Six months earlier, while exiting an interstate ramp, Devon (Allyson Sereboff) was struck head-on, by an elderly woman who accidentally drove up the ramp in the wrong direction, ON to the OFF ramp. The old woman died instantly, but Devon luckily walked away with only scrapes and bruises on her hands and face, and a compound fracture in her right leg. Now, stuck at home and in the process of recovery, she is still unable to walk without the assistance of a cane. Her husband Mike (Scott Lewis) works construction during the day, while her sisters - the cynical Virginia (Sharon Maguire) and the perky Alex (Steffi Kammer) - often stop by to check on her.
Still feeling the trauma of the accident, Devon is getting tired of the daily grind. She runs into an old high school friend, Wojo (McKey Carpenter), who has become a famous rockstar. Then Devon’s inner questions start to bubble to the surface and everything begins to explode.
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One of my favorite parts of this movie was the acting, which was mostly very natural and real. I couldn’t tell whether it was all scripted dialogue or if some was improvised. It seemed evident that these actors and actresses were all very comfortable with each other, which is a huge asset for a filmmaker. I also noticed that the three girls – Devon, Virginia, and Alex – actually look similar enough to be sisters.
There were a couple of scenes that puzzled me a bit, though. In one scene, when Mike gets home from work, he and Devon start to get frisky, then right in the middle of everything, Devon suddenly panics and tells him to stop. This initially seemed odd to me, as she had certainly seemed just as eager as he was. Later on in the movie, Devon confesses that she and Mike hadn’t had sex at all in the whole six months since the accident; that every time they tried, she got flashbacks of her accident. This is somewhat understandable, since Devon seems to be suffering from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), but while this type of behavior might seem normal for a rape or assault victim, it does seem slightly odd that Devon would react that way because of a car crash. Either way, inserting some sort of flashback in this sequence would help indicate that the trauma of her accident continues to cause problems between Devon and Mike. These flashbacks could be done in black and white, and simply be composed of stock footage, if necessary.
Toward the end of the movie, Alex, Virginia, and Virginia’s former flame Jason, are hanging out together, playing games and drinking, over at Devon and Mike’s. After a brief montage with music, in which Devon seems to be getting more and more irritated – a fact that goes unnoticed by the rest of the company – Devon suddenly jumps up, grabs the phone, and locks herself in the bedroom. This is only the beginning of a huge blowout that soon erupts between the family members. While it is clear that Devon’s frustrations were building for a while, it didn’t seem like there was a big enough “spark” to set her off in such a way.
