Genre: Thriller/Drama
Director: Patty Jenkins
Writers: Rachel Hallett Hardcastle & Rosie JoLove
Based on the novel by Sophie Mackintosh
Cast: Haley Bennett, Zoey Deutch, Cate Blanchett, Sabrina Carpenter, John Gallagher Jr., Haley Joel Osment, Grayson Eddey, Rufus Sewell
Plot: It begins with sisters Grace (Haley Bennett), Lia (Zoey Deutch), and Sky (Sabrina Carpenter) finding that their father, King, is gone and presumed dead. Grace asks her Mother (Cate Blanchett) if she knew about her father's illness, and her mother replies, "As you well fucking know."
Lia cries, but Grace's stoic. Lia notes that their father's bloodstained shoe washed up on the beach. The family goes into mourning, and Mother gives them "insomnia tablets." A week later, the girls awake, and Mother tells them they must love only their sisters.
The girls gather in Mother's room, where irons hung on the wall, part of a family ritual. Names are written on them, and each family member chooses one. The name on the iron they select signifies the family member they are supposed to love. One iron is blank, and the person who determines this iron has "no specific love allocated to her." Grace notes that their father always wanted her name.
Outside, Lia stands beside the swimming pool wearing a dress with weights stitched into it. She jumps in. This is part of another ritual, or "therapy," called "the drowning game." In the past, King (Rufus Sewell) would simply hold the girls underwater. Lia fights her way to the surface and feels a sense of gratitude. Mother would always say that feelings were dangerous in "the old world," especially for women. The girls' island is one of the few "safe places" left in the world.
The girls return to their regular schedule of chores and exercises, though Grace is exempt. At night, Grace can hear Lia weeping through her bedroom wall.
The girls recall past times when the house was occupied by many other women. The women would arrive by boat and then be forced to drink seawater by Mother and King. They'd later be instructed to draw pictures of what they'd suffered on the mainland at the hands of men.
Mother tells the girls that when first arriving on the island, they're riddled with toxins. Lia sees that Grace's stomach's getting more extensive, and she's unsure why, believing she might've contracted a disease. At this time, Grace was a little girl, and Mother's pregnant with Lia. Sky was born on the island ten years later. Later, Grace & Lia talk about King's frequent trips to the mainland for supplies. How he'd quarantine himself afterward in case.
Mother tells Lia and Sky that Grace's pregnant. Meanwhile, Grace goes out into the forest surrounded by a barbed-wire fence. She thinks of King with anger and sadness. Grace sets a fire and stomps it out. Later, Grace gets into an argument with Mother ending w/ Mother slapping her in the face. As Mother walks away, Lia watches Grace expels her hate for Mother.
Five months later
Mother takes the girls outside for therapy and asks Lia to pull a mouse from a box and drown it in a bucket of water, telling her that Sky would have to do it if she refused. Lia drowns the mouse. Next, Mother gives her a toad and a box of matches. Lia begins crying but finally sets the toad on fire to spare Sky. Mother douses the flame immediately, telling Lia, "You passed" The toad hops away.
Lia is awakened in the night by Mother, who locks herself and the girls into her bedroom. They look out the window and see three figures on the beach. They see they're all men.
The following day, the girls watch Mother interact with two men and one boy out the window. The men lost their boat, seeking shelter. They offer to protect the women, but Mother threatens with a knife, leaving them on the beach. Mother returns to the beach the next day and tells the men they can come into the house. Llew (John Gallagher Jr.) and James (Haley Joel Osment) are brothers, and the child, Gwil (Grayson Eddey), is Llew's son. They assure the women that someone will come to rescue them. That night, Lia looks out the window and sees a bird. She notes that the sisters aren't permitted to cry. She does so, anyway.
