Genre: Drama
Director: Matt Ross
Writer: Joshua Collins
Based on the novel by Jodi Picoult
Cast: Elsie Fisher, Alex Garfin, Kate Hudson, Pedro Pascal, Aaron Eckhart, Melanie Lynskey, Timothy Simons, Peyton Wich, Jahi Di'Allo Winston, Sadie Stanley, Ian Patrick
Plot: At the start of the film, we see slow motion as a group of kids are seen playing and laughing on a playground. Overheard, is a narration of Josie Comier (Elsie Fisher), “In nineteen minutes, you can mow the front lawn, color your hair, watch a third of a hockey game. In nineteen minutes, you can bake scones or get a tooth filled by a dentist; you can fold laundry for a family of five. Nineteen minutes is how long it took the Tennessee Titans to sell out of tickets to the play-offs. It's the length of a sitcom, minus the commercials. It's the driving distance from the Vermont border to the town of Sterling, New Hampshire. In nineteen minutes, you can order a pizza and get it delivered. You can read a story to a child or have your oil changed. You can walk a mile. You can sew a hem. In nineteen minutes, you can stop the world, or you can just jump off it.”
As the narration draws to a close, the camera slowly zooms in on a young boy standing alone at the playground as the group of kids play around him. “In Nineteen minutes,” Josie’s narration continues, the boy tilts his head down with a fierce stare and we cut to black, “You could get revenge.”
We are introduced to our main characters going about their day in small town of Sterling New Hampshire, so small that everybody knows everybody. Alex Comier (Kate Hudson), a judge, is on her way to work. Lacey Houghton (Melanie Lynskey), a midwife, is busy with a patient giving birth. Lacey’s husband, Lewis (Aaron Eckhart) is in the middle of a class lecture at Sterling College. Patrick Ducharme (Pedro Pascal), a detective is caught in traffic on his way to work as there is a car accident on his path. Josie Comier is at school, with her boyfriend, Matt Royston (Peyton Wich), wrapped around her. He is Sterling High’s star hockey player. They meet up with friends at the school.
A little time passes and Patrick hears on the police radio that all available units go immediately to Sterling High and there is an active shooter at the school. Patrick manages to wedge himself out of the traffic and heads to the school. When he gets there, an onslaught of police surround the building as kids who rushed out of the school are there waiting for their parents to get them. Patrick and the police run into the school, Patrick steps around people either injured or killed to find the shooter, whom he finds in the locker room with Matt Royston laying dead on the locker room floor, Josie is laying beside him with blood running down her head. Patrick sees a boy, Peter (Alex Garfin), sitting down on the ground and leaning up on the bottom locker. Patrick, unaware at first, asks Peter where the shooter is. Peter doesn’t respond, but holds a gun to his own temple. Patrick orders Peter to drop the gun. Peter decides not to shoot himself and disarms, allowing police to flood in and cuff him. Josie begins to stir, Patrick notices her and gets down to the floor on her level. Josie can hardly talk, but Patrick has a quick vision of his Goddaughter, Tara, painting his toenails not even 24 hours before the incident.
We flash back to twelve years before, Peter and Josie are 5 years old and on their first day of kindergarten. Both of their mothers, Alex(Josie) and Lacey(Peter) are friends, therefore, Peter and Josie became friends by that association. Peter has an older brother, Joey, who does his job as an older sibling in teasing his younger brother. Like Peter being excited to start kindergarten with Joey quipping, “Its just school, don’t be such a loser.” Peter gets on the school bus and Josie calls out to him that she has a seat saved for him. He sits next to her and shows her his Superman lunchbox. Not before another kid on the school bus takes the lunchbox and throws it out the bus window.
Later on, Alex gets a call from the school that Josie had been fighting. She said she hit a kid for picking on Peter. Alex tells her “what’s always the best thing, isn’t the right thing,” Meanwhile, Lacey is talking with the school about Peter being bullied and they offer little to no help in solving the problem, saying some kids are just the fall guy. Lacey tells Peter that she will punish Peter if he doesn’t stand up for himself.
During an open house at the school, Lacey and Alex witness Josie and Peter playing house together, showing how close they’ve become as friends. But soon after, during another playdate at Peter’s home, Alex and Lacey discover the kids playing in the basement, Josie holding a gun owned by Lacey’s husband, Lewis. This causes Alex to forbid Josie from playing with Peter outside of school anymore.
