SPOILER ALERT: the following article contains massive spoilers, including the ending. If you have not yet seen the movie, proceed at your own risk, or better, come back to this article later!
An isolated teen discovers her mother’s sinister secret.
SPOILERS AHEAD
Run Plot Summary and Synopsis
Diane Sherman gives birth prematurely to a daughter whom she later sees lying in an incubator, surrounded by hospital staff. The screen reads the definitions of arrhythmia, hemochromatosis, asthma, diabetes, and paralysis.
Seventeen years later in Pasco, Washington, her now-teenage daughter Chloe awaits university acceptance letters but Diane repeatedly stops her from seeing the mail. Chloe finds green capsules prescribed to her mother. Chloe checks the bottle and finds a pharmacy label with her name covering Diane’s. She tries to look up the name of the drug, Trigoxin, but their internet no longer works. She dials a stranger from her mom’s bedroom, where the only landline in the house is and asks him to look up the drug. The man tells her it’s a heart medication and that all pictures of the medication show a small red pill.
Chloe asks her mother to take her to the movies. During the movie, while pretending to go to the bathroom, she rushes to the pharmacy across the street. The pharmacist refuses to tell her what the medication is at first but eventually reveals that it’s a relaxant called Ridocaine, meant for dogs. When Chloe asks what would happen if a human took the medication, the pharmacist says that one’s legs could go numb and Chloe begins to hyperventilate. Her mother finds and sedates her and takes her home.
Chloe wakes up in bed and finds her door locked and chained so she is unable to escape. When she notices her mother’s car isn’t there, she drags herself out of the window, eventually making her way to her mother’s bedroom window. She begins to have an asthma attack and rushes for her inhaler. She tries to get on the ramp that allows her to go downstairs, but the wires have been cut. Chloe throws her wheelchair down the stairs and tumbles down after it.
On the road, she sees the mail truck and rushes to stop it. She explains what her mother is doing as Diane drives past, spotting Chloe’s wheelchair and stopping. The driver tells Diane he can’t let her take Chloe, and Chloe tells the mailman she wants to go to the police. However, while he is closing up the van to take Chloe to the police station, Diane stabs him with a sedative syringe. Chloe awakes in the basement with her wheelchair chained.
She discovers all her college acceptance letters, photos, a death certificate that shows a girl named Chloe died two hours after her birth, as well as an article about a couple who had their baby stolen. She finds a picture of herself as a toddler, walking. When Diane enters, Chloe accuses her of factitious disorder imposed on another and asks if she was ever really sick. Diane insists everything she ever did was to help and protect Chloe while filling a syringe with paint thinner to make her forget. Chloe is able to crawl away and lock herself in a cupboard. Afraid her mother might try to kill her and realizing her mother needs her Chloe drinks from a bottle of organophosphate, forcing Diane to rush her to hospital.
Chloe wakes in a hospital bed unable to move or speak, with Diane watching through the window. She signals to a nurse, who brings her pen and paper. A code blue is called and the nurse rushes out. Diane takes advantage and sneaks in to retrieve Chloe. The nurse finds Chloe missing, with “mom” written on the paper. After suspicions from a doctor questioning why Chloe has had a dozen primary doctor changes in the past six years, security is informed. Rushing to escape to the car, Diane pushes Chloe towards the exit but is stopped by stairs. Pulling out her gun, she panics and Chloe locks the chair so Diane can’t move her. After telling Chloe she just wants to protect her, Chloe says she doesn’t need Diane as the police show up. Diane raises her gun and they shoot her in the arm, causing her to fall down the stairs.
The Ending
Seven years later, Chloe wheels into a correctional facility, and uses her cane to go through the medical detector, showing she has gained partial mobility in her legs again. She visits someone in the infirmary ward and begins talking about her wonderful husband, children, and job. The screen pans to her decrepit, sick mother, immobile in bed. Pulling the green pills out of her mouth, Chloe tells her mother she loves her and to open her mouth.
Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 3.0).