The Submarine Kid | Film Synopsis & Review
War changes people. Not only soldiers but also those in which they are closest. When soldiers come home from war, the invisible wall of distance is solidified and they find themselves unable to connect with friends, family and loved ones like they had before. This disconnect creates an empty vortex of emotions that takes its toll in devastating and, at times, obscure ways. This obscurity personifies itself in an extreme way with Spencer, the main character of the 2015 film the Submarine Kid.
Directed by Eric Bilitch and written, in part, by Finn Wittrock, the film tells the story of Spencer; a young man who has just returned from a third tour of duty in the middle east for the United States Marines. Spencer, Finn Wittrock, seems very withdrawn and a bit haunted by something he did while deployed because he keeps seeing a woman in a hijab and hearing radio static repeating the words “take the shot”. While home, he tries to reconnect with his old life. This includes dinner with his parents, younger brother and nurse girlfriend, drinking and partying at a local bar with his childhood friends and working at a used book store owned by a veteran. While working at the bookstore, Spencer meets a woman named Alice, played by Emilie de Ravin. Alice seems a bit mysterious but somehow comforting and understanding toward him, even though they do not know one another. They first meet after Spencer is having a post traumatic episode after working a sign for the bookstore in the back of the building. He hears the static and notices a faucet is leaking behind him. He turns the water off and hears the bell sound at the front door. Keep this scene in mind as water plays a huge role in the events that transpire in this film. Alice walks in the door and says she is looking for old newspapers and magazines for a scrapbook she is making.
They talk as she searches through old stacks of newspapers and both she and Spencer seem to hit it off right away. It is not until they both mention their mutual hatred of cats, which Spencer says his girlfriend has two of them, that the vibing stops and Alice leaves. One rainy night, Alice comes by the bookstore while Spencer is closing up. They begin to talk for a bit and Spencer ends up inviting her to a house party his friends invited him to. There is a great line during this conversation where Alice asks Spencer about his girlfriend and he replies that they’re on a break. Alice quickly, and in my opinion brilliantly, responds with “So, that means you can take other girls to parties?”. Diverging slightly here but I’ve always hated this troupe in films. A man finds his perfect, manic pixie dream girl and is willing to drop the woman he is currently with at the drop of the hat to be with her? This always plays out like the man was always supposed to be with her and the woman he drops just has to be ok with it. This infuriates me but I’ll move on because I could go on about this for several pages. At the party, Spencer meets up with his friends and tries to introduce them to Alice but they all kind of gloss over the subject and begin drinking. Spencer is quickly drawn into partying with his friends and Alice kind of disappears. Spencer talks to his best friend Toad about her and asks him not to say anything to his girlfriend Emily. A little while later, Spencer ventures into the house and finds Alice in the house’s library. They flirt a bit as they admire the library and Spencer notices a comic book sitting on the desk Alice is sitting on. Spencer says he’s never read it and Alice says she knows every word of it by heart.
This comic book is very important to the plot of the story but I’ll hold off on explaining its significance. As a quick overview, the comic Alice finds is titled The Submarine Kid and is about a young boy from a small town that possesses the incredible ability to hold his breath underwater for an extended period of time. As the young man grew, he became sort of a small town legend. The boy eventually becomes a man and, while performing one last trick for the people of the town before he goes out into the world, as the comic puts it, he decides to try out his longest breath hold at the town’s celebration in his honor. The young man ends up staying underwater for a very long time. At first, people are impressed but, as time goes by, they begin to worry as he doesn’t resurface. As the crowd panics, the young man’s friends jump in the water to look for him but no one can find him. The comic ends with the Submarine Kid’s fiance mourning his disappearance and sordidly awaiting his return.
