The film opens with a vehicle seen following a man, as he runs in fear until his legs give up,
before he collapses to the ground. The driver of the vehicle then exits his car with a shotgun,
and shoots the guy in cold blood.
We now move on to the next scene: where we get introduced to our protagonists;
they are a family of three on a drive to their vacation cottage.
Their names are Mark, Mary, their son, Brendon, and also a family dog named Harris.
The family then make a stop at a gas station and are immediately greeted by the attendant,
who is familiar with them because they used to come up to the area for vacation a lot.
The attendant promptly expresses his condolences for Mark and Mary’s daughter’s recent death due to
an accident. While Mark is conversing with the attendant, Mary notices that her son,
Brendon, has run off to a clearing behind the gas station, so she goes to look for him.
But then...
We see a figure running in the woods, making us wonder if it is Brendon the son.
But as it turns out, Brendon hasn’t been wandering off that far out the entire time.
The three resume their drive, and after several hours on the road,
they finally arrive at cottage. Mark the husband displays a sullen look when he finds a pair
of tiny crocs that belonged to late daughter. That evening, the three going out for a walk,
when suddenly a car pulls up and ominously shines its headlights at them.
When Mark is about to
approach it, the car drives away. Even though the family finds this odd, they simply brush it off.
After they tuck Brendon in for the night, Mark & Mary try being intimate,
but Mary ends up crying because she isn’t over daughter’s death. They awkwardly fall asleep
next to each other, until they are waken up by faint wood knocking sounds the next morning.
Mark decides to head downstairs to check it out. Then, he finds another family of three out by the
porch, stacking firewood. As Mark goes outside, they promptly apologize for waking him up and introduce themselves as
Bobby, Jane, and Jared Sakowski. According to them, they decided to give away
chopped firewood as a symbol of good faith, since they live right next door.
They also announce that they would love to come over for lunch. Caught off guard, Mark instantly
agrees to this since the family genuinely interested in getting to know each other.
When Mark goes back upstairs, he announces to Mary that he met their new neighbors,
who would like to come over for lunch. Mary doesn’t seem to like this idea, because they
initially came all the way here to get some peace and quiet, but she reluctantly agrees.
As planned, the Sakowskis show up later that day for lunch. However, instead of knocking
the door first like normal people would, they straight up enter the house without knocking.
Some time after Mark's family welcome the Sakowskis, Bobby Sakowski casually tells a
story about a family that used to live here shortly before Mark and Mary came along.
Bobby refers to them as the Smiths, and says that The Smiths are now gone without a trace.
As the day goes on, we see Bobby and Jane actively asking more and more personal questions about Mark
and Mary’s lives, such as about their family background, and who the little girl in their
family picture is. Mary solemnly admits that it’s her daughter who passed away.
During one of the conversations, Mark makes a remark about how Sakowski is a Polish name,
so to make small talk, he asks Jane about Poland. Jane, however, is weirdly caught off guard by this
question, and nervously answers she is simply a Polish descent but has never been there herself.
The visit lasts until the evening, so the two families decide to sit down together for dinner.
During this time, Jared Sakowski asks if he could see Brendan’s room,
so the two boys run upstairs to play some games together.
After the boys leave, Mark proceeds to ask more about the Smiths, the family that Bobby mentioned
earlier today. Bobby makes a remark about how the Smiths were poor people who lived in their car.
He didn’t know a lot about them except for the fact that they looked like hicks, so Bobby told
them to get lost. Bobby and Jane then proceed to ask more disturbingly invasive questions, such as
what Mark and Mary do for a living, whether or not they have another house someplace else and if so,
where the house is. Plus, they also want to know what exactly happened to their daughter.
As Bobby and Jane bombard them with these inappropriate inquiries,
we can visibly witness Mark & Mary grow uncomfortable.
Meanwhile upstairs, Brendon is playing games with Jared, and Brendon keeps winning. Being the little
kid he is, rubs it in. Unexpectedly though, Jared who is offended puts a knife to his throat.
Brendon runs downstairs crying, but then suddenly, Jared fakes crying too
and runs up to his parents, saying that he was punched by Brendon, to which Brendon denies.
While embracing Brendon,
Mary notices the red mark on Brendon’s throat, and realizes that something isn’t right.
Mark comes up with the same conclusion, so he announces that they should call it a night.
Bobby and Mary tells them that it's just kids having fun and sure that they can make it right,
but Mark insists that they should leave. The Sakowski finally agree to leave, but Bobby keeps
trying to convince Mark to let their families see each other again, until Mark gets annoyed.
After the neighbors leave, Mark takes out his annoyance and frustration on a vase of flowers
given to him by Jane.
Unbeknownst to him, Bobby is right outside, creepily watching Mark from the window.
