Divorced father Jay, played by Peter Sarsgaard (Presumed Innocent, The Bride) is driving his 15-year-old daughter Kayla, played by Joey King (the first time I've seen her since Fargo, where she played Colin Hanks' character's spunky daughter), to a weekend ballet retreat. En route, they spot Kayla's friend Britney, played by Devery Jacobs (Reservation Dogs), waiting at a snowy bus stop and offer her a lift. During the short trip, we see Britney briefly flirting with Jay while Kayla looks on disapprovingly in isolated rejection.
During a break for a pee in a remote, snow-covered forest, Jay hears Kayla scream. He runs over to find Kayla sitting distraught on the ledge of a bridge above a rushing river. Kayla tearfully confesses that she pushed Britney off the bridge into the water after an argument. Unable to find Britney’s body in the icy river, Jay panics. Rather than calling the police, he takes Kayla and Britney’s left-behind purse straight to his ex-wife Rebecca, played by Mireille Enos (who we have recently seen in For All Mankind), an attorney.
Desperate to protect Kayla from prison, Jay and Rebecca attempt to hide the crime. They decide to frame Britney’s father, Sam, played by Cas Anvar (The Expanse). Sam phones the police because he gets the distinct impression, quite rightly, that the three of them are covering something up! They falsely tell police detectives that Sam was abusive towards Britney (Jay had earlier seen a scar on her face while in the car) and when quizzed, Kayla also confirmed that her friend had told her that her dad hit her sometimes. Later, when Sam confronts the family, demanding to talk to Kayla, Jay and Rebecca try to bury Britney’s phone on Sam's property to frame him.
At this point, things go from bad to worse, largely because Sam's interference with their plan forces them to regroup and rethink what to do. It turns out that Jay also lost his phone in the river that day, which adds to the potential mayhem! Jay and Rebecca really get stuck into the cover-up at this point and make even more irrational decisions, leading to catastrophic actions to protect their daughter - which I'll leave for you to discover as the story unfolds. As I said at the outset, you won't need much brainpower to work out the twists and turns, nor what is really behind it all in the end, which is doled out during the emotional finale.
The film was shot in and around Toronto (doubling for New York state) by cinematographer Peter Wunstorf and the film makes great use of the landscape in a Fargo-esque way! It all feels like a 'cold' tale and there is often tight interior framing and focusing that adds to the tension and suspense. Not bucketloads, but some of the scenes are a little edgy for sure as the realisation of what is going on closes in tightly on the characters involved!
Peter Sarsgaard, Mireille Enos and Joey King perform their parts admirably well, particularly in those later emotional scenes during the reveals. The rest of the players do their bit too, adding to that sometimes chilly, tense atmosphere. A tidy little thriller on Amazon Prime Video, a few years old now, so you should have no trouble tracking it down.
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