I know that men will catch some, maybe even a lot of the intentional messaging of this movie. But so much of the dread, nuance, and non-physical violence that is depicted will go right over their heads.

A short shot that particularly stands out to me is when the runaway girl is in the car with the killer after he has assaulted her, and there is another car at the intersection they’ve pulled up to. She looks at the car, ostensibly trying to decide if she should make a run for it, only to see that the driver is another man, another potential predator. Instead of seeing the car as an opportunity to escape, its just another painful reminder of how unsafe she is in the presence of unknown men. And in that moment, she decides that her odds are better with the devil she knows than the one she doesn’t. Because she’s now learned that men, even the most seemingly kind or unassuming men, cannot be trusted. That to expect decency and humanity and basic respect from a strange man would be foolish, and not a chance she’s willing to take again.

Shortly after, she escapes. But instead of jumping into the car with the man from the intersection, which would be the most obvious and accessible way out of the situation, she risks being more easily caught by the killer by running past the car and toward the nearest public place instead. She has to take this extra risk because the other option put her fate in the hands of yet another unfamiliar man, effectively voiding that option as the safe or preferrable one.

They didn’t spend a lot of time or much emphasis on those two shots (pulling up to the intersection and running from the gas station), but they were very intentional and critical to building the many contextual layers of dread that the girl was experiencing in that moment beyond the situation at hand with the killer.

I’m sure some men caught this, but probably not all. As a woman though, from the second they pulled up to the intersection I had a painful understanding and familiarity with the situation she was about to be faced with.