystal, Kara, and Agnes with her small dog. 

Now we all know M. Night Shyamalan always (usually?) gives himself a cameo in his movies. And they're not blink-and-you'll-miss-him type cameos, oh no, he is pretty much on screen for a few minutes, so you know when he makes an appearance. Sometimes he has more screen time in his movies than others and I would say this is one of those movies. He is the van driver, taking these two families to the secluded beach. Once they get there, he does a checklist to make sure they have everything they need (like sunscreen) and asks them if they made sure they left their passports in their safes back at the resort because he doesn't want anybody to lose anything. Now the first time you're watching this, you're thinking, oh, that's nice of him, but when you watch it a second time, you realize why he's asking them that. Or maybe you realized it the first time! He tells them they can call him when they're ready to leave and he'll pick them up or he'll be back at five, whichever comes first. (I assume at this time, it's nine or ten a.m.) He has also brought a TON of food for them which Guy thinks is a waste, but the driver tells him there are three kids and kids each a lot of food. Sure, teenagers (especially boys) eat a lot of food, but do kids eat a lot? I feel like kids are really picky when it comes to food, they're not usually scarfing it down. There are two six-year-olds and an eleven-year-old with them; honestly, they're probably going to eat less than the adults. Since there's so much stuff, Charles asks the van driver if he can help, but he tells them he needs to get back. Yeah, once we realize what's going on, it will be pretty obvious why he refused to help them! On the way to the beach, they walk through a canyon/cave. 

When they get there, they are not the only ones on the beach. There is a man already there, sitting by himself against the rocks. Maddox gets excited because she recognizes him as the rapper, Mid-Sized Sedan (who came up with that name?) and is aghast when her dad doesn't know his hit song, "More Dough for the Cookie" (again, who came up with that name?). We had actually seen him earlier; I think it was supposed to be earlier that morning where he and a young blonde woman were on the beach and the woman takes off her clothes and starts walking into the ocean, looking seductively over her shoulder at him. That's all we got before we see him here. Maddox wants to talk to him, but her parents tell her to leave him alone since he's on vacation. His real name is Brendon.

There's a bit of tension between Guy and Prisca when Prisca, who's reading, covers the title of her book and asks Guy what she's reading and he replies that he doesn't know. I guess this is to show that they're drifting apart, but honestly, I don't think not knowing the book your significant other is reading is the biggest deal. Maybe they don't have the same tastes in their reading material. I bet you my mom doesn't always know what my dad is reading and vice versa. 

The three kids are having fun, all playing together on the beach. We see them notice stuff in the sand, near a giant rock wall, and most of it seems to be rusted silverware from the hotel. They play hide-and-go-seek and when Trent is hiding in the water behind a rock wall, he notices that there are no fish around him. Also, from behind him we can see a naked body floating facedown, about to bump into him. Ahhhh! Even though we don't see the face, I know it was the young blonde woman who we last saw wading into the ocean. The body bumps into Trent and the poor kid is terrified and screams for his mom. Everybody comes running and Prisca takes the kids away while Guy and Charles lift the body from the water. We see Brendon come up and both his nostrils are bleeding and he can't seem to get it to stop. You know, I don't think I've ever had a bloody nose in my life and I'm kinda glad cuz there's just something especially gross about it. Charles tries to call the police, but he can't get any reception.

Guy asks Brendon about the woman and he tells him that she swam out by herself and he was waiting for her. He then gets defensive and says he had nothing to do with it when Charles asks him why his nose is bleeding, but he refuses to say anything more. 

We next get some small moments of things to come which includes Agnes laying under an umbrella and telling her daughter-in-law that her chests feels funny and Chrystal replying that they should have gone on a yacht like she suggested and Trent telling his mother that his swimsuit is starting to hurt. 

