****

There are so many things out here. And sometimes it’s scary. But that’s ok. Because it’s still just you and me…

This is a difficult film to watch, but you watch it because you know that Ma (Brie Larson) and her son Jack (Jacob Tremblay) will escape. What made the film especially good was how it did not end with their freedom. Lots of films show traumas, but few of them deal with how people respond to traumas. Ma’s character is a bit frustrating because she goes from being the woman she needs to be in order to keep her son alive, to being the girl who was kidnapped as a teenager.

I liked how the film was told/shown through Jack’s seven year-old eyes. We all know only what we know, so it’s interesting to think about Jack’s limited perspective. Judging Jack’s experience it helped remind me that my perspective is a limited one too.

The last point is that I find it interesting how vilified the media and news organizations are in film. In this case I think that it might be almost a fair criticism to show the hyper judgmental, dishonest Nancy Grace or Tucker Carlson type. This is a tense, sobering film that there is no great time to watch, but equally it is a film that will be very good at any time.