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In a true story, a thriller author conducts her own extraction—searching for her sick grandchildren in the Costa Rican jungle, rescuing the kids, then running from the gun-toting cult members who threatened her life. Audiences will cheer for the reluctant-hero couple as they fight to save the kids and bring them home to the US.
SYNOPSIS:
The main characters are L.J. and Dave, a likable fifty-something couple from Eugene, OR. The movie opens with a child-endangerment scene in Costa Rica, then cuts to their wedding. Dave’s vows are humorous and include references to hiking and biking, so we know they’re fun, active people. After the brief ceremony, the couple talks to one of Dave’s daughters, and we learn that L.J. is a novelist and that they’re planning to visit another of Dave’s daughters and his grandkids in Costa Rica on their honeymoon.
Shortly after the couple arrives in the small coastal town, everything goes sideways. A storm wipes out the beach where they’re staying, they both get violently ill, and L.J. is assaulted by a mugger with a 4-foot stick. But all of that is nothing compared to what is about to happen.
They find their grandkids living in a cult home with deplorable conditions and a mentally ill mother who’s taken her bizarre ideas about food, sanitation, and health to a new extreme. Already worried about the children’s safety, they watch in horror as the children develop staph infections all over their tiny bodies. When Zona—who thinks antibiotics are poison—refuses to take the kids to the clinic for treatment, L.J. decides to get help. Dave finally admits that his daughter is a danger to her own kids and agrees to go along.
At a small office for children’s services (PANI), they plead for help. Zona had already been reported months earlier for a previous staph-infection issue, so the officials agree to round up the kids. Dave and L.J. climb into the back of a federal police truck and set out into the jungle to find the remote home they’d only been to once.
After a few wrong turns, they finally locate it. But Zoey and the kids aren’t home. The couple is devastated, knowing they only have that one chance. One of the cult members is home and starts texting. L.J. yells at the officials to stop him, but it’s too late. He’s already warned Zona that the police had come for her kids. She promptly sends Dave hate messages and goes into hiding.
The authorities put out an alert, then go back to their other responsibilities. But Dave and L.J. can’t leave the area without doing everything possible to find the kids and get them medical help. They go into detective mode and bike all over, questioning locals and showing Zona’s photo. They finally get a tip from someone who had lived with the cult and start to believe they can locate the family.
LJ keeps investigating and looking for a new place to stay, while Dave goes to a local police department and persuades officers to go out gain. After hours of searching the jungle, they head back down the mountain in defeat. Suddenly, Dave spots his daughter’s vehicle in some bushes. The police raid the primitive jungle house and call an ambulance for the children. The kids are taken to a clinic, and after intense negotiations, PANI officials finally release them to the grandparents.
Dave and L.J.’s celebration is short lived—because shit is about to get even crazier. The mother’s cult friends—who’d been outside the clinic trying to intimidate them—vow revenge. They post online that they plan to find the couple, hurt them, and take the kids. Zona posts a Bible verse about a child killing her father.
Dave and L.J. go into hiding, moving from place to place (studio-like rentals), watching over their shoulders, and caring for three sick children under the age of seven. For the first week, it’s all they can do to feed the starving kids, give them medicine and teach them how to shower and brush their teeth—because they’d never done either. In addition, it’s Christmas week and every hotel and rental is booked, so they often don’t know if they will have a place to stay the next night. Still, they buy presents and have a sweet little Christmas for the kids, a scene that audiences will love.
With the help of locals, they finally find a room in a private home deep in the jungle. But soon, two of the mother’s friends (one carrying a gun) come within a half mile of where the family is staying, looking for them. While out walking, L.J. is spotted by the men and has to run and hide in the jungle to keep them from hurting her or following her back to the children. After that, officials finally give them permission to leave the area and move to the city of San Jose where they will be safer.
But they have no idea when, or if, they will be allowed to leave the country. Without passports for the kids, they make plans for alternative routes of escape, such as chartering a boat to Florida. Finally, a judge grants the protective custody order, and Dave drives back to Bri Bri to sign for it. With the paperwork to freedom in hand, he heads back over the mountain—and is nearly run off the road by a passing truck. He sits for a moment, thinking about precarious life is.
The embassy grants the kids passports, and after a final nerve-racking moment at the immigration counter in the airport, the family boards a plane for Portland, Oregon. On arrival, they are greeted by big family welcoming party—a happy ending that will have audiences on their feet clapping.