This post WILL contain spoilers, so if you feel like you’ve read too much, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

I am not a professional movie reviewer. I do not hold a degree in the arts or theater. I’m just another Joe Schmo with an opinion and an open mind, especially after seeing a particular post about horror movies and trauma (Link to Instagram Post and this one right here is the link to the podcast episode). I’m also not a licensed therapist or anything of the sort. I do not hold a degree in psychology or possess specialized knowledge about how the brain works. 
The “We” I am referencing in this post is my personal experience and how I’m tying it to the antagonist of the movie. If you happen to relate, please consult a licensed medical professional, as I am not one, and neither is ChatGPT.

Grief is the anguish experienced after a significant loss, usually the death of a beloved person. https://www.apa.org/topics/grief Adapted from the APA Dictionary of Psychology

Now, this is essentially going to be about the seven stages of grief and how I saw it expressed and executed in the movie, and how I’m currently processing grief in my life. Please reference the psychological definition of the word ‘grief’ above. This is important as I will not be associating grief with the death of someone in particular, as someone in the movie is.

Please note that grief comes in various forms, and everyone processes it differently. Grief is not linear, and there is no timeline on when someone is done grieving. That being said, someone could be on two different stages of grief while simultaneously dealing with two distinct forms of ends – whether that be the end of someone’s life, the end of a relationship, or a situation. 

The Seven Stages of Grief: 

For the sake of the premise, there is a brother and a stepsister. The father of the brother marries the mother of the stepsister (the movie does not talk about what happens to the mother, so neither will we). The stepsister has partial blindness, meaning they can see shapes and light but nothing else. Towards the beginning of the movie, the siblings are home from school, and the father has locked himself in the bathroom. The brother is then able to unlock the door with a butter knife, and once he swings the door open, the father is dead on his back, foam and blood covering his mouth. Because the stepsister is partially blind, she asks and yells to tell her what is happening and to confirm that their dad is okay. The brother does not speak because of what he sees. The stepsister finds out in one of the worst ways possible – she touches her father’s face and realizes that he is not moving. The brother remains silent. The screen is fogging up with the realism that they are in the bathroom, which brings us to our first stage of grief – Shock or denial. 

1. Shock – I am 30 years old. I found out a little more than three years ago that grieving is not just something someone does when they experience the death of another human being that they knew or were relationally close to. I’m not sure if I mean this in a funny way, but ever since I learned this, I have come to realize that I have been in a lifelong state of grief. I know this may sound dramatic, but it is true. Because I was given the information and permission to grieve, I was able to do this with not only every single past version of myself that people knew, but I was also able to realize the shock and denial of the death of all my familial relationships that I once held so deeply. 

The shock comes in waves of “had I done this or done that, been this way or acted like this in this situation, I wouldn’t have to deal with the ending of this.” Why is this happening? Why did this happen? How could I let this happen?

2. Denial – The movie effectively captured this aspect when the siblings end up being adopted by a mother named Laura. They have no idea who this person is before living with her. In the movie, there is a scene where the brother and Laura are sitting back to back on chairs. They’ve had a few too many to drink, and they start to tell each other private, heartbreaking scenarios of their lost loves. Laura’s daughter died while drowning in their pool. The best form of denial is when Laura brings up the fact that the brother’s father, who they’ve now buried, used to beat the son before and during the integration of the stepsister and the stepsister’s mom. The son had so much pent-up anger towards his father that when the stepsister was eight years old, the son hit her. The heartbreaking part is that we don’t know this is true until the very end of the movie. The part of denial is when Laura briefly mentions this to Andy, the brother, while they are sitting back to back, and he immediately questions her statement. The conversation ends up getting redirected to how Andy’s father would hit him on regular occasions, and never once did he touch Piper, the stepsister. 

For the longest time, I did not want to be gay. I hated myself, my brain, my body, my soul. Even as an adult at 27 or 28 years old, I did not fully come to accept that I was a blazing homosexual. Because of my drug addiction and my poor decision to not use a condom when having wild sexual encounters, I was diagnosed HIV positive. I had so many thoughts when I received this diagnosis. “Had I not been gay, this would’ve never happened.”, “If my parents had just accepted me and not thrown me out, I wouldn’t have resorted to drugs to find acceptance and freedom.”, “If I don’t take my bloods or do my blood work, then I’ll develop AIDS and I can end my life and put everyone out of their misery.”. 

All these ifs, and’s, and but’s were keeping me from moving forward. I was the ultimate gaslighter towards myself. I put the victim suit on, poured gasoline all over myself, and I’m the one who lit the match. Because I was denying my feelings of unworthiness and masking them with entitlement, I only exhibited internalized homophobia. Because I was denying my addiction to drugs, attention, and sex, I had absolutely no care in the world whose life I also ripped to shreds in the process. 

Denial is a river, and it can drown you unless you know how to swim. 

3. Anger – In all the movies I’ve seen, the emotion of anger is best represented through physical activity, and sound, whether that’s loud grunts and scrunched-up faces, or fists punching through walls or people. Andy embodies this characteristic when he is caught in a vulnerable, manipulative moment with Laura, his foster mother. The stepsister, who is partially blind, wakes up from her sleep with a black eye. Though Laura is the one who caused it, Piper says that she smelled her brother. Andy defends himself and denies the accusation, and Laura tells Piper about the physical beatings her brother regularly got from their father. Seemingly stating that because their father beat him, Andy was jealous and hit his sister. In a fit of rage, Andy denies this, yells, and ends up punching through the wall, trying to get Laura to admit the truth. 

