Institute History
Description
Fertility doctor Sarah begins her beloved daughter Mia’s seventh birthday expecting nothing amiss. But as an ominous wind swirls in, Sarah’s carefully controlled world begins to alter. Mia begins behaving oddly and a rabbit appears outside their front door — a mysterious birthday gift that delights Mia but seems to deeply disconcert Sarah. As days pass, Mia becomes increasingly not herself, demanding to see Sarah’s long-estranged, hospitalized mother (the grandmother she’s never met before) and fraying Sarah’s nerves as the child’s bizarre tantrums begin to point her toward Sarah’s own dark history. As a ghost from her past re-enters Sarah’s life, she struggles to cling to her distant young daughter.
Director Daina Reid crafts an exquisitely fine-tuned psychological thriller, elegantly incorporating unsettling visual and aural cues to signal how destabilized Sarah’s world has become, in perfect complement to screenwriter Hannah Kent’s captivating excavation of the character’s most deeply guarded secrets and lingering traumas. Sarah Snook does fascinating work, as the desperate mother’s escalating loss of control unearths hidden and complex layers of her identity.