Susie also remembers the worst thing that ever happened to the family: The day her little brother, Buckley, swallowed a twig and stopped breathing. She remembers seeing Ruth Conners (Carolyn Dando), the school weirdo, at the farm and that she (Susie) now knows that Ruth saw things that others didn't. She remembers going to a sinkhole near a farm with her father and tossing things in, remembering that she was full of wonder at how the earth swallowed things whole.
She wanted to be a wildlife photographer and would go around taking photos of people in the neighborhood (focusing on a heavy-set girl). Susie remembers being given a camera and how she loved that photos could capture a moment before they were gone. Later that night, Jack makes love to his wife, Abigail (Rachel Weisz), next to the pile of books near their bed. Her father, Jack (Mark Wahlberg) tells her that the penguin has a nice life, since he is stuck in a perfect world. There was a snow globe with a penguin in it she was worried for since he was all alone. The film starts with Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan) reminiscing about her childhood.The synopsis below may give away important plot points. If Susie is able to let go, she may learn that she and her fellow travellers have a higher purpose in needing to move forward. But Susie seems somewhat determined to try and lead those that can feel her presence to the fact of George being her murderer, especially when his next potential victim seems to be Lindsey.
However, another young female who Susie meets in her current location tells Susie that she must advance forward to the next step. Another neighborhood girl, Ruth Connors (Carolyn Dando), who most deem weird, is also able to feel those in the hereafter, including Susie. Indeed, Susie, currently in-between heaven and Earth, is looking over her family, as well as Ray. Her father, Jack Salmon (Mark Wahlberg), cannot let go of ever finding out what happened to her, although he, along with their two other younger children, Lindsey (Rose McIver) and Buckley (Christian Ashdale), feel like they can occasionally feel Susie's afterlife presence. Her mother, Abigail Salmon (Rachel Weisz), is not dealing with her death well, keeping her bedroom as a sealed up memorial. She died without ever getting her first romantic kiss. In telling the story, Susie does not remember the exact method of her death or where her body is located, which the authorities do not find, but who have evidence that Susie is most likely dead.
If she was not preoccupied with these thoughts, Susie believes she would have noticed or felt the creepiness of neighbor George Harvey (Stanley Tucci), a serial killer of females of all ages who ends up murdering her. That year, special things going on in her life were the beginning of her aspirations to become a wildlife photographer, and her burgeoning romantic feelings, seemingly reciprocated, for senior British transfer student Ray Singh (Reece Ritchie). Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan) of Norristown, Pennsylvania narrates a story that begins in 1973, when she was a typical fourteen-year-old in a loving family to which no bad things ever happened. She tells the story from the place between Heaven and Earth, showing the lives of the people around her and how they have changed all while attempting to get someone to find her lost body. She must weigh her desire for vengeance against her desire for her family to heal.Ī fourteen-year-old girl in suburban 1970's Pennsylvania is murdered by her neighbor. Centers on a young girl who has been murdered and watches over her family - and her killer - from purgatory.