Synopsis: This is set as sort of a thriller - we follow the story of JILL - a girl in her 20s who is wandering through the woods. We learn later that she lives with her sister, MOLLY, who is still a student at the local college, while Jill works the late shift as a waitress. One night, on her way out the door to work, Molly asks her to wake her up when she gets back at 630 the next morning so Molly can wake up and study more for her mid terms. Jill works her shift, and a nice man tips her $20 for a cup of coffee. When she gets home, she finds out that Molly is gone - there is no sign of forced entry, but Molly is missing.
Jill immrediately goes to the cops, and this is when we learn that she had been kidnapped earlier, and thrown down a hole and tortured for weeks. After she managed to escape from the pit on her own, the authorities couldn’t find any sign of her abduction, and ruled the whole thing to be made up. Hence, when she comes to the police with the story, they don’t believe her at all. Convinced the police aren’t going to help her out, Jill begins to track down her sister.
As she speaks to her neighbors, and other various people around town who give her leads, she has to dodge the police. First she pulls a gun on a dude at a locksmith, then she runs, and her shrink calls her and tells her to come to her office to talk things out, but Jill realizes that her shrink is just working with the police, trying to bring her in.
As she closes in on the culprit, finding out what hardware store he goes to for his torture materials, Molly’s boyfriend calls to tell her that Molly came home, and Jill again surmises that the bf is also working with the cops, so she hangs up on him too. She finally learns who the killer is, and he leads her back into the woods, back to the hole where she was first captured.
In the interim, Molly manages to escape from where she was being captured, which also turned out to be right beneath Jills house. Jill tricks the killer into thinking she climbed into the hole, and when he shows up to gloat, she surprises him from behind, shoots him in the leg, and pushes him into the hole, and takes away the ladder. The cops text her telling her they found her sister, and she comes back home to find Jill and told the cops that she made the whole thing up, so that they don’t go looking for the killer, who is still alive, trapped in his own hole.
Overview: Ehhh, I don’t know what to think about this one. Its an okay thriller, but that’s all its going to amount to be. Its a about a girl who is sort of experiencing ptsd, except she’s not this time, and everone else thinks she is. It’s pretty standard. There isn’t enough suspense contained in what’s actually happening. She spends all of her time either whining to the cops, or coming up with half-cocked stories to make the local townspeople give out other people’s personal information. The way she sort of buys right into the killer’s talking is a little weird, and its sort of explained when she has the tables turned on him, but its not handled well. There is no ultimate conflict. Nothing is on the line - Molly escapes by herself, Jill’s actual interaction with the killer spans no more than.... 45 seconds of total screen time for the total feature? That isn’t an antagonist. And pointing out that the cops are the antagonists is just weak. Think about a good horror or thriller movie, and the protagonist always gets away by the skin of their teeth: bloodied, broken, scarred for life, barely alive, but alive nonetheless. People live for
the protagonist’s “Bitch, what?!?” moment in a movie, when revenge is finally exacted, but the protagonist has to earn it. That doesn’t happen here. Moreover, the villain is as good as killed off, all but cutting off any possiblity of a more boring franchise. PASS.
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