The movie begins with a series of flashbacks following the childhood of an animated Kayla,
doing all sorts of adventures accompanied by her parents Jay, and Rebecca.
But their blissful family life doesn’t last forever; we jump to Kayla age 15.
Here we learn that Rebecca and Jay are now divorced, and the reasons for their split
are not revealed.
That day, her mother, Rebecca, drops her boyfriend at an airport as he is traveling to another
city for a business arrangement.
Kayla sitting in the back seat, seems displeased about going to the school ballet, and refers
to it as a stupid retreat.
Her mother then drops Kayla off at Jay’s, where they are greeted by Jay and his new
girlfriend, Trini.
Kayla steps into Jay’s car, because today, he’s driving her to ballet camp.
On the way, the daughter comes across Kayla’s best friend, Brittany, sitting alone at a bus stop.
As it turns out, Brittany has been waiting for the bus to head to the same retreat, and
Kayla invites her to join them on the trip.
They continue to go on their course, and Kayla points out a bruise Brittany is sporting on
her face, but Brittany insists it’s nothing serious.
A few minutes later, Britt announces that she needs to go to the bathroom, and requests
that Jay pull over.
As a rest stop is nowhere in sight, the two go into the forest next to the road.
Her father waits outside the vehicle, but they are gone for quite some time before he
decides to go into the woods himself.
While he is searching for the girls, he hears a scream, so he runs up to the sound.
Jay then finds Kayla sitting alone on a bridge all by herself, a scared expression on her face.
Apparently, Brittany has fallen; she claims they were joking around when Brittany fell
by accident.
Jay goes into the river impatiently and tries to find Britney, but she is nowhere to be found.
During this search, his phone gets busted, and they couldn’t find any trace of Brittany
save for her purse, which contains her now broken phone.
Jay panics; he returns to the car to call 911 with Kayla’s phone, until she stops him.
Here Kayla finally admits that she lied earlier; Brittany didn’t fall, instead, Kayla intentionally
pushed her as Brittany was being a bitch.
Jay shudders at this grim confession, and he pulls her down when a truck crosses them.
Even though Jay has done nothing wrong, he is as desperate to save his daughter as any
ordinary man would be.
He thinks for a second and manages to initiate a plan.
Instead of heading for Ballet camp, they drive back to the city and head for Rebecca’s office.
Jay is hesitant to tell his ex-wife Rebecca immediately.
At the sight of Jay, Rebecca perceives the events and considers Jay an irresponsible
father for not dropping Kayla to ballet.
Jay leads her to their daughter, and watch as Kayla pukes, followed by asking for her inhaler.
Kayla is asthmatic and she apparently couldn’t remember where she last saw her inhaler.
And so, they get her a new inhaler and take Kayla home.
When Kayla is taking a bath, Rebecca sees a rip on her shirt, and asks how this happened,
prompting Kayla to confess what she had done.
Once Rebecca exits the bathroom, she and Jay end up arguing because she wants to go to
the river to find Brittany, but Jay stops her.
He convinces her that Brittany must be dead because the fall would have broken her neck,
and if she didn’t die from that, she would’ve drowned or died from hypothermia.
Meanwhile, Kayla is their only daughter, so the only thing to do is to protect Kayla now.
Realizing that Jay has a point, Rebecca agrees to cooperate,
and later, she sets that torn shirt on fire in a fireplace, hoping to remove any evidence
against her daughter.
It is clear that this entire situation still bothers her, because that night, she dreams
about Brittany’s dead body.
On the next day, Jay comes over again, while Rebecca is acting strange because of the nightmare
she had last night.
These divorced parents proceed to argue over whether or not their daughter was capable
of such a vile thing, and whether it was an accident or not.
Overhearing their conversation, Kayla rages, shattering the glass, and tries to run.
The parents quickly go after her and carry her back inside, while she keeps thrashing about.
This kind of spoiled brat then yells at Jay, saying that she pushed Brittany on purpose,
whatever that means.
With the family tension, Jay decides to leave the house for now.
Later that day, Brittany’s dad, Sam shows up, assuming Kayla’s staying there because
he heard Kayla never made it to dance camp.
