When troubled siblings return to their childhood home to visit their mother, they confront her about a lifetime of abuse, but when she becomes violent, they tie her to the bed, pushing acrimony to life-threatening extremes.

SYNOPSIS:

At the last minute, Kristen (38) and her brother Parker (35) consider skipping their planned visit with their mother Jennifer (66), but heavy snowfall leaves them no option but to go inside their childhood home. Meanwhile, their husbands, Connor (45) and Manuel (35) have gotten lost on the way to the house and snowed in at a diner, where they worry about the siblings facing their mother alone. Conflict at home starts almost immediately when Kristen and Parker enter: Jennifer gripes that her children are late and therefore don’t care and should probably leave. Tensions mount, and soon Jennifer is screaming, breaking dishes, throwing things, and slamming doors. Kristen and Parker follow her to her bedroom, where she wields a knife. Parker disarms her, and the siblings tie her to the bed.

At the diner, Connor and Manuel meet Gary (70), Jennifer’s second ex-husband. They see an opportunity for perspective on Jennifer’s eccentricities, so they join him at his table and begin a conversation about her as they wait for the snow to stop and the roads to be cleared. They discuss Jennifer’s instability, her problematic relationships with her kids, and more. They also provide counterpoints: Gary remembers Jennifer’s good qualities, too, and recalls the difficult circumstances of Jennifer’s life that provide at least some explanation for her erratic behavior.

Kristen and Parker decide to use their mother’s temporary immobilization as a chance to discuss their longstanding problems as a family. They confront her with memories. Jennifer was always hostile to Kristen, telling her she hated her and even chasing her with a knife when Kristen was a teen, something Jennifer claims not to remember. By contrast, Parker was her perfect little boy, and she used him as an emotional crutch after the siblings’ father left. She kept him up late crying night after night, causing problems at school, and had him sleep in her bed, which had questionable sexual undertones. When Jennifer tries to dismiss these complaints as ancient history, the siblings stress that she has continued the patterns—demeaning Kristen, leeching off Parker—to the present day. The siblings want the patterns to end. They also want their mother to take the psychiatric medication they found in a cabinet.

When Jennifer wets the bed, Kristen and Parker untie her to clean up, and she flees. They find her outside freezing in the snow. Connor and Manuel arrive. The four get her inside and back in bed, where she is silent. They discuss psychiatric hospitalization and realize they might not have grounds for committal. Feeling powerless, all they can think to do is leave, so they do. Alone again, Jennifer gets out of bed. She types an apology to her children but deletes it. Starting a game of Solitaire, she provides a spark of hope by taking her medication.

Trouble at Home won Best Feature Screenplay at the Conquering Disabilities with Film IFF, was a semi-finalist in the New York International Screenplay Awards, and was a quarter-finalist in the Filmmatic Drama Screenplay Awards, all in 2021.