After reciting the plot of this comic word for word to Spencer, they begin to kiss. While making out, Spencer starts to hear the static again along with another noise. Alice begins to hear the noise as well but Spencer assures her that it is not real. The noise gets louder as it turns into yelling and the pair go to investigate. Spencer and Alice head outside and see one of Spencer’s friends having a fight with one of the guys throwing the party. In an attempt to break it up, Spencer gets in between the two men fighting and one of the party hosts pushes Spencer back. This triggers a pretty intense flashback to when Spencer was wounded during a mission in Afghanistan. At this point, he is suspended between the past and present as he cannot seem to distinguish the two and begins to violently assault the guy who pushed him. Toad is able to get him off of the guy, but Spencer seems to be seeing himself and his friends in full military gear. The gang then promptly runs off and we get what I believe to be one of the best scenes in the movie; they run through the house and the view switches from the group in regular clothes to everyone wearing military gear equipped with assault weapons and scopes. This scene pretty much embodies the core theme of this movie: PTSD delving into a realm that blurs the line between fantasy and reality. After the group disperses, Spencer and Alice get in his car and drive off. Spencer speeds down the road as he begins to have a near psychological breakdown. Alice attempts to ask Spencer to take her home but he simply gives a tearful apology saying that what happened at the party was not him. Alice finds this endearing and asks him to take her someplace special. He takes her to Thunder Lake, a place he says he’s always loved and feels drawn to. After doing something I could only describe as incredibly reckless with his car down a steep hill, Spencer stops the car and Alice asks him if he’d like to live there forever. He says yes and he asks the same of her. Alice of course says yes as well and they make love in the car.
Afterwards, Spencer admits he doesn’t ever want to go back. I assume he is referring to the real world. Alice then asks him to do the incredibly reckless driving stunt on the hill again and, as he accelerates, the screen goes black and he wakes up in the hospital. As Spencer wakes, he has a brief flash of the Submarine Kid before his parents and the doctor come into full view. The doctor tells him that he had an accident in which he drove his car into the lake and nearly drowned. Lucky for Spencer, as an incredibly in shape Marine he was just fine but they want to keep him in the hospital for a bit. Emily, who is a nurse at the hospital, comes into the room in full on worry mode. This stressful situation triggers a hallucination of the woman in the hijab sitting in a chair with the Submarine Kid comic in her hand. Spencer promptly freaks out and says he can’t be there. He gets up from the hospital bed and locks himself in the bathroom. He begins to freak out a bit until he has a flash of his first meeting with Alice, which happened right after he turned off the runny faucet. He then looks at the bathroom faucet and has an epiphany. Spencer fills the sink up with water and sticks his head in. From here we cut to a beautiful beach where Alice is running and giggling and Spencer is chasing her. They have another little conversation about staying there forever until water begins to come out of Spencer’s mouth. When he wakes up he is on the floor of the bathroom with Emily giving him CPR. Spencer then quickly gathers his things and, still in his hospital gown, walks out of the hospital room with the Submarine Kid comic clenched tightly in his hand. Emily and another nurse try to get him to stay saying that he cannot be discharged yet, but his best friend Toad says he will take him out of there if he wants.
They end up at a beach where, while reading a bit of that comic, Spencer believes he killed Alice when he drove his car into the lake. Toad informs him that he drove off alone last night and that he may be a bit loopy. Spencer begins to talk about fate and not believing in coincidence. Toad asks him what he’s talking about and Spencer hands him a digital timer and asks him to start it when he goes into the water. He says he needs to work on his extended breath hold as he is out of practice. Spencer runs to the ocean and submerges himself. We then cut to Spencer and Alice having a nice little picnic on the beach at sunset. They are about to kiss when Spencer spits up more water and we go back to him on the shore after Toad gives him CPR; Spencer is upset because Toad didn’t stop the timer when he got out of the water. Upon driving home, Spencer’s friends, his brother and Emily are waiting for him. One of Spencer’s friends spills the beans about Alice and Emily confronts Spencer saying she’s trying to be there for him because he clearly can’t be there for himself. Unfortunately, Spencer is not really paying attention to her because he was holding his breath the entire time she was talking. They have a little fight about Alice when Emily brings it up and he simply says this isn’t about her. When Spencer goes into his house, he’s met by his parents and uncle discussing the repercussions of his actions at the party. The guy Spencer assaulted is pressing charges and he is looking at paying for damage to the guard rail he destroyed when he crashed into the lake. This scene is very interesting because not only does Spencer not even seem to care, he begins to hold his breath again as the lapping of water fills the air. I find it interesting that his uncle mentions his military service as a card they could play to reduce the assault charge in court. His family is actively trying to get him out of trouble, using the concept of serving his country as an excuse, instead of really digging into the root of his problem and getting him real help.