He assumes Kayla and Brittany must be skipping camp together because they’re best friends.
Obviously, Rebecca lies to him, saying that she doesn’t know Brittany’s whereabouts
because Kayla never went to dance camp due to an illness.
Sam then admits that yesterday he had a confrontation with Brittany, after which he made her go
take the bus to dance camp, and now he regrets it.
When he asks to speak to Kayla, Rebecca lies, saying she is at the doctor's.
The man leaves and asks Rebecca to call him when Kayla comes back.
Later that day, Sam keeps calling Rebecca multiple times, until she couldn’t take
it anymore so she goes downstairs.
Rebecca then asks Kayla to lie to Sam and say that she doesn’t know where Brittany
is, but a scared Kayla refuses to speak.
Before an argument ensues, Jay visits the house again.
Rebecca catches him up on what just happened, so the parents plan to pack up and stay at
a hotel for a few days, to coach Kayla on what to say and do for the next few days.
When Rebecca is throwing her bags in the trunk of her car, Brittany’s dad Sam shows up
again, asking why she didn’t answer his calls all morning.
He also wants to meet Kayla because he’s worried about his missing daughter, but Rebecca
lies again, claiming that Kayla is still at the doctor’s to run some tests.
As they are conversing, a curious Jay walks to the driveway to check things out,
and not long after, Kayla steps out of the house, revealing the lie.
Sam’s suspicion spikes at the sight, so he tries to step up to Kayla to directly ask
her where Brittany is, but when Jay intervenes, Sam shoves him aside as Jay's nose starts bleeding.
Before things get more violent, Sam backs up to leave while saying that he’s going
to call the police.
Rebecca cleans Jay’s bloody nose, during which they share a sweet moment that makes
Kayla smile as she watches from afar.
Afterwards, Jay brings up about the bruise he saw on Brittany’s face yesterday, and
how they could use that to pin Brittany’s disappearance on Sam.
Given that Rebecca used to work for the homicide department, Jay comes up with a plan.
Rebecca goes to see a former colleague, Detective Kenji, at the homicide department and present
her with a fake story.
She claims that her daughter’s best friend Brittany, hasn’t been seen in the past 24
hours, and Brittany’s dad showed up to the house earlier acting crazy.
To add, she suspects that Brittany has been abused.
At home, Jay finds Kayla and discovers that she’s been cutting herself.
He lectures her about how she’s so much more than this mistake, and she has a bright
future ahead of her.
Jay reassures her and tells her she is beautiful, but Kayla replies that she is not like Britney.
Here we learn that Kayla is jealous of her friend.
Later that day, Rebecca brings the detective home to interview Kayla about Brittany.
Playing along with her parents’ lies, Kayla says that she saw Brittany with a bruise 2
or 3 days ago, but haven’t seen the girl since.
She also adds that throughout her and Brittany’s friendship, Brittany has stated a few times
that she and her dad clashed a lot, and he would hit her.
While all this takes place, Jay is upstairs, eavesdropping.
When the detective stands up to leave, she says she’s going to interview Brittany’s
dad next.
From her tone, it’s clear that she’s convinced Brittany’s dad, Sam, is behind this.
Two detectives show up at Sam’s place afterwards, and interviews him.
The man claims he’s been looking for Brittany and tried to report her missing, but the police
didn’t take him seriously because Britt has run away before.
This only raises detectives’ suspicion.
One detective proceeds to accuse him of abusing his daughter, which surprises Sam, and he
denies ever laying a hand on Brittany.
The following day, Jay takes Kayla to his place to hang out, but instead, they find
his girlfriend Trini.
Trini is upset because she found a woman’s purse in Jay’s car just the other day, and
demands to know who it belongs to.
We can clearly see that it is Brittany's purse, but Jay lies and says it's Kayla’s.
While the two argue, Kayla leaves the premises as she’s still bitter about the idea that
her dad is dating someone else.
Meanwhile, Rebecca is at work, when the detectives arrive to inform her that Sam's neighbors
have an opposite perception of Sam than the one Kayla told.
They ask Rebecca if Kayla has ever mentioned Britney losing her phone, which Rebecca denies.
