Meridith Lane (Amanda Wyss) still lives in her childhood home in southern California, taking care of her increasingly helpless father (Patrick Peduto). This might be the setup for a touching story of familial devotion, but in The Id we quickly learn that it’s the opposite. The relationship between father and daughter is tense and complicated. Dad is far from an easy patient, often blaming his daughter for the sins of her mother. And Meridith is increasingly overwhelmed and isolated.
Meridith Lane (Amanda Wyss) still lives in her childhood home in southern California, taking care of her increasingly helpless father (Patrick Peduto). This might be the setup for a touching story of familial devotion, but in The Id we quickly learn that it’s the opposite. The relationship between father and daughter is tense and complicated. Dad is far from an easy patient, often blaming his daughter for the sins of her mother. And Meridith is increasingly overwhelmed and isolated.
Worse, the two see almost no one except each other. There’s Tricia (Jamye Grant) from Meals 2 U who stops by every day to bring food, and while she realizes the situation is strained, to say the least, there’s not a lot she can do about it in a few minutes standing on the doorstep. It doesn’t help that Meridith is also increasingly bad at communicating and she often sends Tricia away with barely a word.
It seems like things will limp along this way indefinitely, until a surprise call gives Meridith a surge of hope. Her high school prom date, Ted (Malcolm Matthews), is going to be back in his hometown and on a whim tried her old number. He’s surprised to find her there after more than 25 years, but is glad to reconnect and wants to stop by for dinner. Ted is ridiculously cheerful, but she seems to like it.
Meridith had a lot of boyfriends — much to her father’s disapproval — but in many ways Ted was”the one”, at least as far as she was concerned. The idea of a reunion summons memories and imaginings of a future with him, both so vivid they threaten to drown out reality. But her newfound hope makes her father even more spiteful and horrible than he was before, as he senses her trying to pull away and live her own life. Something has to break, and they’re each determined it won’t be them that gives in.
It’s easy to guess where things will end, though despite this the final scene was still something of a shock. But Meridith’s slow unraveling is excellently done, a sadly realistic portrait of a woman crumbling under the stress of being a family member’s sole caretaker and being too proud or too embarrassed to ask for the help she needs. Her desperation radiates off the screen, and it’s the sort of desperation all too many people can relate to. And that makes the horror even more powerful.
I’ll give it four and a quarter out of five. It’s largely a familiar story but one expertly brought to life and you won’t be able to look away as both family relationships and Meridith herself fall apart.