Obviously not wanting to hear this, and taking advantage of his father telling his friends to go home, Spencer excuses himself to the nearest bathroom and begins to run water in the tub. Instead of another beach date, we see Spencer in a backyard pool dressed as the Submarine Kid. This is a direct call back to this part in the comic book, which is shown at the beginning of the film. Alice is there and Spencer asks where they are and that it feels like the best day ever. Alice says she has something to show him and she motions for him to jump into the pool with her. They resurface in the middle of Thunder Lake and Spencer asks if this is from the comic book. Up until now Alice has been kind of feeding the fantasy, but during this scene we see her become a bit more melancholy and breaking the illusion. She asks Spencer why he doesn’t want to be in the real world with all of the people in his life that love and care about him. Spencer then reveals that, because of the bad thing he did overseas, he’s not sure if his family and friends would accept him or even look at him the same if they ever found out. Upon admitting this, Spencer is brought back to the real world by his mother giving him CPR. Once again, he says he can’t be there and takes off. While walking into town, he is found by Toad. Toad tries to get him to come back home but Spencer just says he needs to be able to hold his breath longer and he thinks Alice can hold hers forever. Toad tries to tell him she is not real and there are people who need him but he just ignores him and keeps walking away. Spencer ends up at the bookstore after hours timing his breath holding. We see he gets all the way to a little over eight minutes before he stops; Spencer becomes agitated because it is not long enough. I’m going to diverge here slightly but I looked into this and, according to an article about hypoxic and anoxic brain injury published on Headway.org; If the oxygen supply to the brain is interrupted, consciousness will be lost within 15 seconds and damage to the brain begins to occur after about four minutes without oxygen. The fact that Spencer has been depriving his brain of oxygen several times in this film, not to mention the fact that he breaks 10 minutes at one point, makes it both believable that he is having vivid hallucinations but also unbelievable that he would be functioning as well as he does. I’m sure other factors like his military training, age and physical stamina influence this outcome but I digress. After he calms down a bit, he digs into a stack of old newspapers that Alice was looking through when they first met. He finds an article about a young woman whose car was discovered in Thunder lake but her body was never found. Alice’s voice comes in as she reads more and finds that she was the grieving fiancee of a local legend; the Submarine Kid. Spencer has another episode and begins busting up things in the back of the bookstore. In the morning, his boss Marc finds him and sees that he’s clearly gone through something as books and shelves are strewn all over the place and he’s carved illustrations from the comic book into a nearby table. Marc asks Spencer what’s going on and he hands him the comic and says it’s a book about him. Marc, being a former marine himself, recognizes Spencer’s behavior and says obsessing over this book won’t get him over the bullshit but further into it.
He has a really good line in this conversation that boils down to him basically saying he knows Spencer thinks that this story is his but it’s not. I like this line because Marc is trying to tell Spencer he knows what it’s like to wish you were someone else with a different life story. Hell, everyone knows what this is like, but he’s trying to tell Spencer that delving into this won’t help the underlying problem. Spencer refuses to believe this and quickly leaves the bookstore. He ends up back at his house and sneaks into his old bedroom to pack a bag of clothes. His younger brother catches him packing and hands him a large envelope addressed to Spencer from the US Marine Corp. Spencer takes it but does not open it as he tells his brother not to look up to him or aspire to be anything like him. He finishes packing and tells his brother that he should get ready because Toad is coming to pick both of them up and to not tell their parents where they are going. They end up at a house on Thunder lake where Spencer, his brother, Toad and the guys all drink and do drugs throughout the night. At one point, Spencer hands one of his friends a stop watch and we hear it beep as the film cuts to Alice on the beach again running after a golden retriever; a dog they talked about getting the last time they were on the beach together. Spencer tells her they should build a house and he knows how to do it. Alice tells him they can’t keep doing this and they can’t be together in that space forever. As Spencer attempts to convince her that they can, he sees the woman in the black hijab standing behind Alice. Side note, this is the first time we see this woman inside of the world where Spencer sees Alice. Alice turns toward the woman and turns back to tell Spencer he can’t hide from her forever. Before Spencer can respond, he is brought back to the real world by Toad, once again, performing CPR on him as he had dunked his head in the bathroom sink for over ten minutes.
