I had the pleasure of seeing an advance screening of this movie. I was a bit skeptical going in, because Hollywood has a way of distorting reality in the name of sensationalism and ratings. I was pleasantly surprised.

Some researchers have proposed that the function of fiction is to simulate social experience, allowing the viewer to learn through the experience (Mar & Oatley, 2008). Judging by this standard alone, Rabbit Hole is one of the best examples of fiction I've ever seen. In a Hollywood climate where things always seem to end in a neat and tidy box, this movie offers a refreshingly authentic simulation of unimaginable tragedy and loss.

As a scientist, my metric for authenticity is empirical research. The more a movie with this subject matter is align with how people in the real world deal with such tragedy, the more authentic it is in my view. And in this regard, Rabbit Hole, with its story and remarkable acting from all the cast members, is strikingly authentic.

Peering Through The Rabbit Hole

In Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the main character Alice falls through a rabbit hole into a an alternative reality, where nothing is what it seems and nothing can be expected.

What Becca and Howie go through after the death of their child is similar to going down that rabbit hole. For them, the world is suddenly surreal. Even the once familiar now seems foreign; they are literally strangers in their own environment.

This is how people in the real world see the world after experiencing intense trauma. Trauma changes perspective. Tedeschi and Calhoun (1995) found that trauma causes changes in self-perception, in addition to changes in interpersonal relationships and changes in a philosophy of life.

In Parks and Weiss (1983), 61% of those who had suddenly lost a spouse agreed with the following statement 2 to 4 years after the incident: "It's not real; I feel that I'll wake up and it won't be true."

Lehman et al. (1987) conducted interviews with 41 parents who had lost a child in a motor vehicle crash 4 to 7 years ago and found that many of the respondents had come to see the world as a hostile place where things can be taken away at any time. 37% reported that they felt as though the death was not real and that they would wake up and it would not be true. As the researchers note,

"When a loss occurs suddenly and without warning, it may be especially likely to shatter a person's assumptions that the world is orderly, rational, and fair (Parkes & Weiss, 1983; Wortman, 1983)."

How does one get out of the rabbit hole? As the tagline for the movie says, "The only way out is through".

Long-Term Effects of Traumatic Loss

Rabbit Hole opens roughly a year after the Corbett's loss. We don't know how they coped in the first few months after the accident, but one thing is clear: they are still far from recovery.

Both Becca and Howie are coping in very different ways. Becca wants to sweep all reminders of her son under the floor, including his toys, clothes, dog, and house. She even left the job she had when her son was alive. Becca also resents her mother's (played by Dianne Wiest) advice to embrace religion, and gets upset whenever her mother makes comparison's between the loss of her son and Becca's loss (which occurred under very different circumstances).

Howie, on the other hand, deals with the loss by clinging to every reminder of his son. He watches videos of his son on his phone, wants the dog around, and desires intimacy from his wife, who is not ready yet for that intimacy. He also imagines his son is still around. In a very poignant scene, he is showing potential buyers around the house when they end up in his son's room. One of the potential buyers asks how old his son is, and he tells them his son was killed in an accident. He proceeds to describe how he still half expects his son to pop out of the bed at any moment and surprise him.

Becca and Howie's different ways of coping puts a strain on their relationship. Howie attemps to move on by establishing a relationship with another women who can identify with his pain, whereas Becca attempts to move on by establishing a relationship with the teenager who accidently struck her child with his car. Yet, they are both bonded by certain similarities. They both are grieving, and simultaneously blame each other and no one in particular for the accident, constantly going over "what if" scenarios ("What if we locked the door that day?", "What if the car wasn't driving by at that precise time?", etc.). Also, both are having great difficulty finding any particular meaning from the incident.

The Corbett's ways of coping is strikingly similar to research on the long-term effects of the traumatic loss of a loved one. In this vein, the movie is to be commended for not sugarcoating the coping process.

In their study, Lehman et al. found that even after 7 years after the accident, parental bereavement was associated with increased depression, an increased mortality rate, a drop in financial status, and a higher divorce rate. Most of their effects held, even after controlling for income and marital status, although they did find that a lower income and/or being separated or divorced was significantly associated with poorer coping.

Additionally, those who had lost their child in a crash were less able to talk about their feelings with relatives, often doing the opposite of what their relatives wanted in order to make them angry. Respondents were also less likely to still be working at the same job they held at the time of their child's death.

Even after 4 to 7 years, most respondents had not achieved a state of resolution. Almost half of the sample had reviewed events leading up to the accident in the month prior to the interview. A majority (59%) were still unable to find any meaning in the loss, had thoughts that the death was unfair, and had painful memories of their spouse or child during the past month. 96% of the parents reported that during the past month memories of the deceased entered their mind, 79% of the parents indicated that they keep going over the events that led up to their son's death, 91% often asked "Why me?" or "Why my child?" and 62% indicated that they often find themselves thinking "If only I had done something differently, my child would still be alive." 41% of the bereaved parents indicated that, even though they realized it was not possible, they at times imagined their child coming back.

Variability in Coping Response

People differ quite dramatically in how they cope with loss. Perhaps Rabbit Hole's greatest strength is that it highlights this important variability.