Later that night, Mark tells his wife that he feels unsafe here and would like to
return to the city. He also tells her that his brother, Toby, is coming over to the cottage.
Mary doesn’t like this idea, because the whole point of going to this vacation cottage is to
fix up their strained family bond, which is caused by the death of their young daughter.
The couple then walk back inside to pick up the pieces of the broken vase together. At the same time, the dog barks,
and Mark lets Harris out to take a piss. But not long after, they suddenly hear a gunshot outside,
and then we see a figure in the woods. Scared, Mary and Brendon go and hide upstairs,
while Mark takes out a gun, locks the doors and gets ready to deal with whatever comes up.
Upstairs, Mary looks for her phone to call for help, but she can’t seem to find it.
Meanwhile, Mark peeks outside and realizes that their car tires are slashed.
He then sees Jared casually walking outside, so Mark steps outside, and picks up the
dog collar placed by Jared on the ground. Like a little psycho, Jared coolly says
that Bobby is burying Mark’s dog right this second. He then proceeds to throw a rock,
breaking one of their windows. He then throws a second rock at Mark but misses.
During this whole stand off, of course some of us keep thinking that Mark should’ve just shot
the boy but he never did. Mark then lets Jared leave and goes back inside. As it turns out,
one of the rocks that Jared the kid used to throw through the window is Mark's phone, which has been
broken. Mary tells him that her phone is missing, presumably stolen by Jared. The husband hands
his gun to her and tells her to go hide with their son, while he goes out and takes care of
it. He takes a kitchen knife with him and goes to a nearby house to look for help.
Meanwhile, in the cottage, Jared the little shit is apparently already inside,
playing video games. Soon after, we discover that Bobby has made it inside the house too.
Not only that, he has apprehended Mark, and uses it to lure Mary and Brendon out.
The evil neighbors sit our protagonists down in the living room.
While Bobby goes away to another room, Jane reveals that Jared is actually not her son,
but her brother. It turns out that Bobby saved them from an abusive home, and she’s been
following him ever since, she's scared if she leaves him she would have nowhere else to go.
And then as if on cue, Bobby walks in; it’s at this point
where he tells that he’s not Bobby anymore, his real name is Mark, and that the three of them have
been stealing identities for a living and now they want to steal Mark, Mary, and Brendan’s.
But then all of the sudden, they hear a car outside. It is Toby, Mark’s brother who finally shows up to the cottage.
Bobby, Jane, Mark, and Mary warmly welcome Bobby, pretending that
everything’s all good.
Meanwhile, the little psycho holds Brendon hostage upstairs.
After an awkward meeting with the Sakowskis, Toby excuses himself to fetch his belonging in the car.
right when Bobby suddenly shoots him, which obviously enrages Mark. He challenges Bobby to shoot him,
and Mary reminds him that he still has a child and a wife to care for.
We then see a confusing montage of Mark, Mary,
and Brendon living life so disturbingly normal, and we even see Mark & Mary making love.
Just as we begin to wonder how the montage fits into the narrative, it is revealed that Bobby,
Jane and Jared have been watching them the whole time. They order Mark and Mary to perform
their "perfect" wealthy living routine at gun point, so they can copy it after killing them.
Shortly after, Jane & Jared leave the room because Jane wants to start trying on Mary’s dresses.
After the two leave, Bobby hits Mark with the butt of his shotgun and forces Mark to sit and
watch while he rapes Mary.
Mary pretends to cooperate for a second, until she finally
stabs him on the chest, while Mark knees his face and they take the gun away from him.
But it’s not going to be that easy: the little shit walks in while holding Brendon at gunpoint.
And so once again, the family ends up yielding to the bad guys,
and they sit around in the living room. We see here that miraculously,
Bobby somehow survives his stab wound, and Jane has now put on one of Mary’s dresses.
To make it even more disturbing, Jane and Bobby begin referring to each other as Mark and Mary.
Bobby then pulls out a newspaper cutout, and reveals that ever since he read the
news article about Mark and Mary’s daughter’s death, he’s been looking
for them because they’re the perfect family for Bobby, Jane, and Jared to steal identities from.
Jared steps closer to Mark while toting his gun around,
so Mark takes this opportunity to snatch the gun away from him and accidentally shoots Bobby in the leg. Up next,
he points his gun at Jane and threatens her to take the shotgun down but she refuses.
Mary then asks the same thing, but in a nicer way, so Jane listens to her.
Meanwhile, Bobby is too proud to yield. He gets ready to attack Mark, so Mark shoots him dead.
The next scene shows an ambulance taking Bobby’s dead body away,
while Jane gets arrested by the police. Jane and Mary briefly exchange eye contact before
the police car takes her away.
The movie ends with Mark and Mary seeing a marriage counselor,
looking more content and ready to move on with their lives.