Content warning: extensive discussion of addiction and substance abuse.
My brother Tom died of an overdose at age 36. There was a brief period of time, shortly before his death, where he was able to kick his habit. We took our first and last family vacation together during that period, heading to the theme parks in Orlando, Florida. It was one of the best times of our lives. His being sober made the trip just that much sweeter. Tom was having fun, smiling, and laughing, all of which were growing to be rarities just before he got clean. For the first time maybe ever, I think we all had hope that we might be able to pull off transitioning into being a functional family.
The last night of the trip, we stopped somewhere for dinner. As we sat at the table talking, a darkness fell over Tom’s face. He was there, physically, but it seemed his mind had gone elsewhere. I feared the worst, but hoped that since he had been doing so well that maybe it would just be a brief episode of irritability or anxiety. However, when we left the restaurant, he demanded my mom stop at a nearby liquor store. She pleaded with him, but eventually gave in to his screaming and stopped. He relapsed. Hard. He stayed out all night and was an insufferable, incoherent asshole the entire ride back to New Jersey. It was the beginning of the end for him. The trip that had otherwise been so joyful ended in disaster.
Tom’s story is eerily similar to that found in Krisha, 2015’s genre-bending character study by writer/director Trey Edward Shults. This stunning feature debut is heavily influenced by the real-life tragedy of Shults’ cousin Nica Fairchild — who struggled with her addiction during a family Christmas gathering — and stars himself and many of his real family members. The film sees the titular character, a recovering addict who abandoned her family 10 years earlier in hopes of creating a sober life for herself and played powerfully by Krisha Fairchild, reunite with her family for Thanksgiving. Not wanting to ruin her time with them, tension is high as Krisha tries desperately to show she is a new woman. The family, however, is distrustful of Krisha, fearing she may relapse. She soon finds she may not have been fully prepared to confront her past, nor the hurt and trauma she’s caused her loved ones over the years. With so many films exploring the hardships of active addiction and more still showing the desperation of those struggling to achieve sobriety, Krisha is unique in its compassionate depiction of the fight to remain sober amidst so many triggers.
When we are introduced to Krisha, she’s already gotten clean and it’s all about maintenance on her end. However, this proves to be an enormous task as Krisha’s family is overly delicate with her, fussing over her every move. This creates a sense of pressure and sets high expectations to “behave”. Despite all of the many festive distractions available to them — football, errands, cooking, chores, games — Krisha feels all eyes on her. She’s not sure she will live up to their ideas of what a fully recovered addict looks like to them.
The film seeks to do more than simply show what a day in the life of a recovering addict looks like, though. How does it actually feel to struggle with staying sober? This is the question at the center of Krisha. If you ask the character herself, she would say arduous. Frustrating. Exhausting. Lonely. These responses are evidenced by the chaotic amalgamation of piano notes and echoes of character movements loosely strung together to form the score, created by composer Brian McOmber, for much of the film. The score is itself a character, roaring over many of the conversations as a sort of reflection of Krisha’s inner thoughts, without the voiceover narration. It makes its debut upon Krisha’s descent from her guest room to the kitchen, where every character — several barking dogs included — is present and busy. The music quiets and crescendos as her anxiety does the same, nearly disappearing when she is calm and intensifying as she grows overwhelmed by her surroundings, which compounds with the pressure not to slip up in any way. As Krisha tries to calm her nerves and get started on her sole responsibility of preparing the turkey, the music provokes anxiety within the audience, allowing us to further see from her perspective.