At that moment, Patricia and Jarin show up. Guy wants to try to catch the bus driver before he leaves and tells the couple that he thinks they all need to leave. Jarin tells him he's already left. He and his wife see the body, now covered with a towel. They ask what happened and while Guy tells them they don't know, Charles indicates Brendon had something to do with it and thinks his nose is bleeding because he and the now deceased woman got into a fight. Brendon tells him his nose has been bleeding for hours and he doesn't know why it's been doing that. Chrystal comes running up to tell Charles that something is wrong with his mother. While Charles goes to check on her, Jarin tells the others he's going to go to the clearing by the jungle to see if he can get a signal there. He says there must be a place to get reception because how else could people call to get back? He makes a very valid point because that is what the van driver told them. As he walks through the canyon/cave, he starts gasping, then the screen goes black and we next see him laying on the beach with his wife helping him sit up. She tells him he stumbled out and he was holding his head and looked like he was in pain. He says he felt a pressure in his head. 

While Charles is talking to his mother, telling her he's going to get a van to come back for them, Prisca comes up to him and asks if he can take a look at her son because he's having "some kind of reaction." Charles dismisses her because he sees Trent playing with Kara off in the distance and they look fine to him. He can't really worry about the kids right now because he will have to give CPR to his mother who soon stops breathing, but it is too late and she dies. He thinks she died because she saw a murdered woman and was so shocked that her heart couldn't take it anymore. It won't be long before her dog will die as well. Nobody seems to really care about that; they're just like, "Oh, the dog has died." Of course, they do have bigger things to worry about at that point. 

There's a moment where the Cappa siblings are talking to each other and the way the shot is set up, you only see parts of them, like Maddox's legs (she's standing up) and Trent's left arm and part of his back (he's sitting, facing her). You know by this time they are different actors (er, ages!) because their voices sound different. They're telling each other that they look different and Trent tells his sister he sees something shiny way up on top of the rock wall that is surrounding the beach. 

In a scene soon after that one, we see the backs of Maddox and Trent as they are talking with Jarin and Patricia. Trent asks them their names and occupations and we learn that Patricia is a psychologist. They ask the kids their names and ages and before they can give their ages, Jarin wants to guess how old they are because he claims to be good at guessing ages. Hehe, he might not be so good in this case! You know who is terrible at guessing ages? Me! He guesses that Trent is ten or eleven and doesn't believe Trent when he informs him he's six, but Maddox confirms that he is six and that she is eleven. Patricia, in a low voice (although I'm sure the Cappa siblings can hear her judging by their proximity to them), says to her husband, "They're feeling unsafe. There is a lot going on here." Jarin thinks they're messing with them, but decides to let it slide. Not long after, Prisca comes up to the couple and asks them if they've seen her children. Now I realize she doesn't recognize Maddox and Trent who are standing right across from Patricia and Jarin, but wouldn't she be wondering who these two young people are? She doesn't even seem to acknowledge them. Naturally, Jarin and Patricia are confused because they know her kids are literally right in front of them and Jarin asks if everyone is playing a joke on them. Trent speaks up and says, "I'm right here, Mom." We see Prisca's shocked face as she takes in her six-year-old son who looks eleven and her eleven-year-old daughter who looks sixteen. Trent is wearing a towel around his waist and Maddox's swimsuit is too small for her and she will soon changed into an extra swimsuit that her mom brought (that was fortunate!) 

While this is going on, Brendon decides to book it and runs through the canyon/cave, attempting to escape. Charles follows him and they both black out and end up on the beach. Charles mentions that it felt like he was deep underwater. They realize they can't get out through the canyon/cave, which, besides swimming or climbing the giant rock wall, is the only exit. 

Prisca, who thinks the kids are having a reaction to something they ate or caught something since they're on a "remote, undeveloped island" (that's some reaction they're having!) tells her husband she wants the doctor to look at them. But before she can do that, Charles has gone up to Brendon and slashed him across the face with a pocket knife he had in his pocket. Everyone rushes over and Charles apologizes, telling the others that he thought Brendon was going to hurt him. His hand is covering the slash on his face and he tells the other he must be in shock because he doesn't feel any pain. When Jarin asks to sees the gash, he removes his hand and it is revealed that the gash has completely healed and it's just a scar. Something crazy is going on in this island! Brendon opens up and admits to the others that he did try to escape, but only because he was freaked out. We find out that he had just met the girl at the resort and they started talking about how they're both sick and she had just been diagnosed with MS. He had told he he had a "weird clotting with his blood." Patricia and Jarin catch on that he mentioned they were both sick and Patricia thinks "maybe this is some kind of group psychosis." She tells the others she's studied this and thinks that because they're all emotionally shaky, they don't believe they can leave this beach. 