Toad scolds the guys for letting him do this and, although they say he was ok and they were with him the whole time, Toad and Spencer’s brother express their anger and ask what they would have done if Spencer had died doing this. Spencer goes to his room to be alone and finally decides to open the letter from the Marines. As he begins to read, he hears the static again. We then flash back to that fateful incident in Afghanistan. Spencer and his unit were on patrol when they came across some men with guns and women that looked like hostages. Spencer calls over his radio to see what action he and his unit should take and he just keeps hearing “take the shot” over some static. Although he does ask for confirmation, he only hears “take the shot”. Spencer fires his weapon but the command repeats “do not take the shot”. Unfortunately for Spencer, he heard this too late and all hell broke loose. The men returned fire and one of them used a woman in a black hijab as a shield. The man shot at Spencer and, when he returned fire, he ended up shooting and killing the woman in the black hijab. While he and his unit are retreating, Spencer catches a bullet in the back. As Spencer relieves this traumatic moment, he screams as he holds the letter and the woman in the hijab is sitting right next to him.
The next morning all the guys are asleep and hungover. Spencer’s brother wakes up to look for him but finds his room empty with nothing but the letter from the Marines on the bed. He reads it and wakes Toad excitedly. He tells him that Spencer’s officially out of the Marines. That letter was his discharge notice. Wanting to share the news with everyone, they ask where Spencer is. One of Spencer’s friends sees him submerge himself into the lake and they all run down after him. Spencer returns to the beach where he sees Alice waiting for him in a wedding dress. The only thing is, she’s not really waiting for Spencer. She admits to him that she was trying to turn him into the man she lost, the Submarine Kid. She continues to tell him that they need to stop pretending they’re people that they’re not. Spencer pleads with her and says he is becoming him, the Submarine Kid, for her. He hands her his stopwatch and tells her to start it when he goes under the water. Tears in her eyes, Alice starts the watch as she sees Spencer go under. When Spencer comes up, he is back in full military gear in Afghanistan. He comes face to face with the woman in the hijab and sees that she is now holding the stopwatch. The woman drops it and, in a scene that is completely silent, Spencer finally comes to terms with what he did to her. Once this happens, he finds himself at the bottom of Thunder Lake and finds the remains of the Submarine Kid with his signature brown goggles still attached to his skull. He screams but has a moment of clarity. He finally realizes that he has to stop living a fantasy and live in the real world; a world that is filled with pain and regrets but also people who know him and love him no matter what. Spencer snaps out of his haze, grabs the goggles and resurfaces. His family and friends, who had been frantically swimming around the lake looking for him, immediately swim to him. Back on the shore, we see the Submarine Kid comic lying on the grass and Spencer bends down to put the goggles on top of it. We then cut to Alice, presumably in the world of the comic, sitting near the lake. The Submarine Kid comes up from the water and he asks if she’s ready to go and she responds with an enthusiastically warm “yes”.