In the morning, Lia finds Llew in the ballroom playing the piano. They talk briefly but are interrupted by Mother. At breakfast, Mother informs the sisters that they'd never be alone with one of the men. However, Lia already longs to feel Llew. Outside, Mother has the girls practice shooting her gun. Lia goes fishing, and when she returns to the beach, she finds Gwil standing over a dead bird. Lia blows the whistle around her neck, and Mother comes running. She tells Lia to go to the house and get the salt. Mother then declares that the bird is "not a good sign." In her bedroom, Lia removes a knife from her drawer and repeatedly cuts herself on the thigh.
Lia finds herself always watching Llew and noticing him watching her in return. Mother observes this and slaps Lia. She then gives the girls scarves to cover themselves with. The sisters discuss the men. Lia is sympathetic, Sky is somewhat neutral, and Grace dislikes them. Later, Lia has a moment alone with Llew. He tells her she's beautiful, touching her hair.
The next day, Grace warns Lia that she'll get sick from close contact with the men. Lia claims she keeps her distance from them. They see a strange bird in the sky. Later, Lia finds Llew outside and shows him around the forest. She feels both attracted and repelled by him. He kisses her, and she notices a dead mouse on the ground. Llew tells Lia he'd like to be alone with her again. Back at home, she brushes her teeth until her gums bleed.
Mother gathers Lia's getting sick in the morning and demands that she goes into her bedroom and "Meditate upon the irons." Lia receives a note from Llew asking her to meet him by the pool that night. She does, and they sneak off to the beach to make love.
Back at home, Lia finds Grace in labor. Grace delivers her baby, a boy, but it's stillborn. Afterward, Mother makes Sky and Lia get into the bathtub and clean themselves vigorously. Mother then instructs Lia to take the baby out in a boat to drop it into the sea. After doing so, Lia looks at her house, feeling reluctant to go back.
Returning home, Mother further instructs the girls to lie down on the ground. She covers them with a sheet giving them permission to cry for five minutes.
Later that day, Lia looks out the window of her room with binoculars and sees something floating in the ocean. She believes it's a ghost. Seeing it too, Grace tells Lia not to inform Mother of this. Grace says that she's sorry about Lia having to dispose of the baby's body, and Lia responds that she didn't mind because she loves Grace.
The next day, the girls wake to find Mother gone. The men explain that she told them she's going to the mainland to get supplies. Lia seeks Llew out on the tennis court to make love again. Afterward, they talk about their pasts and about the mainland. Llew tells Lia she'd like it there. Lia considers going with him when he leaves but knows that it'd be dangerous for her. More than anything, she wants Llew to love her. Grace & Sky in the house is in Mother's room, looking through her medicine cabinet, finding painkillers and sedatives. In her own room, Lia finds flowers, presumably from Llew. She wants to keep them, but she doesn't want her sisters to see them, so she throws them away.
The following day, Grace and Lia quarrel. Grace's angry that Lia is growing so close to the men, especially Llew. Lia hears music and follows it to the ballroom, where Llew is playing the piano. They go to Lia's room and make love again.
Lia remembers witnessing the water cure ritual once when she was a child. This consisted of Mother holding one of the damaged women's heads down in a saltwater basin until she stopped struggling. Afterward, Lia goes to Mother's room and cleans the irons, as it is "the chore of the one without love to keep them shining."
Lia gravitates more and more towards the men and away from her sisters. Llew gets angry at Lia for staying underwater too long in the pool, as he believed she was drowning. Lia and Llew sneak away to the forest, though Lia's frightened of being spotted by Grace. Lia asks Llew about the mainland, and he gets angry again. She cries, and that only makes him more upset.
Returning to the house, they discover Sky and Grace taunting Gwil, and Llew becomes genuinely furious. The sisters begin panicking that Mother hasn't returned. James tells them they'd return to the mainland with the men when they leave, but Grace's unwilling to entertain the idea. That night, Llew sneaks into Lia's room and sleeps beside her.
Lia wakes up alone, draws a bath, and cuts herself on the thigh. Sky asks Grace to cut her hair. Lia protests, but Grace agrees. Afterward, Grace tells Sky she looks pretty and not to let the men "take liberties." Lia goes to the garden to cry but is discovered by James. They discuss sibling relationships.