The camera also works to convey Krisha’s inner thoughts and emotional state. It stands in the middle of the kitchen and, in one take, captures all the goings-on within the house. There are cousins playing with a ball in the living room, people cheering at a football game on tv, aunts and uncles walking around or trying to find Tupperware lids, dogs barking and running, and so on. The camerawork is somehow simultaneously erratic and extremely precise. It focuses on Krisha but, as people appear or loud noises are made, veers quickly to see what’s happening before setting its gaze upon her once more. At other times, the camera is positioned just over Krisha’s shoulder, so that we can literally see from her point of view. This helps us to better understand our character and forces us to identify with her, whether we can relate to her story or not. This is extremely important as the aim of the film is to gain insight into the mind of a recovering addict and understand Krisha’s view of the events taking place that day. We are meant to truly understand how this Thanksgiving day, which feels overall average to the rest of her family, feels to Krisha like being thrown to the wolves.
When things first get underway, Krisha is managing well. She meticulously fills out a well-used log detailing how much of which prescription she has taken and when. She even comes across alcohol the family has apparently hidden away from her and easily returns it to its hiding place. Whenever things feel a bit too heavy, she employs several different coping skills she’s learned over the years. She tries self-soothing and breathing exercises. She smokes cigarettes and physically removes herself from the boisterous group in order to center herself. At a few points, she attempts to call her partner for support but has no luck with getting an answer. Each of these mechanisms serves its purpose in the moment. She’s anxious but not shaken.
Krisha is justifiably alarmed when surrounded by the rest of the family, but it’s actually the quieter moments she has with them that do the most damage to her progress. Throughout the film, she has a series of one-on-one conversations with some of the relatives she’s hurt most. First is Trey, the son she abandoned on her quest to get well and who is having none of this. He angrily reminds her she knows nothing about his life anymore before leaving the room. Next is Doyle, her wise-cracking brother-in-law played by Bill Wise. Doyle is kind to Krisha, offering her “a place of healing” to talk openly about the past with him, but grows increasingly frustrated and accuses her of being “heartbreak incarnate”, “a leaver”, and “an abandoneer”. She responds, “I have stayed away while I was healing myself, and you are not going to change that.” This affirmation sounds rehearsed, as if she had practiced saying it at some point in case she may need to respond in this way. While the retort may help her escape the conversation with Doyle, it sounds like she does not yet fully believe the words she’s saying.
After these conversations, we find Krisha walking in a small circle, looking at the ground and mumbling quietly to herself. The music is quiet but sporadic. This is the first instance where we begin to worry for Krisha’s mental health. We wonder if maybe this reunion may be too much too soon for her.
Unfortunately, after painfully reuniting with her mother, Krisha’s temptations overtake her willpower. She stealthily retrieves her sister’s hidden wine bottle and sneaks it to her room. She doesn’t have a wine bottle opener, so she spends a few moments struggling with the cork. There is no music. There are no other sounds. Krisha’s sole focus is to get this bottle opened. Finally, she finds a small pair of scissors, presses it to the cork, takes a deep breath, and begins trying to push it down. At last, the cork gives way and there’s a huge round of applause as Krisha gratefully takes a long sip of wine. Jazz music kicks in with the first recognizable song of the movie, complete with lyrics and a melody. Things finally make sense in Krisha’s mind. She is finally comfortable. She guzzles the bottle, closing her eyes and relishing its contents. When she opens her eyes, she looks both ashamed and relieved.
When Krisha returns to the kitchen, no one is any the wiser to her secret. Except, that is, until she decides to remove the enormous 30-lb turkey, which she previously needed help carrying, from the oven. She attempts to carry it to the kitchen counter, but in her drunken state she causes some of the contents to slosh over the corner of the pan. The camera cuts to the ground, where a wave of gravy cascades and Krisha, unable to balance, falls with the entire turkey. Chaos erupts in the room. Doyle laughs bitterly, as if he saw this coming. Robyn screams, others race to help Krisha off the floor. Trey sits at the table dejectedly shaking his head. To drive home the reasons behind their resentments, the rest of the family quite literally cleans up Krisha’s mess while she leaves the room. Krisha attempts to call her boyfriend once more. When he doesn’t answer, she leaves him a nasty message blaming his non-responses for her relapse.