Kara has also aged and she's now about 12 or 13. Charles thinks it might be a virus or a reaction to the mosquitoes on the island or something that is happening to trigger their hormones. 

While the ocean waves are crashing ferociously against the rocks, Jarin asks who thinks they can "swim a hundred lengths of a pool against the current and then turn and swim an unknown amount along the coast til they find another shore?" That's his guess of how far it would be to swim out and get around the cove. Uh, nobody, that's who. And nobody is keen to give it a go. Not that I can blame them. 

Patricia has gathered everyone around for a discussion. She thinks they need to know each other so they can trust each other. She goes around, asking everyone why they came to the resort. Chrystal admits that she and Charles have been having a tough time and Charles is stressed because he's a doctor, so he needed time away. Charles isn't too happy she's saying all this, but she tells him she won't say anything else. When the subject comes around to Guy and Prisca, Prisca changes the subject, telling them they need to make a decision and that the kids are probably reacting to a virus. She also declares she doesn't feel good and Guy announces that she has a tumor, but the doctors said it was benign. Of course, this is the first time the kids are hearing about this. Jarin asks her where the tumor is and Prisca points to her abdomen. He feels her tumor and tells her it's the size of a golf ball. She says that can't be right, that it's only supposed to be three centimeters. And then she faints. Now Charles feels her tumor and tells them it's the size of a soft ball. Jarin wants to cut it out, but Guy says no, then says he doesn't know what to do. Finally he asks if there's any alcohol and Chrystal runs to get some. Patricia provides the needle and thread Charles has asked for (though they'll soon discover they won't need it!) Right before he cuts into Prisca, he randomly asks if anyone knows the name of the movie Jack Nicholson and Marlon Brando starred in together. This will come up again when he asks about it and we never find out what it was. I was thinking they were never in a movie together and that's why he couldn't come up with the name, but then I Googled it and they did indeed star in a western together that came out in 1976 called The Missouri Breaks. I have never heard of it and I feel like most people have never heard of it. Don't expect a review of it on here anytime soon! So then he cuts int Prisca's side. :::shudder::: Good thing she was passed out! He's using the same knife that he slashed Brendon's face with, so I'm hoping he was able to sterilize it really good! But, as soon as he slices her open, it closes. Jarin tells him to cut her again and they'll keep their hands in there to keep the incision open. Eww, they've been in the sand and saltwater and there's no place with soap and water to clean yourself; surely she would end up with an infection! So they do it again like Jarin instructed and now the camera is looking up at the faces of Jarin, Charles, and Guy. Guy says it's closing around his finger and Jarin tells him to keep pulling it apart with his fingers and we see him starting to lift the tumor out, but it's attached to muscle tissue. Charles exclaims it's the size of a cantaloupe! Ewww! And for extra grossness, the camera pans back down as they're taking this disgusting bloody mass of a thing out of her. OMG, so gross! I wonder what they did with it? We never do see where they put it. Did they just toss it in the ocean? I would want that nasty thing far, far, far away from me! Prisca's incision closes and she wakes up (that was good timing!). She tells them she feels better and Guy tells her they removed her tumor. Hmm, so sounds like that tumor was NOT benign after all. 

For some reason, sometimes possesses Brendon to go over and lift up the towel that was covering the dead girl. I get that they need this for the plot, but it makes no sense why he would want to look under there. I sure as hell wouldn't want to look at a corpse rotting in the sun! But, like I said, it's done for plot purposes because he is startled by what he sees and calls the others over. This is when it is revealed that her body has completely decomposed and it's just bones. Prisca, who works in a museum, says it would take seven years for a body to decompose like that, but yet this happened in three hours. 

