A: You really shouldn’t have been texting during the movie! Now go watch it again!
This movie is about the plot Shannon (Shan) Russell hatches to rid herself of her abusive husband Sledge and his partner in crime, Schnappsie, and keep the money from a caper-heist the three were involved in 9 years ago. Shan is deaf, or at the minimum, her hearing is severely impaired. Things go awry when novice camper Ben unwittingly gets entangled in her revenge plot by his choice of campsite for the 3 day weekend forcing Shan to improvise to save him in addition to herself.

A: Nine years ago, Sledge, Schnappsie and Shan were involved in a caper, presumably with Sledge as the boss. The safe contains the spoils of that endeavor.

A: Sledge and Schnappsie had to do prison times of different durations for their crime with Schnappsie getting out before Sledge. To ensure no one made off with all the money, they lock the money in a blue safe with code known only to Sledge. This blue safe is placed in a bigger red safe with the combination known only to Schnappsie. They bury the two safes by a lake with the location tattooed on Shan’s back. This ensures that all three are required to retrieve the loot and no single person can access it by themselves.

A: Shan wants to implicate Schnappsie in an attempt to double cross Sledge. Knowing Sledge, Shan expects him to be infuriated enough by the betrayal to kill Schnappsie. She also plants decoy safes near the original spot where the trio buried the safes. Shan has GoPros (or similar recording device) recording at both the sites. She expects Schnappsie to first try his combination on the real safe and later Sledge apply his on the decoy safe. Finally she plans to use Sledge’s aquaphobia to get him to chase her in the water and drown in the process leaving her with the safes and the combination.

A: Once Sledge is out of prison, the three head to their planned rendezvous by the lake to retrieve their treasure. Before the meeting, Shan digs up the original safe by the lake. She also creates an identical decoy pit with identical fake safes making it appear that the outer red one has been opened and the inner blue one tampered with in an attempt to break in. She conceals GoPro cameras at each location to record the combination when the safes are opened. Shan schedules to meet Schnappsie first and Sledge later that evening. Shan stages her own kidnapping and texts Sledge and Schnappsie for help. She also texts Sledge implicating Schnappsie in the kidnapping, making it appear that Schnappsie was trying to double cross Sledge in an attempt to keep the stolen money for himself.

She lets Schnappsie rescue her and they head to the main pit where Schnappsie unlocks the red safe with the combination recorded by the GoPro.

Later, the two meet Sledge, who is enraged at Schnappsie’s attempted double cross. Shan then leads them to the decoy pit. Seeing the red safe open and the attempted break in to the blue one, Sledge loses it and shoots Schnappsie dead. He then jumps into the pit only to find his combination doesn’t open his blue safe—it’s a decoy meant to record the code to the real blue safe. Shan then leads Sledge to the real pit where there is the locked red safe. They cannot open this since Schnappsie is the one with the combination—and he’s dead! Sledge must realize at this time that Schnappsie was not trying to cheat him out of the money.

The red safe is eventually brought on to the boat. Shan pretends to drive off with it, forcing Sledge to shoot her with (unknown to him) a blank she had loaded onto his gun. Shan pretends to be shot and lets water into the boat which starts sinking. Seeing his fortune slipping away, Sledge who has aquaphobia (a mortal fear of water) somehow forces himself onto a raft and paddles to the sinking boat and drowns with the safe. 

Shan has attached a magnet to the safe connected to a float with string. This reveals the location of the safe. She now has the codes and the safe, and Sledge and Schnappsie are dead.

Of course in all this, she has to contend with Ben showing up unexpectedly to this party, and is forced to improvise to save him along with herself!

A: When Sledge enters the decoy pit, Shan sees a flash of light in the real pit, from Ben’s phone (her’s actually) alerting her that someone is in there. It’s at 1:12:43

A: Shan knows of Sledge’s aquaphobia and that Sledge will choose to travel by land to the spot and not via the boat. So she builds the decoy pit further away from the water than the real pit. So when Schnappsie and Shan travel to the site by boat, they hit the real pit. Later when Sledge and co travel by ATV, they hit the decoy pit.

A: Shan finds Sledge’s gun in his trailer and loads it with three bullets and a blank. She fires the gun once herself as part of staging the scuffle between her supposed kidnappers. She is banking on Sledge needing two and only two to finish Schnappsie off. One can assume that if Sledge had used only one, she would have found some excuse to discharge another bullet thus leaving only the blank for Sledge to shoot her with.

A: Shan disables the ATV by pouring water into the tank removing Sledge’s ability to navigate the area by land and forcing him to use the boat where due to his acute aquaphobia, Shan has the upper hand.

A: Schanppsie, it appears, likes popcorn—a fact known to both Shan and Sledge. So in staging her kidnapping, Shan drops popcorn in the other car to draw suspicion to Schnappsie as the culprit attempting to double cross Sledge. She also drops the popcorn in Sledge’s RV but then decides against it and cleans it up. This is presumably because she thinks Schnappsie wouldn’t be so careless to leave popcorn in Sledge’s RV and it would take away credibility from the betrayal from Schnappsie she is staging.

A: Shan needs to ensure that the only loaded weapon that Sledge has access to at the end is his revolver which has the blank she loaded earlier. She discharges Schnappsie’s AR pretending to shoot Ben who is the supposed kidnapper but deliberately misses, using up all the rounds.

A: Shan needs Ben out of the way for the last phase of her plan. So she leads Ben to the real pit and whacks him with the shovel, in a show of revenge for kidnapping her. She then proceeds to bury him but not before giving him the end of the hose so he can breathe. Sledge of course does not see this.

A: This is the one real problem with this movie. Mr. McDill should have had Shan facing Sledge or at least looking sideways vs. completely away. One way to rationalize this is to assume Shan’s hearing is severely impaired but she is not deaf. She can hear loud sounds like the report of a firearm discharging. 🤷🏽‍♂️

A: Shan really wants to rid herself of the abusive Sledge and Schnappsie. The money is a bonus which will likely pay for cochlear implants to help her hear again. She has a brochure on financing cochlear implants in her car that we see briefly.

A: When Sledge arrives and Ben is forced to hide, Shan’s 10pm reminder (vibrate mode) for the Sledge meeting and Ben’s reminder (alarm tone) for American Ninja Warrior, both go off. This forces Ben to throw away his phone for Sledge to find and hopefully assume it was dropped by one of Shan’s kidnappers.

A: This is  another minor problem with the movie. Maybe Ben had a portable battery pack to charge the phone in his tent?

A: I don’t know. Maybe something like you helped me and I helped you and we did good? Perhaps someone who knows AMESLAN can help here?

A: Depends…on how deeply you want to scrutinize things. Like most such movies, there are a few things that stretch credibility. e.g. see Q on Shannon perfectly timing her fake reaction at being shot when she is facing away from Sledge and presumably deaf. The cell phone battery lasting 3 days is a head scratcher. Another is Ben picking this unmarked area to camp when it is clearly his first attempt at camping, and then planning so poorly that his vehicle is out of gas right after getting there. 

But it’s possible to explain these away or at the minimum, overlook them—for overall the movie holds well together and is a highly recommended watch.