As the film opens we see a
young girl named Lea (Hannah Westerfield) running through a clearing in the
woods by herself, everything green and lush around her. Soon she and her friend
Jamie are looking down from a cliff at a body of water, where apparently
they’ve come before, thinking to jump but never daring to do so until now, her
last day before she and her parents move away. Lea says: “Last chance. Tomorrow I’m gone.” Jamie is reluctant, perhaps
fearful, but Lea jumps, shouting out for joy as she does, while unknowingly being observed
by another boy. We soon get a sense of the girl’s imagination when in her
clubhouse she sets up three figurines, including a wood carving of a bear, then
sees the real-life versions of the three frolicking together in the field. A
little later, when she finally speaks to Bill (Jay Jay Warren), the boy who was
watching her, she sees a recent wound on his hand. “My dad cut me with a piece of glass,” he tells her. “By accident?” she asks. And what seemed
like the most innocent and idyllic of places in those opening shots now shows
its darker side, as Lea catches a glimpse of Bill’s home life, and also comes
across a crazy person in the woods. On top of that, she witnesses her parents
arguing, and things are beginning to feel out of control for the girl. When she
runs back to her clubhouse to retrieve her figurines, she finds that Bill has
taken the ladder she needs to get up there. And when she confronts him about
it, there is an accident. Then when she finally gets home, she collapses, and
it is unclear just what has happened to Bill in the meantime – and, frankly, to
her. It is a frightening and unsettling moment.
Now an adult, Lea (Elizabeth
Lail) wakes from a nightmare, a man asleep in the bed beside her, his face
hidden, his identity unimportant. When she is out in the street, another man
tries to grab her. This is a hostile world, this city, in contrast to the town
of those opening shots, and we get the sense that her world has been hostile,
in one way or another, ever since the incident. It changed her world, whether
she realizes it or not. She is nervous, and we learn she has been in therapy
and taking medications for a long time. She is also neglecting her work and is
on the verge of being evicted. She is a loner, even canceling lunch plans with
her father. It seems she has never gotten past that incident, and after
collapsing at a pool, her mind takes her back momentarily to that spot in the
woods. After waking in a hospital, she accepts an invitation to travel back
upstate with her father.
“Not much has changed,” her father says when they arrive in town.
And perhaps that is a good thing, for it will more easily allow Lea to face that dark moment from her childhood, a moment that still has a grip on her. And when it all comes back to
her in a rush, she starts to confront her past, to piece it all together, with
the help of Sam (Sean Cullen). Sam is an interesting character, an adult who
had befriended Lea when she was a child and helps her now to discover the truth
of what happened back then. He, like her, is a loner, and certainly has a heart
and a gentle disposition, but leads a somewhat curious life. Perhaps even more
curious is the strange fact that Lea’s father takes her upstate and then
basically disappears from the action. But it is Elizabeth Lail’s excellent
performance that drives the film and keeps us engaged. She is absolutely
phenomenal in this film.
Special Features
The Blu-ray includes a photo
gallery of more than a hundred production stills. The gallery plays without the
need of pressing the arrow key on the remote. The film’s trailer is also
included
Unintended was written and
directed by Anja Murmann, and was released on Blu-ray on April 14, 2020 through FilmRise and MVD
Visual.
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