BEFORE: I chose this as a possible Mother's Day film months ago, based solely on the plot synopsis on IMDB. As it turns out, the theme of mothers and mother-related things started a few days ago, and will continue for a couple days after the holiday, but this is where I wanted to plant the flag for the day. Of course, it was available on Hulu when I made my plan, but I have the worst luck with that service, possibly because I treat it as sort of a third resort, if a film's not available on cable, then I may find it on Netflix, but if I don't get to it in time and it scrolls off Netflix, then I have to see if it pops up on Hulu - which this film DID, only I didn't get to it in time there either, so now I'm ready to watch it, but it's not there. It's on AmazonPrime, sure, but for rental so at that point I might as well just rent it on iTunes for 30 days. I hate to pay an extra $3.99 if I don't have to, but in this case I have to if I don't want to break or re-work my chain. Just somebody, please tell me what the system is, if a film is available on Hulu, why WHY can't it just stay there long enough for me to get to it? I know, every film there is under contract, and every contract ends at some point, it just feels like I rarely get to see anything good on that service before it's gone. (And for some reason, it stays on my Hulu watchlist, which makes me THINK it's still there, only it's not. That's hardly an ideal way to run a streaming service, it just pisses me off.)
Justin Chatwin carries over from "The Chumscrubber".
THE PLOT: A matriarch of a dysfunctional family is pushed to her tipping point by the disappearance of her son.
AFTER: Well, some things turn out the way I want them to, and then again, some things just don't. Of course, any two films viewed next to each other could have some things in common, and then are probably also going to be different in many other ways. But for the second night in a row, it's a film about mothers worrying over their sons going missing, and also, both this film and "The Chumscrubber" raise questions whether the universe has a plan or is just filled with random, occasionally happy, accidents. Damn, I'm questioning reality itself after this one, more about that in a bit. Oh, and SPOILER ALERT if you haven't seen this one, for the umpteenth time this year, it's impossible to talk about this one without giving away some important points.
The good news is that a mother character is front and center here, Nancy Green has four kids, comprised of two adult daughters, one teen daughter, and a son at that very difficult age somewhere between 18 and 30 (honestly, it's difficult to tell with Anton Yelchin, he played teenagers in movies when he was WELL into his 20's) where he's deep into drugs or alcohol, questioning his sexuality and for some reason, very liable to trash a hotel room. Meanwhile, the oldest (?) daughter, Elisa, is some kind of pop star (or overnight YouTube music sensation, it's tough to tell) who's been disowned by her mother (or has kicked her mother out of her life, this is also tough to tell). The next oldest (?) daughter, Madeline, seems to have her life together (but then, why is she moving back home for a while?) and the teen daughter, Lily, has been diagnosed as possibly bipolar (like her brother?) and is seeing a therapist while only pretending to take her medication. Again, let me remind everyone that it's National Mental Health Month, and we're deep into some of the same issues raised by "The Chumscrubber" - why are some drugs OK to prescribe while also telling our teens to not self-medicate with recreational drugs? It's just an odd place to draw the line, that's all. I'm willing to bet that marijuana, in its natural form, is probably better for teens in the long run than Ritalin is.
There's plenty of dysfunction to go around here, mom Nancy is concerned for her son, who took off, and has practically given up trying to discipline her youngest daughter, Lily. I guess by the time you get to raising your fourth child it's easier to get them on medication than it is to remain a disciplinarian? The whole family is still trying to recover from the death of Mr. Green, although not much is given here in terms of details about him, like when he died, how he died, what he did for a living to be able to afford such a large house, etc. But the ripple effect is clearly there since every character is pretty messed up in some way. Then there are hints that one or more of the children might have been molested by a neighbor who approached them when the parents weren't around.
I wasn't sure at first if this was another film being told out of sequence, primarily because the film starts with a bunch of fragments (including a clock running backwards) and then each scene after that felt a little disconnected from all the others, so that started to raise my suspicions. A lot of times when this happens lately, it turns out that we're being shown things in non-linear order, and it sticks with me because it usually pisses me off. Most directors who attempt this don't really know how to do it properly, so they end up just making a mess, or they're doing it to cover up those very long, boring allegedly "weak" parts of a story. The first season of "Westworld" notoriously did this too, but some viewers figured it out early and put it out there as a theory that turned out to be right. Umm, I think. And of course, I saw this technique recently being used in "Little Women", which toggled between two different years in the lives of the March sisters, and a big tip-off was that fact that one sister cut her hair very short in the later year, so if you paid attention you could tell when each scene took place by the length of one character's hair.
Early on in "We Don't Belong Here", the son character, Max Green, dyes his hair from brown to blonde, and so I thought, "Ah, geez, here we go again, that's probably going to be important - or at least it's going to be the clue that tells me where we are in the jumping-around-through-the-timeline bit if I pay attention. Perhaps I was overthinking things at this point, or maybe my brain has been broken by too many films that have collectively overused that time-jumping storytelling technique.