That night, Sky has a terrible nightmare. Lia envisions the manipulation tactics used by her parents to discord herself and Grace when they're little. After one of her nightmares, Grace insists on giving Sky "therapy," making her drink several saltwater glasses, followed by glasses of fresh water. Lia returns to her own bedroom and is met there by Llew. She realizes that when Mother returns, these meetings will have to stop.
In the morning, Grace sees Llew leaving Lia's bedroom and lashes out at Lia. Lia runs down to the beach, recalling instances in which she was forced to hurt Grace or Sky under the guise of "therapy" and cut herself afterward.
Lia would wake with a nosebleed in the morning and wonder if the damaged women stopped coming to the island. She finds Llew by the pool, drinking King's liquor. Lia takes a sip but spits it out, and Llew calls her "disgusting." Later, she finds him wearing King's white linen suit. They go to Lia's bedroom, and Llew asks if Lia is taking precautions against pregnancy. She's unsure what he is asking but says yes anyway. Lia finds Grace bathing and sees Grace has also cut her hair. Grace claims that Lia has betrayed her sisters but that she forgives her. She talks about using vinegar and baking soda in a bath to prevent pregnancy, helping Lia understand what Llew asked her earlier. They go into Mother's room and stand before the irons.
The next day, Lia seeks out Llew, who's on the tennis court playing with Gwil. When she asks him if he wants to do something, Gwil responds that he's busy. When she persists, he becomes angry. Lia slaps Llew, and he grabs her wrists, telling her that he doesn't "belong" to her. She goes back to the house and finds James, who's sympathetic to her obvious distress. She kisses him, but he stops her, declaring, "It wouldn't be right. We're not here for that". Lia goes to Mother's room and removes the irons from the wall. She takes them to the forest and hides them in the hollowed-out trunk of a tree.
After dinner, the sisters are sitting on the terrace when they see something floating out in the ocean - another "ghost." They wonder if it's Mother. Grace declares that the sea is "giving up its dead." Everyone's on edge after the appearance of this "ghost," The men begin patrolling the perimeter of the island. While they're gone, the sisters start taunting Gwil again and asking him about his mother. He runs away in tears. The men return, and everyone goes out in search of Gwil, but he's nowhere to be found. Back in the house, Llew locks the sisters in the lounge "For their own protection." Grace is furious.
Grace and Lia exchange passive-aggressive remarks about Lia's relationship with Llew. Llew's patience with Lia begins to fray, and then he becomes downright hostile to her when she begs for his attention on the tennis court in front of Gwil. Later, Grace outright yells at Lia about her selfishness, believing she's putting all of them at risk of disease. However, despite her anger, she still cares for Lia and demonstrates how to avoid pregnancy, though Lia seems to have no concept of how reproduction works.
Lia's unable to cope with the sudden reversal of Llew's feelings and her already precarious emotional stability is threatened by this development. Lia wishes for all other creatures to share in her agony.
Lia's pain is further highlighted in her conversation with James, featuring nuanced commentary on the gap in understanding between the two genders. After telling Lia that it wouldn't be appropriate for the two to have romantic contact, James declares, "It's terrible to be a man sometimes," a statement that Lia finds dubious.
The sisters feel ambivalent about Mother's absence; they're thrilled by the freedom they're experiencing for the first time but also disturbed by that very same freedom and concerned that she hasn't yet returned.
Lia's removal of the irons from Mother's bedroom wall is a symbolic first step towards denouncing the rituals and teachings she was raised with. "Mother will be so angry with me when she returns," Lia declares uneasily, "... But this is what a lack of love does to a person, I will tell her".
After a while, Lia explains to Josh more disturbing details about King and Mother's manipulation tactics, providing insight into the taut relationships between the sisters. She remembers Mother taking away her favorite toy and giving it to Grace, and another instance when she was given more food than Grace at mealtimes. Mother forced Lia to nearly suffocating Grace and rub sandpaper against Sky's skin when they're older. Josh deems it likely that these tactics were meant to breed resentment between the girls, perhaps so they wouldn't band together and turn on their parents.
