Director Baldoni effectively depicts the abuse from the survivor’s point of view, where she is unable to process what just happened to her. But it’s baffling that, despite a ready-made plot the script omits important scenes dealing with the central theme. In the book, after Ryle first hits Lily, she gives him an ultimatum and says what he did to her was wrong. But in the movie, Lily buys into Ryle’s suggestion that they made “a lovely mess,” as he had also cut himself with the broken pieces of the casserole he dropped before hitting her. After the first incident, Ryle doesn’t attack Lily until they are married. But when he discovers the card with Atlas's number hidden behind Lily's phone cover, he pushes her down the stairs. In the film, Lily wakes up to Ryle stitching her wound, gaslighting her into thinking she accidentally fell and reassuring her that she’s okay. Lily believes him and decides to stay, contradicting the novel, where she threw him out of the apartment when he insisted that she fell down the stairs.