Honestly, if that were being used here, and now I'm not sure if it was, that would be the least of my problems with this story. Something else is happening here, something that leads me to question the reality of what we're being shown. A character jumps out of a window and falls several stories, and then appears to be very dead, which would naturally make sense. But then that character is back in later scenes, as if nothing had happened, no damage from the fall. This supports the time-jumping theory, falling from the window could just be that character's final chronological appearance, and everything that comes later maybe just happened before that. But wait, there's more. Another two characters appear to have a very bad accident at another point in the film, and then the next day, they're back in action, too. So, is part of the film a dream, or some kind of alternate reality? We could be in some "Donnie Darko"-like territory if people are on medication and imagining that something's "wrong" with reality, or the meds could cause them to have vivid dreams that would appear just like a section of the film, but does that really answer all of the lingering questions here?
Now, it's possible that this film is just a mess, and that some scenes contradict others, either through simple continuity mistakes, or the fact that Anton Yelchin died in 2016, before the film was released. If he wasn't available for reshoots, perhaps the filmmakers had to work with the footage they had. That's one possibility, however there are ways to film another actor and replace his head or face, so if that's the case, there were other solutions to getting the footage they needed to finish. (EDIT: According to Wikipedia, all filming was completed in July 2014, so there goes that excuse.)
Another theory, and I'll check out the opinions online after I finish typing this, is that nothing is real here (duh, it's a movie, of course nothing is real...) and maybe everyone is in some kind of purgatory or afterlife, and they're trying to work out issues left over from their living lives, and if something really goes off the rails and they die, then they wake up the next day and they're fine, but they've learned a little more about themselves, and with that knowledge they're one step closer to getting out and moving on to the next thing. The title of the film would seem to support this, as does the part near the end where the characters wait to get on a boat, there's something about that which calls to mind Greek mythology and waiting for Charon, the ferryman, to take them across the River Styx to a better place. With all the medications I'm also sort of reminded of the red and blue pills in "The Matrix", and starting the next day over after a disaster also reminds me of "Groundhog Day". But I guess whatever's really going on here is speculative at best, and maybe it's best left up to the viewer? The works of David Lynch, especially the recent re-boot season of "Twin Peaks", would also seem to be a reference point, in a similar way you may end up unsure of a shifting fictional reality.
(BUT, if purgatory looks and feels just like real life, then how do we know that real life is real, that we're all not in some kind of purgatory right now? Wouldn't it make more sense for someone in purgatory or limbo to be AWARE of the fact that they are, so they can atone or make amends or work out whatever issues are keeping them there and preventing them from moving on? Just a thought.)
OK, I checked the reviews on IMDB and there's another theory - some of the scenes that seem out of continuity could be dreams, and one or more characters in the family might have some kind of precognition ability. Damn, I may have to watch parts of this film again to be sure, unless I can find some kind of full explanation online for everything that happens. It's really sort of maddening. Speaking of which, yet another possibility is that the events of this film are viewed through the lens of people who have mental illness or reactions to their medications, and that also could be affecting what we're seeing as "real".
There's a credit at the end thanking the staff of a hotel in Dedham, MA, which is right near where I grew up - that led me to check the filming locations on the IMDB, which happens to list only my hometown! That's odd, but I haven't lived there since 1989, except for short visits, so it's not like I would ever know when a movie was being filmed there. This made me go back and scan through the film at double-speed, looking for places I might recognize - my hometown happens to have a nature reservation, a number of large houses (McMansions, we call them) and also a sort of rehab/clinic facility, which would all fit in with the scenes in this film. (When I was a teen, there were plenty of rumors about famous rock stars who stayed at the "Lodge" in my hometown to get sober, usually involving members of Aerosmith or the J. Geils Band getting clean there. Who knows if any of those stories were true?)
But then I did a little more research on Wikipedia, and it seems most of the film was shot in and around Wellesley and Worcester, MA. This would explain why the high school track didn't seem familiar to me at all. The nightclub scene was shot at Ralph's Chadwick Square Diner in Worcester, and the outdoor scenes were filmed at the Elm Bank Reservation in Wellesley, not the nature preserve in my hometown. Nothing seemed familiar except for one shot, the exterior location of the bookstore, which was right near a theater marquee. I was able to see the address on the door of the shop, and confirmed that was shot in Norwood, MA. I know that theater, it's a local stage for plays now, but it used to be a movie theater, and it's where I saw the first "Star Wars" film back in 1977!
My parents still live in the next town over, so at least something seemed familiar tonight and brought back childhood memories for Mother's Day. So there you go.
Also starring Catherine Keener (last seen in "Sicario: Day of the Soldado"), Kaitlyn Dever (last seen in "Laggies"), Anton Yelchin (last seen in "The Beaver"), Riley Keough (last seen in "The House That Jack Built"), Annie Starke (last seen in "Albert Nobbs"), Molly Shannon (last seen in "Private Life"), Austin Abrams (last seen in "Gangster Squad"), Debra Mooney, Maya Rudolph (last heard in "The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature"), Cary Elwes (last seen in "Billionaire Boys Club"), Michelle Hurd (last seen in "Random Hearts"), Sarah Ramos (last seen in "How to Be Single"), Mary Quick, Mark Famiglietti (last seen in "Secret in Their Eyes"), Adrian Enscoe, Sheila Stasack, Lucinda Jenney (last seen in "Grace of My Heart"), Tamara Hickey (last seen in "Chappaquiddick").
RATING: 3 out of 10 vague predictions from a psychic
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