Jarin thinks something wonky is going on with time on the beach and Prisca is able to do some quick math and by going by her children's ages and the time they spent on the beach, she figures that "half an hour is equivalent to something like one year of [their] lives." She has noticed that Guy has wrinkles and says the aging process must be true for everyone but they don't see it on everyone. At least now we know why they have so much food; it really was for the children who would be going through growth spurts, and, as Jarin points out, they are eating so much because "they need to grow an enormous amount of mass quickly." The adults are staying roughly the same mass, but their cells are aging. Prisca points out that their hair and nails should be "growing at an abnormal rate", but Jarin rationalizes that cells in hair and nails are dead. I get what he's saying and he's correct, but it doesn't make sense for a dead body to decompose that fast because dead body equals dead cells. Oh, well, I'm just going to go with it. 

Being that an hour equals two years of your life, it doesn't take long for them to figure out that they'll age almost fifty years in one day. (Boy, I'm sure glad they made the math easy for them and for us! Can you imagine if they aged 3 years every 47 minutes or something like that and you would have to figure that out?) They think their rapid aging might have something to do with the rocks around the beach. Sure, I'll go with it. This is a movie where you just have to go with what they're telling you or else it will make you insane trying to come up with a rational reason for what is going on.

Jarin compares them trying to leave is "like swimming to the surface too fast after being too deep in the ocean." He states their bodies can't reacclimate and that's why they become unconscious when they try to leave. He suggests that they could walk slowly through the canyon/cave by taking a step, then standing still and do it over eight to ten hours to let their bodies acclimate. Of course, according to Prisca's timeline, that would mean someone would have to give up twenty years of their life trying. No one volunteers. Although, wouldn't they all be aging twenty years in that time? In fact, the people on the beach would probably age even more because the person who escaped after reacclimatizing would need time to find their way back to the resort or wherever to find help, then get the help to come back...and how would they even help them? I suppose they could help them by sending a boat or a helicopter. But they don't know if that will work. As far as they know, at this moment, there is absolutely no way way to escape. Wouldn't it make more sense for EVERYBODY to do this tedious process of slowly taking one step, then stopping over the course of ten hours to get through the wonky barriers of this supernatural beach?

Since the time Prisca fainted, Trent and Kara were ushered away and they've been spending time in a fort that Kara created earlier that day (when she was six) and getting to know each other. They're teenagers now and discuss their feelings. Kara tells Trent that she doesn't feel the same and that her mind is changing too and she's getting many thoughts at the same time. In an earlier scene, a more mature Maddox had confessed to Brendon, "I don't feel the same way I felt yesterday or this morning, and I don't think my parents would understand. My thought have more colors in them now."

So we know that both their bodies and minds are maturing. However, they really never touch on the subject of their knowledge. Do Trent and Kara know their multiplication tables or much about world history, being that they started the morning as six-year-olds? (When do kids learn their multiplication tables?) Even Maddox, beginning the day as an eleven-year-old, would have have limited knowledge. 

I think this might be a good time to put up a spoiler warning. Even though some of the things I'm going to start talking about are shown in the trailer, I don't want to take that chance and ruin anything for anybody who hasn't seen this movie yet and doesn't know the outcome. Also, there are still quite a bit of people left on this beach and I don't want to spoil who, if anybody, makes it out or if they all die on this beach. 

SPOILERS AHEAD! READ AT YOUR OWN RISK! 

