Tucker and Dale vs Evil

A 12 year old boy and his single mother live parallel lives. The boy spends his days alone while his mother works and goes out with her friends. The boy's solitude is both a source of freedom and a cause for grief. His explorations slowly bring to light the dark contrast between the rules of society and the laws of nature. And before long, the delicate balance of his inner world becomes shattered by unforeseen events. —Anonymous Low Tide shows a few days in the life of a boy in Texas living with his reckless, fun-loving, poor, hardworking mom. He's her only child and he's the only "steady", stable male in her life. The men she sees drift in and out; she sleeps most nights alone. The boy's life is hard and sad, and his torment steadily grows until one night he escorts his mom to a bar at night and she leaves without him. He walks home in the dark alone. At home, he rounds up the dirty laundry, puts it into the machine, and then, seemingly impromptu, forces himself to drink down laundry detergent several times so he gets very sick. The end of the film shows his mom fetching him from a hospital and then driving him to what we take to be a place he particularly likes and rarely sees: a Texas Gulf beach, where they both reconnect and share an all too rare moment of qualified happiness. —Rick Whitaker