Ben Is Back

Watch Peter Hedges' drama Ben Is Back (2018) online on iFILM. On Christmas Eve morning, nineteen-year-old Ben (Lucas Hedges) shows up on his family's doorstep with no warning. He's supposed to be in a sober-living program. His mother is overjoyed and terrified at the same time.

Holly (Julia Roberts) lets her son stay for the holiday on one condition: he doesn't leave her sight. Ben is in recovery, and a single day at home turns into a test for everyone in it. When the family dog goes missing, a quiet Christmas spirals into an overnight odyssey through the places Ben used to haunt, where people remember him all too well. Every old debt he left behind threatens to drag them both back under.

Hedges keeps the opioid crisis intimate, telling it through one family across one day, with no lectures attached. Roberts plays maternal love pushed to the edge of panic, arguably one of her finest dramatic turns. It speaks to anyone who values an honest film about addiction that refuses a tidy happy ending. Stream Ben Is Back (2018) online on iFILM.