This begs the question: just what did she do to help herself in her time away? All of the self-help coping mechanisms and positive affirmations seem to fade. She no longer takes personal responsibility. We realize that the only person she actually did try to call for help was her boyfriend, who she seems to have gotten into an argument with before leaving for this holiday. Had she gone to a rehab or attended meetings, she would likely have a therapist or sponsor to contact. She doesn’t even seem to have close friends to call. In her 10 years away, when she was working on “becoming a better human”, Krisha may not have actually recovered from her addiction. Perhaps she was able to remain clean simply because she was away from her family. Thus, she set herself up for failure by not having a more definitive plan for herself before diving, head-first, into dangerous waters.
A short while later, after Krisha sobers up a bit and tries to sit at the table with the family, she is shooed away. She ends up back in her room where she and Robyn have a messy, tearful heart-to-heart. Krisha admits she was trying to handle too much anxiety and insists she had been healthy before coming back, as well as laments how everybody treats her like she’s fragile. During their talk, Robyn reminds her, “We have a life together. We have a history with our mom and our family, and I’ll always love you. But you’ve got to get it together. It’s in there. You’ve got to find it. I can’t do it for you. Everyone here loves you, but you’ve got a lot of fixing to do because you’ve hurt people.”
It’s at this point we realize Krisha is having a break from reality. The camera cuts to the prior scene again, but instead of Krisha calmly requesting to sit at the Thanksgiving table, we see that she was actually aggressively demanding it, smashing the table and plates when she didn’t get her way. She curses at everyone, ruins all the food, and harasses Trey, who ultimately decides to disown her. Intercut with Krisha‘s wild behavior in the dining room, we see that Robyn was actually much angrier than Krisha interpreted her to be. Robyn recounts, with bitter sarcasm, how she defended Krisha to the rest of the family, who didn’t want her to come back, and finally says she’s had enough of her sister.
This is the side of Krisha that her family has come to expect and resent, but is new to us. It’s the dual personality that seems to possess so many addicts when they use. She’s loud, belligerent, and violent — the complete opposite of that deep-breathing ex-hippy with the calm demeanor we spent the rest of the day following. Reflecting what has likely been a pattern in her life, Krisha verbally and physically fights with the one person who was on her side and destroys everything in her path.
The fact that Krisha mentally created a fictional understanding and supportive dialogue with her sister implies that perhaps those loving words were Krisha’s own internal thoughts and feelings towards herself. She knows she holds the power to live a sober life. She knows that people love her and want her to do well, and she appreciates all that Robyn has done for her. But her inner darkness ultimately overpowers her. Unable to handle any more memories, pressure, despair, or guilt, Krisha begins snorting her pills and chasing the bitter taste with alcohol. Finally, her distraught face looks into the camera for a few moments, again pleading with us to intervene on her behalf. But we’re helpless, and all we can do is watch. Krisha closes her eyes in acceptance and the film fades to white.
Krisha explores anxiety and trauma in a way that is both supremely off-putting yet mesmerizing. The film takes on addiction, anxiety, and the struggle to battle one’s own toxic thoughts with the sort of compassion and insight that can only come from lived experience. It’s exactly this lived experience, which Shults and his family so generously share with the audience, that creates such a palpable unease, which percolates just under the film’s glossy finish.
In the pantheon of great dramatic character studies, Krisha ranks among the best and most important. It humanizes those struggling with addiction and shows how their disease infiltrates and destroys all aspects of their lives, the ripple effects of which last long after the person suffering gets well. Shults tackles a thoroughly-covered subject from an entirely unique perspective, offering a better understanding behind choices that seem so easy not to make for most people. Krisha is an incredibly haunting, moving, and somewhat disturbing tragedy that may resonate with many thousands of others who struggle with sobriety this holiday season.
SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) 24/7/365 toll-free substance abuse treatment referral: 1-800-662-HELP (4357)
I’d like to dedicate this to Nica Fairchild, Tom, S.E., Mike, Dannielle, Sam, Brittany, and anyone else who has struggled with addiction.
