Directed by: Peter Hedges
Starring: Julia Roberts, Lucas Hedges, Courtney B. Vance, Kathryn Newton, David Zaldivar
I understand through personal experience how scary it is to have a child who is a recovering addict. It is heartening to see your child moving in the right direction, but it is equally terrifying because of the fear of relapse. Will my child be strong enough to handle the triggers which will inevitably push him to a decision on whether to stay clean or use again? What's even scarier is how there is no amount of love or restraint you can exert to control things. Ben Is Back understands that and for a good portion of the movie, the suspense it draws comes from that very dynamic. Ben Burns' (Hedges) return home for Christmas causes a gamut of emotions in his family: Joy, fear, apprehension, mistrust, and finally horror. Horror because his mother, Holly (Roberts) learns things about her son she wishes she hadn't.
Ben Is Back begins on Christmas Eve and unwinds over a bizarre 24 hours. Ben traipses home, seemingly on leave from his rehab, and is locked out of his home (for good reason, as we learn).
Holly sees Ben when pulling up her driveway with her two younger children. Her first emotion is sheer joy. Once that subsides, then the reality of having her addict son in her home comes to fruition. She says she trusts him, but hides all of the pills and jewelry. Ben's sister Ivy (Newton) is less convinced of his sobriety. Holly's husband Neil (Vance), Ben's stepfather, isn't exactly thrilled to see Ben either. Not because he doesn't love Ben, but because he fears the havoc he caused will return.
Against their better judgment, Neil and Holly allow Ben to stay for 24 hours and after that, they will return him to the rehab. Holly's rules include a drug test and not letting him out of her sight, which she finds is akin to trying to keep hold of something in a wind tunnel. Ben's demons will not make this 24 hours easy. We learn Ben was not just a user, but a drug dealer as well, and this contributed to the death of one of his friends. Then, the family returns home from Ivy's recital to find the house broken into and the family dog stolen. Ben knows this isn't a random act, and he and Holly journey out into the night to find the dog, which leads to further painful consequences.
Ben Is Back soon becomes part thriller and belongs to Hedges and Roberts, whose love for her son is put to the most severe of tests. In order to retrieve the dog, Ben must deal with people he thought he left behind when he went to rehab. He has been clean for 77 days, but that is not nearly enough time to confront the past. He clearly isn't ready, but emptily reassures Holly he is. Hedges continues to impress in a series of strong performances which started with his Oscar-nominated role in Manchester by the Sea (2016) and up to and including the very good Boy Erased (2018). He is able to handle the trickiness of being an addict who wants to recover, but finds it may be impossible. Roberts gives her best performance in years: Unsure, loving, trying to be strong, and ultimately accepting the truth about her son, Roberts makes a sympathetic emotional center.
Making the film a quasi-thriller robs the movie of some of its power, but not fatally so. The ending is inevitable and sad, because such endings with addicts are all too common. A full, lifelong recovery is more the exception than the rule. For an addict, wanting to get help isn't the end of the arduous journey, but simply the beginning. The recent Beautiful Boy also tells the story of an addict and the addiction's toll on his family, but that movie never went out to the emotional edges Ben Is Back at least approaches, if not totally successfully reaches. But, Ben Is Back is still absorbing as it strives to find the painful truths of addiction's hell on both the addict and his/her loved ones.
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