FilmSkool — a free film school
While She Was Out
Della Myers, a suburban housewife, lives with her twin children and her abusive husband, Kenneth. On Christmas Eve, she drives to the local mall to buy gift-wrap. In the jam-packed parking lot, she notices an old car taking up two spaces and decides to leave a note on the windshield calling them out. After the mall closes, her car is blocked by the old car and she's threatened by four thugs. She escapes in her vehicle, but they drive after her. She crashes at a dead end construction site at the edge of a forest. What unfolds in the desolate woods is Della's lone fight for survival against a gang of angry young men with murderous intent.
2008 · Directed by Susan Montford · 82 min · Drama · Thriller · Screenplay in the scene database · 9 frames
Tagline
Everyone has a breaking point. Tonight, she reaches hers.
Plot
On Christmas Eve, suburban housewife Della Myers gets into an argument with her abusive husband Kenneth. After putting her two children to bed, she drives to the mall to buy some wrapping paper and cards. At the mall, she can't find a parking space for a while and angrily leaves a note on the windshield of a car that is parked using up two parking spaces. She leaves the store as the mall is closing, and the parking lot is nearly deserted. She notices the note is gone from the 'offending' car. As she enters her own car, the car on which she had left the note pulls up behind her.
She confronts the car, and four young men — Huey, Vingh, Tomás and their leader Chuckie — emerge. They threaten to rape her. Della insults Chuckie, and a security guard intervenes, but he is shot dead by Chuckie. As the gang realizes that they have committed a murder, Della manages to start her car and drive away. They follow her, intending to kill her, as she is the only witness. As they pursue her some distance, she eventually crashes her car in a deserted area where homes are under construction. She takes a road flare and a toolbox out of her car, and hides behind a backhoe.
Della runs through the buildings under construction to hide, as they search for her. After some time, the thugs corner and threaten her by name, as they had found her driver's license in her purse in her car. As they have her open the toolbox, she hits Chuckie with a crescent wrench, and escapes again into some nearby woods. In the process of chasing her, Tomás accidentally steps on Huey, who falls through a construction site and dies from a broken neck.
Plot summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA.
Crew
- Written by: Susan Montford
- Cinematography: Steve Gainer
- Edited by: William M. Anderson
- Music: Paul Haslinger
- Production design: Patrick Banister
- Produced by: Mary Aloe, Don Murphy, Kirk Shaw
Cast
- Kim Basinger as Della
- Lukas Haas as Chuckie
- Craig Sheffer as Kenneth
- Luke Gair as Terri
- Leonard Wu as Vingh
- Luis Chávez as Tomas
- Rachel Hayward as Lynn
- Jamie Starr as Huey
- Alana Husband as Lingerie Sales Assistant
- Katie Messina as Coffee Sales Person
Production
- Country: Canada, United States of America, United Kingdom
- Language: English, French
- Studios: Insight Film Studios, Proud Mary Entertainment, Redwood Palms Pictures, Don Murphy Productions
- Budget: $6,000,000
- Box office: $498,088
- Themes: housewife, shopping mall, forest, survival, construction site, woman director, abused wife, gang of thugs, nighttime, christmas eve
Own the film
FilmSkool earns a small commission from qualifying Amazon purchases, at no cost to you.
On this film
This is the plain index, shown because JavaScript is off. Every lesson here is a free video published by the channel credited on it and plays through that channel's own embed — FilmSkool hosts nothing.