We now flash forward to present day in the wake of the incident. The kids that survived the incident are released from the hospital. Most of them permanently injured, but Josie came out unscathed, aside from the aforementioned small head gash. Peter is walked to a room where he can meet his defense lawyer, Jordan McAfee (Timothy Simons). They don’t get much time to speak, and Peter only asks, “how many did I get,” to which Jordan doesn’t answer.
The small town of Sterling is now the center of a media circus. Lewis Houghton is forced by Sterling University to “take time off” without any promise of being able to return, even when/if the circus blows over. Even Lacey is feeling the pressure, losing patients because they don’t want the mother of a murderer near their newborn babies. In deep mourning over losing Matt, Josie tries to attempt suicide by taking too many sleeping pills, but she ends up spitting the pills out and wails on the bathroom floor, Alex finds a way to reach her daughter and try to console her. We learn a little about some of the victims of the shooting: Kaitlyn, a student with Downs Syndrome. Topher, the school’s marijuana dealer. Edward McCabe, the only teacher killed, who died trying to protect his students. Edward is also gay. Matt, Josie’s boyfriend. Courtney (Sadie Stanley), Josie’s friend.
Patrick does some investigating detective work to help build the case against Peter. One interesting piece of evidence is a yearbook with many of the students’ pictures circled, and Josie’s is the only one with an ‘X’ over her picture, with the words, ‘Let Live’ written underneath. He also finds that there was another gun used with an inconclusive print on it that supposedly didn’t belong to Peter, and that Matt Royston was the only one shot twice.
We get a flashback to five years before, when Peter and Josie are still hanging out at school. They have sense forgotten why they aren’t permitted to be together outside of school, but they’ve made it work. Peter is still being teased, mainly by Matt and his best friend, Drew (Jahi Di'Allo Winston). Josie is questioning whether she is friends with Peter because she wants to be or has to be. She is growing up and its no longer cool to be seen with Superman notebooks or lunchboxes anymore. Peter is also excited to be able to go hunting with his dad, a promise he made to him for years, and it was something Peter’s brother, Joey, couldn’t do because he couldn’t stand the sight of blood, the one thing Peter had over Joey. Lewis takes Peter hunting, and just as Peter is about to fire at a deer, he found he couldn’t kill the deer. Peter was also forced to play soccer during this time as a means to help him socialize and ‘fit in’ with the other kids. He mainly rode the bench, and his mother, who came to one of his games, embarrasses him by confronting the coach on not letting him play a game in front of the rest of the kids.
At this age, Peter had one chance to fit in with the kids. He was sitting behind one of the girls in class and noticed her seat was bleeding. Peter called out in front of the class ‘Delores(the girl in question)’ is having her period! This opened the door for the rest of the kids to join in and tease Delores. Peter got to be the talk of the town, gossiping about what he saw. The kids even planned to come to class and hand out tampons to Delores. Peter was going to join in, but he saw Delores was trying not to cry and he saw the kid that spent his school career being teased like this and telling the other kids to stop. It was Josie’s turn to drop a tampon at Delores’ desk, Peter tried to protest, but Josie chose “the popular crowd” by letting the tampon roll off her fingers and land on Delores’ desk, saying “Oops”
Most of the ‘current day’ scenes take place some time after the school shooting. Josie trying to figure out how to move on. Matt’s friend, Drew, tries to hit on Josie, but she turns him down, saying she isn’t ready to move on from Matt. Patrick’s story is of him investigating and forming a relationship with Alex. Alex was initially going to be the judge for the case, but she steps down when Josie would eventually be called in as a witness. Jordan is working hard to build his defense case for Peter, citing Peter was suffering from PTSD after all the years of bullying and didn’t know what he was doing at the time of the shooting. He also endures some attacks from the public of his own, like having his tires slashed. We also learn that Joey Houghton, who joined in on the bullying, died in a car accident by an impaired driver. He also had a heroine addiction, which Lacey tried to cover up because she couldn’t accept her kid as nothing but perfect. We witness Lewis and Lacey’s marriage crumble as time goes on. There is one scene where Lewis visits the gravesites of the Sterling High victims. Lacey catches Lewis going to the graves and confronts him for not so much as seeing his son in prison but has been visiting the victim’s graves. Lewis admits he favored Joey over Peter and though he mourns for what his son did, he mourns even more for the victims.
We gets some insights into Josie and Matt’s relationship in the flashbacks. There was a point where Matt flat out attacked Peter right in front of her. She attempts to question why she can’t just leave Peter alone. They have some heated scenes where Matt turns his bullying onto Josie, like a part where they are at a party and Matt wants to leave, Josie wants to stay, Matt grabs her so hard he leaves a bruise on her arm. He also calls her a slut in front of the partygoers.
