Sorry We Missed You Parent Guide

Ricky Turner (Kris Hitchen) is struggling to keep his family afloat. The 2008 recession destroyed his building career and he’s been working at semi-skilled labor jobs. But he’s not as young as he used to be and he’s too proud to go on the dole, so Ricky needs to find another way to pay the rent. When a friend suggests working as a delivery driver, Ricky sells his wife’s car and borrows some money to buy a delivery van.

I hate watching horror movies – the constant tension, the sense of imminent doom, and the gory violence are too much for me. Sorry We Missed You definitely isn’t a horror flick, but it’s dominated a persistent sense of dread and tension that ratchets up throughout the story. Almost all of this film’s 101 minute runtime saw me on the edge of my seat, terrified of what was going to happen next to the Turner family.

One of the great achievements of this production is how deeply it makes us care about the Turners. Ricky is the real thing – a hard working man who desperately wants to make a better life for his children. His wife, Abbie (Debbie Honeywood) is a gentle, tender woman who wants to spend more time with her children and who lavishes kindness on the sick and elderly clients she cares for in their homes. Teenager Sebastian (Rhys Stone) is angry, rebellious, and artistic. And Liza Jane (Katie Proctor) is the bright, beloved daughter, successful at school and a peacemaker at home. The Turners love one another, and it is excruciating to watch as their economic woes put them under progressively greater strain and threaten to tear them apart.

It’s these economic pressures that are the foundation of the plot. Ricky and Abbie are hardworking and thrifty. But the system in which they work is stacked against them. Abbie’s kind heart doesn’t allow her to skimp on the care she gives her clients, which has her constantly running late and in trouble with her supervisor. And Ricky’s boss (Ross Brewster) is a callously brutal man who bullies his drivers in the pursuit of profit and efficiency. The drivers, trapped in gig economy jobs, without stable salaries or any benefits, work ever faster, aware that they are operating on a knife’s edge between solvency and financial disaster.

Sorry We Missed You isn’t rated by the MPAA but contains so much profanity that it lands squarely in the Restricted category. I counted just over 100 swear words – including 73 sexual expletives – but this number is inaccurate. There were scenes where the curse words were flying so fast I couldn’t catch them all, so, if you have a low tolerance for profanity, this clearly isn’t the movie for you. Other content issues are minor, but there is some violence, including a heart-rending act of vandalism, and a brutal beating with a humiliating twist.

The content issues are unfortunate because this movie has a lot to say, aside from the cuss words. It asks big questions about economic exploitation, the gig economy, and how we think people in service sector jobs deserve to be treated. After watching this movie, I guarantee that you’ll look at your Uber driver or Amazon courier in a whole new light.