Warning: very spoilery, obviously, on the last, batshit half hour. (My three-star review is here.)
Anna is sent a photo of herself from an anonymous email account. In the photo she’s sleeping, holding a glass of wine, and the clock behind her says 2.02.
In a very stagey (but enjoyable!) scene Detectives Little and Norelli arrive after she called them about the photo. Norelli suggests Anna took it herself. An angry Alistair, with his wife the actual Jane Russell, arrive, with Alistair furious that Anna has called his Boston office digging around. Anna tells Det Little that Alistair hit Ethan and shows them the sketch “her” Jane Russell drew for her but they believe she drew it herself. David arrives, back from Connecticut where he was the previous night; he has an alibi. Anna tells David she found Jane’s rose earring in his bedroom.
David tells Det Little the earring belongs to a woman named Katherine who spent the night with him the previous week. Anna tells everyone David has been in prison and should not be in New York; and that as he’s been in the Russells’ house to help them with some jobs (he borrowed a box cutter from Anna for this) he therefore must have met her. Anna explains her thinking, like Hercule Poirot fighting for his reputation:
Earring + knife + prison = Anna thinks David is involved.
Fired from job + assistant died + threatened Anna + slapped Ethan = Anna thinks Alistair is involved.
She appeals to Det Little, as a father, that Ethan needs help.
She’s getting confused about the days though, and when she states her husband would believe her, Norelli points out that Anna’s family are actually dead, and her meds make her hallucinate. Anna responds, supposedly to Get Norelli and the others but really to herself: “I don’t know how you can live with yourself if you let something happen to a child!”. The focus is on Anna’s face with darkness all around.
There’s a flashback to their last family holiday together, Anna driving them through the falling snow. It becomes apparent they are in the process of separating because Anna is sleeping with someone else, and her husband never wanted to go on this trip. Her phone rings and she tries to answer it; he suggests it’s her lover. The phone falls on the floor of the car and as she scrabbles for it, the car hits a tree, ending up on its roof. She crawls out but her husband and daughter are dead. When she tries to call for help there’s no signal. The phonecalls we heard her making to them at the beginning of the movie were all in her mind.
Back in her New York brownstone in the present day, everyone is standing stock still. She sees the car on its roof in the next room, snow still falling, and walks towards it.
Jane apologises to the Russells and they leave. At her next appointment with her therapist she tells him she’s been drinking on her meds and hiding her true feelings from him. She explains she just wanted to be “at the centre of something”. David is leaving, and she’s going to change her locks.
She decides to kill herself and crushes her meds, then records a video explaining this, and saying she wants to be forgiven and “do it over”, referring presumably to her family’s deaths.
Looking through pictures of her family on her phone in bed, she sees the last one, the picture of Punch she took when “Jane Russell” came round. She realises Jane’s reflection is clearly visible in a wine glass the photo.
David returns home. She shows him the photo and he tells Anna she is actually called Katie and the one night they spent together was a disaster. He fills her in on anything Katie told him — that’s she was Ethan’s birth mother, and had run off when pregnant, ending up in a drugs commune then prison, and Alistair had got custody of Ethan. The family have been hiding from Katie for years but she had recently tracked them down to New York. We see in a flashback that Katie never actually confirmed herself as Jane Russell when Anna had said it.
David refuses to go to the police and corroborate her story. He stomps off downstairs and she hears a noise. Ethan appears in the doorway, brandishing a bloody knife. He admits he has killed David and is going to kill her. He tells her he killed his father’s assistant Pamela, who died in Boston after apparently falling from her apartment; and he also stabbed his mother Katie to death.
He knows about Anna’s video; he’s been in and out of her house all week, having stolen a key from her. He also knows her family background, as the estate agent told them. The police will think she killed David, and then herself.
He explains that he’s a fledgling serial killer and is still working out his modus operandi, though he already knows he likes to be there as they die.
She says she will kill herself as she doesn’t want to be in a world with him in it as that is “a world of filth”, and starts fiddling with the drugs and wine she was planning on using. She then smashes a wine bottle over his head and runs away, but slips over on David’s blood. He opens his eyes (!) and she struggles upstairs onto the roof with Ethan in pursuit.
It’s dark and the rain is pouring. He stabs her in the cheek with a trowel, and tries to throw her off, but she gets him onto the glass skylight and pushes until it gives way and he falls to his death.
She wakes up in the hospital. Detective Little is there and explains they’ve arrested Alistair and Jane for covering up Katie’s death. David did not survive. Det Little has seen her video suicide note on her phone and leaves it with her so she can delete whatever she wants to before they take the phone as evidence. He also apologises to her for not believing her and says she can expect many other apologies.
Nine months later, we see her smartly dressed in a long camel coat and heels (why are camel coats always used to designate personal put-togetherness?), her hair glossy. She has lost the pasty look of someone who has never felt the wind on her face, or the sun on her skin, and looks a decade younger. She says goodbye to her family in the empty house and that she misses them, then puts Punch in his cat carrier and walks out of the front door.
Outside her removal van is packed up, and she gets into a waiting taxi which drives her away.
I told you it was gloriously nuts!
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