But she was shocked when the police informed her that they have traced Brittany’s phone,
and discovered that the last spot the phone was active at was downtown, which is where
Jay lives.
Next scene, Kayla was walking back home from Jay's place.
Suddenly she hears the tires screeching on the road, as she sees Sam approaching.
Sam yet again demands to know where Brittany is.
This time, Kayla breaks and starts to say that she never meant for anyone to get hurt.
The man freaks out after hearing that, so she screams and retreats into the house as
he is chasing her.
Even after she gets home, Sam still bangs on her walls for some time, while Kayla uses
her inhaler out of anxiety.
Rebecca returns home later, followed by Jay.
She is furious, and she yells at Jay for being stupid enough to let the police trace Brittany’s
phone downtown.
However, Jay tells her to relax because so many people live downtown, not just him.
Seeing her parents fight, Kayla cries out of frustration, causing them to stop arguing
to calm her down.
On the other side of the story, the detectives investigate are hot on their trail; they go
to the bus stop Brittany’s father sent her to and take a look around.
Detective Kenji stares at the river nearby with a curious gaze.
On the next day, the detectives come over again, and this time, they claim to have read
texts between Kayla and Brittany.
Apparently, the two recently fought over a boy in school.
In one of the texts, Kayla even says she wants to kill Brittany.
This raises the police’s suspicion, so they decide to ask if Kayla was anywhere near the
bridge with Brittany that day.
At the mention of the bridge, the parents nervously said no, after which the detectives
reveal that they know the parents are lying, because the police did a search along the
river with hounds, and found Kayla’s inhaler near the bridge.
The parents pretend to be surprised, and Rebecca asks her detective friend to leave the house
as she is disoriented, knowing that it is inevitable that the police will take Kayla in.
Seeing everything falling apart, Jay and Rebecca try one final desperate attempt to save their daughter.
The next scene cuts to the night, where we can see Jay and Rebecca in the car outside
Sam's house.
They sneak to Sam’s backyard and turns on Brittany’s phone so that the police could
trace the signal, and make it look like Sam is hiding Brittany somewhere in the house.
Jay goes to bury it in the backyard, while Rebecca waits nearby.
All of a sudden, Sam appears from nowhere and confronts Rebecca.
She freaks out, so Jay rushes to her aid by attacking Sam, and dunking his head in the
freezing ditch.
However, Rebecca stops him before he kills Sam.
Before they go, Sam tells them that he knows that Kayla did it.
Jay and Rebecca then flee from the scene in their car, but instantly as they are to drive
away, Sam runs to the middle of the road to get them to stop, but they don’t;
Instead, they run him over.
Sam, covered in blood, pleads for his life as they stop to glance.
Rebecca almost calls 911, but Jay stops her, because they know that Sam surviving would
only cause more problems.
And so, they wait until he bleeds to death.
It is never explained what they did with the body, but in the morning, a shaken Rebecca
asks Jay to not leave, and he does as asked.
They sweetly nap together, and later have breakfast with a chipper looking
Kayla, who obviously has no clue what happened to Brittany’s dad last night.
They try to scrub Sam's blood off Rebecca's car, but suddenly, they hear the door creak open.
And out of all the people, Brittany suddenly appears alive and well.
The faces of Jay and Rebecca go pale as if they have seen a ghost or something.
Seeing their faces, Britney reveals that her disappearance was just a facade devised by
her and Kayla, to allow Brittany to visit her boyfriend.
Hearing this, Kayla’s parents are speechless.
While trying to contain their rage, Rebecca walks up to the girl and tells her to go home.
Jay and Rebecca are devastated as they realize they have killed an innocent man for a hoax,
and are disappointed in their daughter.
They confront Kayla, who only now confesses to them that Brittany was never dead, and
it was all just a prank.
She wanted to come clean about it way earlier, but she saw how covering up for the murder
made her parents get close again and she missed it, so she kept up with the lie.
She knows it’s wrong and begs for her parents to forgive her and not leave her.
The movie ends in a sentimental manner, with the three hugging each other tightly as if
it is their last one.
The doorbell then starts ringing repeatedly, followed by the distant sound of approaching
police sirens.