So it is noticed that Trent and Kara aren't with them and they start calling for them, then they see them walking towards them down the beach and the parents are relieved because they look to be fine. However, when Trent and Kara are getting closer to them, they notice that Kara is very pregnant and everyone is shocked, which I don't blame them. I guess Trent and Kara's teenage hormones were raging, but it is a little weird because they just met that day. Maybe they realized they didn't have much time and would be too old or dead soon and wanted to try it out. We never actually see them getting it on, we just see them laying next to each other in the tent talking about their feelings. I feel like they only have this in the movie because of the extra drama it adds, which it certainly does. They try to rationalize it by Trent telling his parents he has feelings for her and he wants to marry her, but they just met. I don't buy they have those kinds of feelings for each other. Although, they are going through this crazy trauma together. At first, I thought they were going to have this rapidly aging new life on the beach and was curious to see how they were going to do that. But what actually happens makes a lot more sense. 

Needless to say, we get the fastest pregnacy in human history. Think about it: if half an hour equals a year, then nine months is what? About twenty minutes? The baby starts to come and Charles, Jarin, and Patricia are helping her. Kara calls out for her mother, but the camera pans as Krystal, who can't take what's going on and is freaked out, runs off in the opposite direction. She goes into the cave, but ends up on the beach passed out and Maddox runs to help her. By this time, a baby is heard crying. We don't see the baby, but just see the awed reactions of Chrystal and the Cappa family. The camera starts to pan over to Kara, her dad, and Jarin and Patricia and suddenly the crying stops abruptly. Once the camera is on them, Patricia is holding the baby, wrapped in a towel and tells them they just put him down for a few seconds to clean him off, and "he closed his eyes." Chrystal comments that he died from a lack of attention and they all know that "things are moving too fast for a baby to survive." Needless to say, they didn't need to cast a baby for this! Like I mentioned before, thank goodness they made the math easy in this because I made my own equations of what their new time line would look like, and, indeed, time is way to fast for a baby to survive.

We already know that 30 minutes = 1 year. So with that information: 

15 minutes = 6 months

7.5 minutes = 3 months

3 and a quarter minutes = 1.5 months

1.5 minutes =  3 weeks

45 seconds = 1 and a half weeks (9-10 days?)

22.5 seconds = 5 days

11 seconds = 2.5 days

6 seconds = barely a day 

So by my counts, that baby would be aging a day every five, six seconds! That is insane! They wouldn't have time to keep up with its eating or sleeping habits, let alone making time to change it or hold it. And I thought babies aged super fast in Sims 3! (Of course that could be because I have it that way because I can't stand babies and/or toddlers in Sims 3! If you play that game, you know exactly what I'm talking about!) 

So now everything is going to sh*t and it's going to get worse. Now, you're probably thinking some of these adults are about to die of old age in the next few hours and that those who started as kids on this beach are going to die tomorrow. And, yes, you would be right, we still have a lot of characters that need something to happen to them. People are going to die and not all of them will be lucky to just die of old age.

Jarin will attempt to swim to find a way out to get help, but his body will washed up on the shore; much like what happened with the girl Brendon was with. Not long after the death of her husband, Patricia will suffer a fatal seizure that lasts much longer than the one she had at the resort the day before. 

Charles will stab Brendon to death and after the attack, Guy will take the knife from the shell-shocked doctor. 

Trent and Kara will have a discussion about how they won't get a prom or graduation or do any of the things they were supposed to do as teens or young adults. Kara proclaims it isn't fair and she's 100% right - it isn't fair or right for anyone on this beach that their age progression has been sped up to the max. It's very sad and depressing. Hell, I think time goes by way too fast as it is now! I can't imagine aging forty-eight years in a day! Hell, I would be pissed if I  were only there for half an hour and aged one year! Kara (probably in her twenties at this point...it's kind of hard to keep track of how long they've been there so far) is desperate to find a way out, so she climbs the rock wall. She's actually a pretty good climber and gets scarily far up. At first, Trent and the other Cappas tell her to come down. Trent wants to go with her and starts climbing, but Guy pulls him off and tells him it's too dangerous. Trent calls up to Kara to tell her to come down; that they should stay together, but she replies with what if they spend this whole time trying to get out and they still don't make it? We get a scare when Kara's foot slips, but she manages to hang onto  a protruding rock. Guy starts to think she might have a chance if she can make it to a ledge she's coming up on and rest. Well, she does make it to the ledge. And she does rest...unfortunately for a little too long. She must have gotten to the point where one blacks out because she falls to her death. I hope to God she was unconscious through the whole thing, cuz, yikes!  

