If I had legs I would kick you it's the least amount of enjoyment you'll get from watching a good movie this year. With stunning sound design, outstanding performances, and characters who make frustratingly bad decisions, the film is as unrelentingly claustrophobic as a stress dream.
Rose Byrne plays Linda, the mother of a child suffering from an unknown disease. Her husband (Christian Slater) is out of town for work, and a flood in the apartment means Linda and her baby are forced to move into a dingy motel. Byrne is bursting at the seams – she drinks bottles of wine, washes it down with junk food, returns to her empty apartment when she should be looking after her daughter, and finds herself caught up in the dark web of machinations of a guy who works at a motel (played charmingly by A$AP Rocky). She's clingy with her annoying (surprisingly non-comedic) therapist. Conan O'Brien) – which is made worse by the fact that Rose is a therapist herself and also manages the emotions of her overly demanding patients.
Distraught over her daughter's health but unable to rise to the occasion, Linda makes one bad choice after another – Byrne captures the character's convulsions perfectly, switching between outbursts of anger and attempts at politeness, her furtive eyes betraying the anxiety behind her smile. The sounds of medical equipment heighten the tension, and the eerie chasm in the ceiling of Linda's apartment adds a touch of horror-movie surreality to the psychological despair.
It's like one of those “adult” memes taken to the absolute extreme – a reminder that adults are often just as screwed up as their teenage peers, and that being a parent certainly doesn't make anyone capable of making good decisions.