Llew's callous treatment of Lia has awoken inside her a greater understanding of all her relationships. She sees Mother's behavior as the abuse and even allows herself to feel angry at Grace for her lack of support and compassion. All her life, Lia has been told she is wrong for being emotional, for needing love. Now, Lia has finally begun to understand what her parents have genuinely done to her, and Mother in particular, and she expresses her disgust plainly. She is now coming to the conclusion that it is the others who are wrong.
While looking at the scars on her body, she declares them "the marks that keep us safe," implying that she suffers from a delusion that her family might be harmed in some way if she doesn't cut herself. Later, she notes that, after Mother forced her to hurt Grace and Sky, she would cut herself so that her "suffering matched theirs...A dull harmony of pain". She feels guilty for hurting them, even though it isn't her fault, so she makes herself hurt along with them.
Grace's calm self-possession and stoicism are beginning to dissolve as she loses her patience with Lia and vents her frustration with the presence of the men: "Let the whole world melt, for all the difference it'll make," she says to Lia, "Let the whole thing fall apart." When Grace explains the vinegar and baking soda bath to Lia, Lia finally understands the disturbing reality of how Grace became pregnant, and she's horrified. Still, Grace tells her, "Do not ask me about that...Not ever". She's unable to confide in Lia about her trauma, unwilling to rehash the dark details. Her comments about the "ghost" in the ocean are similarly bleak, as she claims that the sea is "giving up its dead" because "everything's become ruined."
They discover Gwil's body in the forest; he'd gotten caught on the barbed wire fence and then stung to death by hornets. The men carry the body back to the house, locking the sisters in Grace's room. After Sky falls asleep, Lia asks Grace if she believes Mother is dead, and Grace says no. Lia says a prayer for each of her family members. The men return and unlock the door and tell the girls they made food. Llew invites Lia out for a boat ride.
She apologizes for what happened to Gwil. Lia has a panic attack in the boat after seeing that Llew has a knife tucked into his belt. He also has a rope, and ties her up and has consensual sex with her. He tells her that this was the last time. She responds by telling him she loves him. He doesn't reciprocate but tells her that he isn't a good man. Walking along the beach later, Lia finds part of a boat's motor buried in the sand. Back at home in the ballroom, she wishes Llew dead, and then Grace enters, covered in blood.
Grace recalls seeing one of the damaged women at the clinic jump from a window when she was a girl. She has her Mother's gun and knife. James asks Grace to talk, and she takes him to her room. He notes that the mainland is different from what she's been told, that it's safer. James says that the mainland isn't the mainland because they aren't living on an island, that she could get to the outside world by walking through the forest.
In fact, King's there, and he has tasked James and Llew with bringing the girls to him. Other men are arriving to help, and they're already on their way. Grace asks about Mother, and James admits that Llew killed her, though he claims it's self-defense and that King only wanted the sisters to join him. He tells her that "Thirty isn't too old to start all over again." Upset by those words, Grace tells him she won't go with him, then slits his throat. She tells James of King and all of the terrible things he did to her. Grace remarks that he was only her step-father & Lia and Sky are her half-siblings. She's also happy about Mother's death, who'd been behind the more sadistic therapies.
Armed with Mother's gun and knife, Grace gathers Lia and Sky. They determine to kill Llew, and Grace tells Lia they cannot do it without her. Grace watched Lia and Llew's relationship evolve as he gradually lost interest in her. Grace instructs Sky to stay behind in the house while she and Lia go looking for Llew. Grace sets the gun down momentarily, and Llew appears suddenly, picking it up. He asks where James is, and Sky sneaks up behind him, hitting him on the head with a vase. They tie him up and take him to the beach. Grace tells Llew about how many women died because of the water cure. After watching Llew go from understanding to furious, Lia shoots Llew.
The girls perform the water cure on each other. They say, "Goodbye to all of this," and walk into the forest, bending tree branches over the barbed wire fence to move beyond it. They hear voices in the distance and walk on without fear.
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