So all the deaths I just mentioned take place during the day. We still have some more deaths to go, but they won't happen until it's dark, so let's take a break from all the death and despair! By this time it is clear that Charles has a mental disorder and Guy points out to Prisca that at least one person from each group was sick or had a medical condition. He asks her how she first heard about this place and she tells him it was "a random sweepstakes" and it "came with a receipt at the pharmacy" and she "followed it up online and started getting emails." Guy claims that they know their medical conditions and that they were chosen. They also realize that they have their passports and a car was sent to pick them up at the airport and they could "make it look like [the Cappa family] never left [their] house."

It is revealed that Prisca was going to leave Guy for another man. Maddox confronts her mom about it and she says it's true, but when Maddox asks, she tells her daughter that her husband did not know about her affair. However, we will find out later that Guy did know because he saw texts he wasn't supposed to see. Ruh-roh. Apparently he knew the guy and the guy must be a bit of a wanker because he asks his wife, "Why that guy?" Prisca tells her daughter that she got scared when she found out about her tumor and she asks Maddox if she hates her. Maddox tells her she just needs time to which Prisca sadly replies, "We don't have that." Lots of time metaphors in this movie, interesting! Guy and Prisca do seem to reconcile as Prisca apologizes to him and tells him there's no place she wants to be, but with him. 

As the sun start to set, Guy has started to lose his vision and Prisca has started to lose her hearing. Charles, however, has still lost his mind, as he has retrieved his pocket knife from Prisca's bag and starts stabbing Guy. He tells Guy that "the man with the tattoos" (he's talking about Brendon aka Mid-Sized Sedan) was "gonna steal things from my home." He doesn't want Guy to tell anybody what he did, so now he's attacking him. Prisca also gets stabbed when she tries to shield her husband, but then runs off to tell the kids to hide after Guy tells her to do so. None of their stab wounds are fatal as they heal because he's mostly stabbing them in the back (literally and figuratively!) and their arms because they're shielding themselves, but that still has to hurt like a you-know-what! 

The rusted silverware that the kids (you know, when they were literal kids) found earlier that day comes back in play when Prisca grabs a rusty knife and stabs Charles and she tells him the rust acts like a poison when it gets into your bloodstream and he dies.

Before their mother had told them to hide from the crazed man with a knife, Trent and Maddox had found a notebook in the sand. They quickly realize that whoever wrote in it was trying to figure out what was going on on this godforsaken beach. They wrote, "Magnetism of this exact spot on the Earth with the rocks on this beach submerged beneath the ocean for millions of years deposited with special minerals are causing our cells to age at a rapid rate." I'm still curious to know where they are, geographically! I bet it's where the Lost island was located! Trent suggests that perhaps they "can make a metal tube that [they] can get in that stops the effect on [their] cells" and they can just walk through the canyon/cave and out of this place forever. Maddox points out where would they find a metal tube? I guess this scene kind of proves that their minds are gaining knowledge as they grow older because I don't think a six-year-old would think of what he just suggested. At this point, I would guess they are both in their thirties. The author of the notebook had also written down a list of all the names and addresses of the people who were on the beach with him. Trent notices a light in the distance on top of the cliff and he's pretty sure somebody is recording him. This is about the third mention of somebody seeing something off in the distance. 

When their mother tells them to hide, they go into a cave. Chrystal is also there and she's not doing too well herself. The woman who used to be young, fit, and blonde and capturing herself on Instagram now wants no one to look at her. When we first met her, we learned she had a calcium deficiency and because she's not getting her calcium (and I'm sure the fact that she's aging rapidly also doesn't help), her bones are becoming deformed and she just kills herself by dropping a large rock on herself.