There is a point when Josie finds out who her biological father is and she asks Matt to take her to meet him. Her father is a politician, Logan Rourke, who was Alex’s law professor. When Josie comes over to meet him, Logan tries to bribe her go away. This upsets Josie, and Matt takes the opportunity of one of her most vulnerable moments to manipulate her into having sex with him in his car on the way home from Logan’s house.
There was a point when Peter was into computer game development. He and a friend he made while playing soccer, Derek, designed a first-person-shooter game at a high school. Peter even blurted out to Derek, “Wouldn’t this be cool when it actually happens?”
There was a point when Peter was into computer game development. He and a friend he made while playing soccer, Derek (Ian Patrick), designed a first-person-shooter game at a high school. Peter even blurted out to Derek, “Wouldn’t this be cool when it actually happens?”
There is a point in the film where Josie and Peter rekindle their lost friendship not too long before the shooting. They ended up getting a job together at an Office Depot type of store, running the photo-copying and printing department. It was almost like time hadn’t passed much between them. They didn’t have to deal with the stress and peer pressure of school or having to be perfect at home. They could be themselves. Josie confided in Peter that her relationship with Matt isn’t perfect and how shes happy that Peter could be himself in school and not have to feel like he’s playing a role. He tells her it doesn’t have to be like that for her, but she doesn’t quite listen. This part of their friendship doesn’t last too long: Peter does a school project about popularity for a math class. One of the kids asks Peter what a ‘bridge’ is, and Peter explains its a person that falls into several groups, like Josie for example. Josie doesn’t take this too well. Causing another rift in their friendship.
Peter gives a testimony where he explains what exactly it was that caused him to do what he did, much to the protest of his attorney, but Peter wanted to do it. We see the testimony play out as Peter recalls what happened: He was realizing he loved Josie and wrote a love letter he intended to give Josie. The letter never made it to Josie, as it was intercepted by her friend, Courtney. Courtney and Drew decide to write up the letter and spam it to the entire student body. This only embarrasses Josie even more, and Josie completely cuts ties with Peter. After the letter issue blew over, Peter woke up on the day of the shooting. He had to print up some schoolwork and fumbled around with his glasses on his desk. The glasses fell over and he squinted really hard to try to find the files he was looking for. He leaned down to grab his glasses and put them on, only to come face to face with the dreaded letter. He must have accidentally clicked on the file, and seeing it as clear as day again with his glasses on, it all flooded back to him. He waited until his parents left for work before he started stuffing a bag full of guns and pipe bombs.
In the present day, it is time for Josie to give her testimony in court. After she had claimed to Patrick that she couldn’t remember anything about the school massacre, due to her mind blanking out the incidents, the memories came flooding back. She thought about the times Matt abused her, there was even a time when he threatened to kill her by crushing her windpipe and how she said hated him. We see her recall the moment in the locker room when her and Matt are cornered by Peter.
A gun falls out of Peter’s bag and lands at Josie’s feet. Josie picks up the gun and points it at Peter. Peter tries to reason with Josie, Matt yells at Josie to shoot Peter and to not be an idiot. Peter yells at Matt to not talk to her like that. Josie closes her eyes, barely puts her finger on the trigger and fires the gun. We see that Josie shot Matt in the stomach. Matt falls over, “You…you shot me you fucking bitch.”
Josie, caught up in the stress of the moment and registering what she did, asks Peter to help. Peter walks up to Matt, stares down at him, a camera shot of the barrel points at Matt, curled up from the first wound to his stomach, stares up at Peter. Josie screams at Peter, “No!” Peter shoots Matt in the head.
Josie is in shock, stares at Peter. Peter tells her not to worry, that he will take all of the blame and nobody will have to know what really happened. She faints, and hitting her head on the locker room floor is where she had the bloody gash from earlier.
In the end, Peter is still found guilty and sent to life in prison. Josie is sent to prison, but given a lesser charge of five years. Alex and Patrick are in a relationship and expecting a child. Lacey and Lewis are divorced.
In prison, Peter stuffs a sock in his throat, and as he begins to choke himself, we see an image of the same little boy from the beginning, now riding alone in the back of a school bus. No idea where he is going, just a lone image of a young kid lost in his thoughts. He stares out the window and a smile slowly grows on his face.
The end.
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