I don’t believe I’ve ever exhibited the physical emotion of anger. I always told people that I don’t get angry – that I just get sad and start to cry, which to an extent is true. My anger was always born out of plain and simple fear. Fear of losing people, love, trust, or anything that I thought would keep me protected and safe. So, my anger was when someone found out I was manipulating, and I played the victim card. I took out the victim suit from my closet, ironed it, put it on, and wore it proudly. The only amusing thing about this now is that I’ve come to realize I got this from my dad. All the years that they found out I was gay and hiding my sexuality, how could I do this to him? How could I hurt my family when they snooped and found all my journals, emails, pictures, and porn? I digress. Although yes, my actions as a kid and a young adult were not at all the gold standard of living, my parents were the ones actively seeking this. It’s not my fault they went looking through my emails, text messages, and journals. Nonetheless, I’m the one who played the victim to everyone around me. My pain was used as a manipulation to get what I wanted. Discovering this about myself in my mid-to-late twenties was both eye-opening and horrifying. Becoming self-aware about my character defects gives me no room to play ignorant. 

4. Bargaining – *BIG SPOILER* In the movie, we end up finding out what Laura, the foster mom, intends to do with Andy and Piper. After the death of their father, Andy wants to receive custody of Piper, but he has to wait three months before he can file for custody since then he will be 18. The whole purpose of Laura wanting to adopt Piper was because her daughter had drowned in a pool, but was also blind. Piper, according to Laura, was almost a split image of her now deceased daughter. Laura needs Piper to bring her daughter back, but she also needs to get Andy out of the picture, so she does what she can to deem Andy unfit to raise and receive custody of Piper. There is a scene when Laura and Piper are dancing in the rain, a brief moment after Laura has a bargaining moment – ‘When your brother turns 18, do you think you’ll want to stay with me? And maybe call me your mom?’ This is what Laura asks Piper, to which her response is, ‘I was excited for Andy and me to have our place, but we can visit as much as we can!’ The immediate smile Laura had while asking turned into a sinister, blank, unemotional expression once she heard Piper’s answer. Had Piper’s answer been different, every ritual idea Laura had to bring her daughter back into a body would’ve been out the door. In the movie, you can see the overwhelming sense of guilt she feels, knowing what she’ll have to do. 

I am an addict in recovery. My bargaining was always with the universe and with my constant hatred towards my body, my actions, my words, and thoughts about myself and others. The best way for me to describe this is that I would always ask the universe, Please let me use this drug so I can lose a little bit of weight, and I’ll stop right after. Then I would use and feel immediate guilt and shame. I wanted to be skinny because I hated my body. If I were skinny, then I would feel sexy and feel accepted in the gay community, and guys would like me. This is the mentality I would have. In the rooms of recovery, there is a saying in the cards that we read: “One is too many and a thousand is never enough.” This is what bargaining feels like. 

5. Depression – Throughout the movie, we see Laura exhibit deep depression. She states the emptiness she feels when her daughter dies, and it’s also mentioned that she worked for the agency, where she was able to adopt Piper and Andy,  for almost 20 years. I think it’s important to note that depression does not only exhibit in not taking showers, and not enjoying the things you once did, but also exhibits in maybe someone throwing themselves into a particular thing or hobby and never once acknowledging that they are experiencing a depression episode. This could also be a burning out of things that once brought you joy, and then suddenly feeling a weight of the world on your shoulders, ultimately bringing you to a sluggish and immovable position. 

Also, telling someone, “Have you tried not being sad?” It’s like telling someone who has skin cancer, “Have you tried staying out of the sun?”

6. Testing – A lot of us are in and out of this stage. In the movie, Laura is testing a solution for the entire two hours. If I do this ritual, this should bring back my daughter, and I’ll be able to move on, or asking Piper if she would rather stay with her, because then that would fill the void of losing her daughter. I think that when she first decided to adopt Piper and Andy, she was possibly testing to see if bringing new people into her home would be a good solution for her grief, as she tried to move on. 

For me, testing looks like trying different treatment places that encourage me to look at not only the spiritual aspect of life, but also the very realistic version of what my addiction did to me. The damage it did to my body, and what can I do now to help regulate and take care of it? Testing is when I get to make mistakes and find solutions that work with me, trying to go into finally fully accepting and healing from my grief.

7. Acceptance – In the end, when Laura tries to drown Piper, in the same way her daughter died, she knows she cannot do it. Piper is free, and Laura is in a deep pool of literal sadness. Laura never buried her daughter, but she did freeze her daughter. Her form of acceptance is letting Piper go, grabbing her dead daughter’s body, and she ends up drowning herself in the pool and dying with her daughter. 

For me, acceptance is an ongoing and sometimes scary thing. But without acceptance, I cannot truly heal, love, or grow. I try to put myself in a constant state of acceptance but not in a way where I just accept the worse outcome possible, but in a manner where I take what’s being offered and if I have the power and courage to change what I refuse to accept then make the change and receive something better, greater. Sometimes acceptance is dirty, messy, and leads to separation, but on the other side lies growth, healing, and something new and worth giving my all to.

What are some lies you’ve told yourself when you were grieving?