So now, it's late at night and the four family members of the Cappa family are the only ones left alive. Guy and Prisca are senior citizens now, I would guess in their 80s, though their aging is very subtle. We come full circle from the very first scene when adult Maddox sings to her mother, the same song she sang in the car the day before when she was eleven. You remember? Her mother told her how she couldn't wait to hear her voice as an adult and now she gets to.

In a very sad scene, Guy asks Prisca if they were fighting about something. When she tells him they were, he replies, "Whatever it was, I'm not mad anymore." He also mentions he can't remember why they were trying to leave this beach. It's clear he is losing his memory and that he has no idea that just that morning he was a man in his early to mid-forties. Not long after, he suddenly collapses and you know he has died. Prisca soon dies not long after him. It's really sad, but at least they didn't die a horrible death like everyone else on the island. 

Teen and young adult Trent and Maddox have been played by Alex Wolff and Thomasin McKenzie, but when they wake up the next morning, they are now probably in their early/mid fifties (I'm guessing they literally slept through their forties and maybe even their late thirties) and are now played by Emun Elliot and Embeth Davidtz. I have to say the casting for this movie was done pretty well. I believed all the actors playing the Cappa siblings could be the same person. I'm guessing Alex and Thomasin were cast first since they are in the majority of the film, then they cast their younger and older versions. 

It is now the next morning and they guess they have about thirteen hours left. They are still determined to find a way out, but before they do that, Trent suggests they make a sandcastle first. As they do, Maddox says, "I wonder if everybody continues to feel like a kid when they're our age, or is it because we were kids yesterday?" Ha! I imagine it's a little bit of both. Those two really didn't have much time to adjust from being a child to being an adult! 

Them building a sandcastle is just a plot device for Trent to find the secret message from Idlib that he never decoded. Maddox tells him to decode it, so he does. It says, "My uncle doesn't like the coral." He thinks the coral might protect them from the effects of the rocks. Can you image if he had decoded this as a six-year-old in the van on their way to this place? He would have been so confused! Although, I'm guessing as they aged, he would probably figure out that was a huge clue. 

So they decide to give it a try and they both swim underwater through a coral tunnel. It's not an easy swim and they will have to hold their breath for a few minutes. It gets even scarier when Maddox gets her shirt caught on the coral. Trent swims back to help her and now they're both struggling to get her free which has to exert more energy which can't be good. Now you're probably asking, a) why is Maddox wearing a shirt in the first place and the answer to that is probably for the purpose of the plot and b) why didn't Maddox or Trent just try to take the shirt off of her (it was a button up shirt that she was wearing like a jacket) and they do show then trying to do that, but for some reason it won't work. I'm not really sure. But again, it's done for plot purposes to show that they're struggling to free her. 

They are still struggling underwater when it is finally revealed who has been on top of the cliff with a telescope, camera and other electron equipment. It is the van driver aka M. Night Shymalan and it looks like he just isn't the van driver for the resort! He is looking through the telescope in the direction of the coral and he calls someone to confirm that both the remaining people have died. He has watched for at least a minute and a half and hasn't seen any movement. He tells the man he thought they were going to get through the coral and doesn't know how they even thought of going through there. Apparently, only one other person had tried to escape through the coral, but he drowned.

We follow him to a secure place at the resort that looks like a lab with computers and many people in lab coats conducting experiments and monitoring sicknesses and diseases like diabetes and tuberculosis (those were two I caught on a screen). We hear someone say that all the "home computer devices have been wiped", clearly talking about those who recently perished on the beach. The resort manager (the one who is the uncle of Idlib) leads them in a moment of silence for the members of Trial 73.

You have probably figured out by now that all the people who were on that beach just the day before and have all died were the members of Trial 73. Throughout the movie it's been hinted at that the medical conditions of these people have something to do with why they're at this beach so it comes to no surprise when we learn that these are researchers from a pharmaceutical company called Warren & Warren that uses this beach to conduct their research. As the manager tells them, "Because of this beach, we have been able to save hundreds of thousands of lives with new medicines." We learn that they found this beach that they were meant to find on a research expedition and that they "were meant to test medicines in one day instead of a lifetime." The specialty-made cocktails that each person receives when they arrive at the resort are laced with a drug that they have created for each individual's medical condition. We find out that the medicine they gave Patricia worked very well as she didn't have a seizure for eight hours and sixteen minutes which is the equivalent of sixteen and a half years. He tells them they'll "fast-track trials, make that medicine, and share it with the whole world." Everyone claps, congratulating themselves, never mind the fact that they just pretty much murdered a bunch of innocent people, not to mention they robbed three children the experience of growing up. 