There are so many things I want to discuss about this film, but the main aspect I want to focus on first is the character of Alice. Upon my first viewing of this film, I didn’t quite catch on that Alice was a figment of Spencer’s imagination. I first thought she was a character from the comic book that had come to life. After my second viewing of this film, I realized that not only was Alice not real but she was a manifestation of Spencer’s grief and desire to escape reality, based on a news article he read about her. I’m just speculating here but I think that, once he returned home and began working at the bookstore, Spencer read the article about a local woman named Alice Shelley who seemed to have drowned after her car veered off the road and into Thunder Lake. It is not explicitly implied that she committed suicide, but the article goes on to say she was described as a woman riddled with grief due to her fiancee having drown in that same lake a few years prior. In the general timeline of the film, Spencer reads this article almost near the end but I think he read it much earlier and, once his fantasy world began to collapse, the article served to pull him out of it even more. Since her very first appearance in the film, Alice has served as an escape for Spencer. He is able to easily bypass the radio static when he is with her and he seems quite calm as well. He laughs and has fun with her and he seems very much at peace. When he stops seeing her in the real world, Spencer imagines Alice on a beautiful beach where they are having picnics, playing with a dog and making out. Things take a bit of a turn though when Alice starts telling him they can’t stay on that beach forever. Where the fantasy truly breaks is when the woman in the hijab appears on the beach. His perfect world and his perfect girl begin to disappear and she eventually becomes the voice of reason.
Alice goes from kind of leading Spencer in one direction to pushing him away. She admits that she was just trying to make him into something he wasn’t and they both need to stop pretending and live the lives they were meant to lead. In this way, I think Alice actually serves as his subconscious as he first lies to himself but then realizes that he needs to snap back to reality and stay there. Some of this is hinted toward in Spencer’s conversation with Marc near the end of the film; Marc tells Spencer he knows he thinks the comic is his story but it simply is not. He can’t drag himself deeper into it as it will drag him even deeper into his sorrow and unresolved issues. This brings me to my next point, which is the very real condition of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD. Killing an innocent person overseas through an unfortunate misunderstanding really took its toll on Spencer and caused him to alienate those around him, with the exception of Alice. Spencer came home a changed man and did not think that his family or friends would accept him or be able to look at him the same knowing what he had done. This mentality, along with his trauma, caused him to mentally check out. So much so that, in order to keep living in a world where he is free of his pain, he literally almost kills himself multiple times. I know that his family probably either didn’t know about his PTSD or wanted to give Spencer some space before interfering, but someone should have gotten this man some help. I mean Spencer attempts to drown himself in sinks, the ocean and eventually the lake and no one thought to drive him to a therapist or hold an intervention. I understand that his friends tried to help the best way they knew how, which was with alcohol and drugs, but someone should have gotten him some real help.
Now, I’ve never served in the military but I understand the concept of guilt and grief transforming into immense trauma. I understand why Spencer thought his family and friends wouldn’t accept him if they found out, but I don’t understand why he wouldn’t try. Personally, I believe Spencer was punishing himself for his mission mix up that cost an innocent woman her life. This is why he kept seeing the woman in the hijab, a manifestation of his guilt, and why he screamed in anger when he read his discharge letter. Spencer was so wrapped up in his own guilt that he both wanted to escape into his perfect world with Alice, via suicide basically, or be sent back to potentially die in a war zone; something he believed he deserved. Either way, Spencer was set on somehow ending his life.
The next aspect of this film I want to discuss is water. Water plays a major role in this film not only as the framework of the plot, but also serves as the gateway between Spencer’s dreams and reality. For instance, Alice’s first real world appearances occur when Spencer hears water and when it rains. After this, she only appears when Spencer submerges himself in water. Water, as an element, is often associated with the cleansing of one’s spirit and soul. Christian baptisms, representing spiritual cleansing and rebirth, take place in water as well as the Great Flood cleansing the world of sin. With Spencer only being able to access his “perfect world” through water, it is as if he is cleansing himself of his major sin of murder and entering his version of heaven. This makes Alice free from sin and basically angelic. I think my theory here is backed up a bit at the end because, when Spencer places the goggles on the comic, the Submarine Kid returns to Alice sitting on the shore. He rises from the water, reborn just as Jesus was. In addition to this, Spencer repeatedly says his favorite place is Thunder Lake. He says that some of the best times he had when he was younger was at this lake. Water, and all references to it, help Spencer access a world in which he is forgiven and cleansed of his sins. It represents a lost innocence in a way. It isn’t until he finds himself face to face with the woman in the hijab and discovers the Submarine Kid’s skull at the bottom of the lake that he realizes water can also be a harsh and unforgiving element. When Spencer experiences both of these events, it really sinks in for him that he can’t simply absolve himself of his wrongdoing by nearly drowning himself. He has to face these things head on and work through them instead of pretending like it never happened.
