Emily Cheree Dye | Through the Shattered Lens

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable or streaming? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

If you were having trouble getting to sleep last night, you could have jumped over to Tubi or Prime and watched 2016’s Girl Lost.

Girl Lost tells the story of Shara (Jessica Taylor Haid), who we first see being abused by her mother’s boyfriend and then retreating outside to a pool so that she can run a razor blade over her thigh in peace. Shara is only 15 but she’s had to deal with things that no one should ever have to experience in a lifetime. Her mother, Kim (played by Robin Bain, who also directed the film), is a sex worker who expects her daughter to follow in her footsteps and who encourages Shara to pose for risqué photos that Kim then posts online.

Shara spends almost the entire film fleeing. At first, she and Kim flee Kim’s boyfriend. Eventually, Shara and her boyfriend, the well-meaning but not particularly bright Jamie (Felix Ryan), end up running away from Kim. They live on the streets and discover just how difficult it can be to survive on your own. In the end, no one can survive without money and Shara, just like her mother before her, comes to realize that there’s one guaranteed way to make that money, whether it’s waiting for a creepy guy in a back alley or getting a job talking on the phone to some pervy loser living in his mother’s basement. Eventually, Shara runs away from even Jamie and ends up working at a Russian-owned brothel. Throughout it all, her life continues to unravel. It’s a harsh world that Shara has been born into and it’s one where you either do what you have to do to survive or you end up imprisoned or worse. The film’s ends on a dark note. At first, I thought the ending was perhaps a bit too dark. After all that had happened, I wondered, what it have killed the film to end on a note of hope? But, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the film ended in the the only way that the story could have ended. From the minute she was born, poor Shara never really had a chance.

It’s a deeply unsettling film. In fact, if you are trying to find something to help lull you into sleep, this is probably not the best film to go with unless you’re prepared to have some fairly upsetting dreams. Though shot on a low budget, the film captures the harshness of life on the fringes of society and both Jessica Taylor Haid and Robin Bain deserve a lot of credit for their performances as two characters who are not always likable but who are very recognizable. It’s a sad film that also serves as a tribute to every lost and forgotten soul out there.