Cassidy Glass

What was this? A public service announcement on how to be the most ineffective parent imaginable? Julianne Moore plays a woman so devoid of agency, I started to wonder if she was being held hostage off-screen. Her daughter shows up a total wreck—drugged out, manipulative, and dangerous—and Moore’s response is basically, “Let me throw my entire life in the trash to help you clean up your latest disaster, sweetheart.” This isn’t motherly love. This is willful, delusional martyrdom wrapped in a Patagonia fleece. At every possible turn, she makes the worst choice imaginable. And not in a compelling, tragic, Greek-myth way. No—more in a “how did anyone greenlight this script” way. The stakes are supposedly high, but when the main character responds to escalating danger with a mix of blank stares and whispered concern, you start rooting for natural selection. And don’t even get me started on the ending. I won’t spoil it, but let’s just say it made me want to mail the screenwriter a copy of Boundaries for Dummies. The scenery was lovely, but unless you’re watching with the sound off and pretending it’s a tourism ad for rural Pennsylvania, skip it. Or better yet, show it in parenting classes as a “What Not To Do” case study.