The last thing I want to discuss in this article is the Submarine Kid comic book. The film begins with Alice narrating the entire comic, which sets the tone for the rest of the film, and the story ends up drawing parallels between the fictional protagonist and Spencer. Both the Submarine Kid and Spencer are small town boys with gifts that made them local legends; the kid’s incredible ability to hold his breath underwater for an extended period of time and Spencer’s stellar military career as a United States Marine. Both have significant others who support them and both have life changing events that shape the rest of their lives; Spencer killing a civilian in Afghanistan and the Submarine Kid having his longest breath hold but dying in the process. These parallels are what attracts Alice to Spencer, which is what makes her believe she can substitute her fiancee for Spencer. Throughout the course of the film, Alice realizes that, although similar in some respects, Spencer is definitely not the man she loves. In fact, Alice is the first one to realize she cannot pretend Spencer is the man she loves because of Spencer’s obvious damage. I like to think she doesn’t blame him for it, but it just serves as a reminder that she is way out of her depth with him. In addition to the character similarities, some of which include the Kid’s friends and parents kind of looking the same, some locations happen to be the same as well. Thunder Lake is where the comic takes place and happens to be a real place Spencer remembers visiting as a child, which he deems his favorite place ever. The last similarity between the comic and the real world of the film is the ending. The Submarine Kid takes his last plunge and never comes up in the comic but Spencer breaks the lore and resurfaces. Once again just speculating here, but I think Spencer surviving shows that he was meant to live his actual life because the person he was trying to be didn’t get that chance. The Submarine Kid was always destined to die, leaving his loved ones behind, whereas Spencer was always meant to survive and be with his loved ones. After Spencer finds the kid’s remains, he realizes this and, in a final act within his fantasy, returns his goggles. This act allows him to come back to Alice in the comic book world.
As for the comic book itself, I still don’t know whether or not it was a real story that inspired the comic, a total figment of Spencer’s imagination or just a fictional comic that Spencer dragged into his fantasy world. If I had to take an educated guess, I would say that it is indeed real, as Spencer’s boss at the bookstore does grab it and read a bit of it, but everything that transpires was all in Spencer’s head. I believe Spencer cast Alice as the Submarine Kid’s girl because of the article he read and began to blend elements from the comic into his real life. Although I can’t really account for Thunder Lake being both in the comic and a real place Spencer has been, I believe the comic is both a representation of Spencer’s life prior to going to war, hence the line about the Submarine Kid pulling off his longest breath hold yet before going out into the world, and his desire for a perfect world free of pain. I say this because Spencer mostly sees Alice on the beach but, when he sees her just before she starts to get real with him, they are in a scene from the comic where the Submarine Kid is older and performing a stunt in the pool of his backyard. He even asks Alice “Is this the best day ever?”. I think Spencer blended this comic with his life once he returned from his third tour because it represented the innocence of his pre war life that he wishes he could go back to. The Submarine Kid comic serves as Spencer’s ultimate escape.
This film is absolutely incredible, heartwarming and, if I’m being completely honest, slightly tear jerking. At its core, The Submarine Kid is a story of grief and the journey to acceptance. It’s about learning how to deal with trauma and understanding that forgiving yourself, although not easy, is the best way to do so. This film’s writing is superb, the acting is excellent and the story is uniquely fresh. Finn Wittrock shines in this role and really showcases his versatility. This movie is, in my own biased opinion, an indie sleeper hit that I think is definitely worth a watch.
