We first meet Arden (Toni Collette) in the opening section, titled simply The Stranger, as she struggles to care for her abusive mother in what appears to be a rather run-down home. As Arden takes a walk, she comes across something rather unexpected in the field - the body of a young woman. For reasons known only to her, she takes the necklace the girl is wearing, and on returning home, she calls the police.
For a completely unexplained reason - perhaps because her mother wants to continue abusing her all by her lonesome - when she finds out that the police have come, Arden's mother is furious with her. I'm not sure exactly what Arden was supposed to do. Perhaps she should have just left the body in the field to rot and continue to be abused by her mother. I don't think it was really explained, and we are just left to figure out why her mother is so hateful. Maybe you can explain it if you have seen it, but I certainly didn't get it.
In any case, this sets the tone for the rest of the film.
The emergence of a body, and more specifically Arden's role in finding it, lends her a certain amount of celebrity status, something she is certainly not accustomed to receiving. When she goes shopping, she is asked out by Rudy (Giovanni Ribisi), and though she doesn't think she should go, something tugs at her to make the move and get away from her mother. Unfortunately her mother catches her putting on makeup, and that just fuels the fire of her hatred.
On their "date", it comes out that Arden has a fetish of her own. She wants to be tied up, to be ravished, perhaps even raped. This may come from the years of abuse, or from some secret desire that was awakened by seeing the dead body or from some other source, but nonetheless she shares her desires with Rudy, and his own morbid leanings towards the motives of serial killers. Is he the one who killed the dead girl?
Fade to the next section, The Sister, where we meet a forensics student, who thinks that she has found her long-lost sister, and so she can finally meet with some closure. And have we found the focus of the movie? The ability of those touched by The Dead Girl to give closure? Perhaps. I suppose that we'll have to keep moving.
The third section of the movie is The Wife, who hears about the murders, and the suspicions that she has about her husband suddenly take on an entirely new meaning. After all, where is it that he goes all those nights? Where is it that he is staying out to at all hours, and why isn't he at home, in bed all the time? But then, this scene fades to black without closure, so perhaps we're missing the point after all.
Next up we have The Mother, who is looking to find answers on why her daughter left home, and basically to find her own closure about how her daughter is living. Unfortunately, the answers aren't pretty, and to make matters worse, they come from a prostitute. So while this might be some closure, in the sense that she finds her daughter's place of residence - a run-down apartment, an addict girlfriend and a baby that she takes on as her own - her own daughter doesn't seem to be anywhere to be found. So again, the closure seems to be nowhere in sight.
Finally we have The Dead Girl, where we meet Krista (Brittany Murphy) for the first time. It seems that she's in search of her own way out, to get away from her own demons. She's trying to get to her daughter's birthday, but to do so, she's depending on a John, and he doesn't seem to care much about her. Why would he, when he's only paying her for the sex? Still, she manages to convince him to give her a ride, but when he gets a call to go into work early, he can't deliver, so she decides to hitchhike so she can make it on time.
It's Krista's bad luck that she's picked up by the husband who likes to take long rides at night, and it looks like we finally have our closure.
The Bottom Line: Though the movie is shot in near darkness much of the time, giving it the appropriate somber tone, the pace is really slow. Even though it clocks in at just an hour and a half, it seems at least twice as long because it takes so long to unfold. The sections are probably all necessary, but they just move so slowly that it's painful to watch, and getting to the end is really difficult.
Rated R for language, grisly images and sexuality/nudity.
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