The film excels at building tension by pitting two opposing worldviews against each other:

: Pugh delivers a grounded, intense performance as a woman battling both a patriarchal "committee" of village elders and the heartbreaking reality of a starving child.

: The movie explicitly addresses the "stories" we create. It begins with a fourth-wall-breaking introduction, reminding the audience that we are about to watch a fiction—much like the fictions the characters believe.