It doesn’t seem that difficult of a task to make a movie sad, especially with a talented cast like Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart at your disposal. If anything, the real challenge with a potentially sad and depressing movie is to make it more than that—more than sad. Sure, this movie was plenty sad. It was depressing and heartbreaking, yet I did not feel a great sense of attachment to either of the characters.

Rabbit Hole follows the life of a once happy couple, Kidman and Eckhart, after the tragic and accidental death of their young son. Of course, a child dying is always tragic and terrible and confusing. I just thought that this was what the entire movie relied on—the death of their son. There was nothing else that seemed to fit. In fact, Kidman and Eckhart seemed like they were existing in two completely different worlds. Perhaps this was the intention, but I’m not sure.

After their son is accidentally hit by a car, driven by a teen from the neighborhood, the husband and wife deal with the pain in their own ways. While they both try to move on, Kidman shuts down, gets angry, and lashes out. Eckhart tries to remember and keep things “pleasant.”

I did not fully understand the role of the teen, Miles Teller, or his odd and budding relationship with the mother of the little boy that he hit with his car. It seemed strange and unreal. Now that I think about it, all of the characters seemed so subdued, like they were all operating in some sort of emotionally restrained haze. There were really only two moments in the entire film that I really felt, that really made me feel like I could understand the characters. Other than that, I just couldn’t get into it.

Even though I was not a fan of the majority of this movie, the end felt surprisingly normal and fitting to me. Kidman and Eckhart make the unspoken agreement that they will never be able to move forward or be normal again, at least not in the sense that they were before the death of their child. The ending is truly saddening, left with the image of a couple who are not only doomed to fail and suffer, but a couple who is just acknowledging this horrible fact of life.