My God, this has to be the most unethical thing ever! Sure, I'll admit, it's an amazing thing they can do and it's a wonder to science and medicine and I know they think what they're doing is for the greater good: they're killing off a few people to save millions more (huh, I just realized this reminds me of Knock at the Cabin), but the fact that they're tricking people into it and their families (which sometimes include small children!) become collateral damage as well. I don't know, but I really feel that there would be people with medical conditions and diseases and sicknesses that might, oh, I don't know, consent to being studied on this island and aging rapidly. Maybe they are in a bad place and want to do something good before they die. Maybe they know they're going to die soon and want to help people in the future with their disease. I really don't think they need to trick, then pretty much murder innocent people. Also, I would love to know the backstory of how they found this island. 

Not surprisingly, we learn that Charles had schizophrenia when one doctor tells the resort manager that he thinks they need to "separate the purely medical subjects from the mental illness subjects" because their "violent schizophrenic patient cost us data on our blood clot patient." 

In a turn of events that surprises no one (except maybe M. Night's character), Trent and Maddox are still alive! They have made it out of the coral! We go back to them struggling underwater and with determination, they manage to free Maddox and they swim to their safety. They now know they are not surrounded by the forces of the island anymore because there are fish swimming around them. 

Remember when six-year-old Trent and his pal Idlib were going around the beach two days ago (which I'm sure seems like a lifetime to Trent, probably because it literally was!) asking people their names and occupations? Well, one of those people he asked this question to was a cop named Greg Mitchell. We see the cop sitting in a lounge chair and we hear Trent's voice say, "You're a police officer" and he hands the cop the notebook with all the name and addresses of the missing people. 

Just as a van of new and unsuspecting people has arrived and they are about to be given their laced cocktails, Trent bumps into the woman (who is played by Clint Eastwood's daughter) carrying the tray, shattering the glasses. He tells the guests, "I wouldn't take anything they give you." 

By this time, all the resort workers know they are f***ed. They know now that Trent and Maddox made it out alive. Trent sees Idlib and shows him the decoded message. I do have to wonder how Idlib knew that his uncle didn't like the coral. Did he overhear his uncle cursing the coral one day? Also, while I don't think Idlib knew what was happening on that island, he had to know that nobody that went there ever came back, so why didn't he just warn Trent and Maddox not to go there in the first place? Why didn't he just say "If my uncle invites your family to a private beach, don't go. No matter how great he makes it sound, trust me, you don't want to go." Yeah, yeah, I know, then there wouldn't be a movie, but he had plenty of time to tell them. 

Greg Mitchell confirms the first three names in the notebook are missing persons and he sends the rest of the names to be investigated. He tells Trent and Maddox that everyone has been arrested and subpoenas are being served at Warren and Warren's headquarters this week. (They don't mess around!) The cop and the Cappa siblings are flying in a helicopter, on their way to the airport where Trent and Maddox's aunt will be waiting for them. When Greg asks them how she's handling things, Trent replies, "How would you feel if a fifty-year-old man called and told you he was your six-year-old nephew?" I just realized that he and his sister are probably older than their aunt, or at least pretty close in age. 

For two people who have lost four decades of their life in the course of a day, Trent and Maddox are pretty chill about the whole thing. They were literally six and eleven years old twenty-four hours ago. They lost their parents in a very unfair way. They never really got to know their parents if you really think about it. They lost the experience of finishing their childhoods, being teens and going to high school, being young adults, and all that stuff you go through before you reach fifty. I would be a little more inconsolable if I were them!