The movie “No Exit” is a movie I don’t see reviewed correctly. Or at least insightfully.

The movie is about drug addiction and the struggles of withdrawal. Not only that, but past trauma alongside drug abuse. Many reviews online do no NOT touch on this, I haven't found 1 review that thinks the same as me on this, these reviews only take the film at face value, I'm unsure why? My idea on this film is that it was all in our characters head the entire time and none of the stories events are real. This may be an overused trope that many think is cliche, but the film has thoughtful foreshadowing and representation. Here's why, and here's why it isn't lazy storytelling:

1. Our MC (Darby) is a drug addict, who was neglected by her mother while her father was at war. Her mother used her for possible sex trafficking in exchange for money. The father comes home from war to see the sad state of his family and offs himself because of his PTSD and his hopeless family. The mother and father are portrayed as Ed and Sandi. Sandi is the reason Ed got killed, just like in real life for Darby and her parents. This theory is supported when you see the backstory of how the child was kidnapped, which was due to neglect and money purposes. They are THE SAME.

2. There is a heavy emphasis of Darbys trauma on her father's suicide. It's a constant reminder inhow the characters being it up all the time. Reliving her trauma. She is the focus of this story, these characters revolve around her.

3. The blizzard represents cocaine addiction. The blizzard traps her in a cabin full of people that represent her trauma. Cocaine dust is like the snow, that keeps her trapped with her cycle of addiction, constantly reliving her nightmares, and thus coping with drugs.

4. No exit's title is another nod to no exit to addiction.

5. The child she is trying to save is a representation of herself. A victim of sex trafficking. She is doing what her own parents never could. She is the hero of her own story that she wish she had in real life.

6. The characters play the game bullshit at the beginning, foreshadowing that the characters and story is all bullshit made up in Darbys head. It's a subtle nod that is missed.

7. The ending scenes are what make this theory come together. Why wasn't there closure for the child and her parents? Why are they never mentioned or shown to show gratitude for what she did? Why doesn't she have a wrist marking from her nailed in wrist wound? The transition from the last scene when she crawls to the cops dead body to a portrait on the wall tells me she used the portrait as the setting for her hallucination. In the scene with her sister, there's 5 pictures on the wall in that scene in the background, just like the 5 characters in the hallucination. She also pulled inspiration from her other rehabilitation patients she's with, such as the black man and the caretaker, who resembles the main antagonist of the hallucination. The drawing of her as the superhero and the child is not from the child, it's from herself, since she portraits herself as the hero of this story. She was a hero TO HERSELF, she overcame her addiction after her episode. Why would she willing go back to rehabilitation after such events? Why is the child never seen afterwards for closure? All this suggest none of it was real, it was intentional.

8. When Darby "escapes" her rehabilitation center. She finds coke in the car she steals. And the next scene shows her passed out in the snowy road with a hallucination of her sister outside. This then transitions to where the story now takes place. But this transition was to show when she had coke with her in the car during her escape, she overdoses on the coke before she even could escape and passed out into some overdoses psychotic episode. Causing her to hallucinate the entire story in her head. And then they took her back to the center.

9. The entire film is about her overcoming her addiction when she had her last overdose incident. After the scene where the main antagonist burns the building, it was to represent burning her past trauma and not letting it control her anymore. She needed to face her addiction and trauma head on and succeed in defeating it, and live the life she wants.