Themes
Okuno and Monroe discussed how it is "a story about the importance of believing women when they think they are in danger." Okuno said,
A lot of my work writing on the script was about pulling in from my own experience about what it's like to be a woman in the world, what it's like to be confronted with people who are doubting you and just knowing that as women, unfortunately, we already know that we're going to be doubted. We already have to sort of police our own emotions and approach things very delicately, and that in and of itself can be very frustrating. So I feel like that's the journey that you see Julia on in this movie. ... [In Maika's performance] I saw her self-regulating and I saw the sort of quiet frustration in having to do that constantly.
Maika Monroe agreed, saying she
connected with this story just immediately. It's obviously a thriller and it's a heightened story, but the character is so grounded, and the story that is being told is so grounded, and it's believable. Because this sort of stuff happens. I mean, I've dealt with it. Even within relationships that I've had, that a person that I consider to be maybe one of the closest people in my life, when that person doesn't have my back or doesn't believe me, I think it's the most lonely that I have ever felt. And that's something that Julia experiences — this person that is supposed to be there for her isn't.
Julia feels lonely and isolated. Okuno explained how the character evolved when she reshaped Zack Ford's script. Originally,
it was split between Julia and Francis' point of view. [...] There was an earnest effort to keep making Francis less of a [dick], honestly. ... [E]arly on, I feel like he does try to be proactive and he does try to listen to her. But for me, Francis' fundamental failing isn't even that he's an ass — or dismissive, it's that he cannot actually empathize with what she's going through because he hasn't really been there himself. He just fundamentally doesn't understand what it's like to be a woman and to have an experience of being followed and to have that experience supported by a lifetime's worth of little moments that add up to just generally feeling unsafe or always having to look around and always being aware, always having this omnipresent gaze on the back of your head.
Entertainment Weekly wrote, "This is why the film ends not with Daniel's death, but with the withering look Julia offers to Francis, who consistently insisted that she's overreacting."
