The Room Next Door (2024)

The film opens with Ingrid, a successful author, arriving at a Manhattan hospital where she reconnects with Martha, a former coworker and long-standing friend from the magazine where they once worked together. Martha, gaunt and wearing a hospital gown, tells Ingrid that doctors have diagnosed her with terminal cancer. In the hospital room Martha begins narrating the arc of her life, moving chronologically from youthful confidence to the losses that mark her present solitude.

Martha recounts meeting a young man named Fred in college in the 1970s. They fall in love and Martha becomes pregnant. Fred enlists and goes to fight in the Vietnam War. During his service he returns a different person, afflicted by post-traumatic stress; his behavior changes and he withdraws from Martha. After some time Fred abandons Martha and later remarries. He leaves behind the child he fathered with Martha, a daughter named Michelle. As Michelle grows she repeatedly asks Martha about Fred's whereabouts; those questions harden into resentment, and mother and daughter grow estranged. Seeking answers and hoping to soothe Michelle, Martha contacts Fred's new wife. The woman tells Martha that Fred died trying to rescue someone who was not there -- he was hallucinating a person and ran into a house fire to save a figure conjured by his PTSD, and in that attempt he perished. Martha relays this to Ingrid as a closed chapter that fractured her family life and left her isolated.

In the hospital Martha reveals that she has taken measures to control the end of her life: she has purchased euthanasia pills. She explains to Ingrid that she wants to die on her own terms and asks Ingrid to be with her in those final moments at a rented country house in Woodstock, New York. Martha stresses that she has no remaining family to care for these arrangements; Michelle has separated herself emotionally, and Martha is determined to shape the circumstances of her death. Ingrid hesitates, torn between moral qualms and compassion; after discussion she agrees to accompany Martha to the country home and to stay with her through the night when Martha plans to take the pills.

They leave the city and check into the small rental in Woodstock. Martha arranges the room they will share and speaks about a condition she wants to impose on Ingrid: the next morning, Ingrid will know Martha has died if she finds Martha's bedroom door closed. That single, literal criterion will mark the fact of Martha's passing. Ingrid listens and objects to the cold finality of the rule, but Martha insists on it as a way to spare Ingrid the details of dying. The two settle into the house, and Martha gives Ingrid a small insight into practical matters she has left in order: a simple paper trail of instructions and the admission that she has thought this through long before she reached out to Ingrid.

That night Martha takes the pills; at dawn Ingrid awakens and discovers that the bedroom door is shut. She steps toward the door and, for a moment, allows herself the shocking belief that Martha is gone. Ingrid opens the door to find Martha alive. Martha smiles with a brittle calm and says that earlier she had opened a window and the breeze had shut the door -- the closed door could be read as a rehearsal for what is to come. Ingrid registers anger and fear at having been misled; she scolds Martha for staging what she calls a "practice." Martha replies that she wants Ingrid to know what it will feel like, and she frames the episode as preparation. Ingrid vents unease about being manipulated, and Martha stands firm in her decision to keep control over the manner and timing of her death.

Later that day Ingrid meets Damian for lunch. Damian is a fellow writer who once shared a romantic involvement with both Martha and Ingrid during earlier chapters of their lives. Over their meal, Damian confirms he knows about Martha's plan. He offers practical support to Ingrid beyond emotional counsel: he agrees to help find a lawyer who can protect Ingrid from police suspicion if the death leads to investigation. He tells Ingrid that a good attorney will be ready to assert that Ingrid neither assisted nor coerced Martha and that Martha made her own autonomous choice. He reminds Ingrid of the ways Martha has hidden aspects of her plans; his tone suggests experience with the tangled loyalties that the three of them have navigated. Ingrid accepts Damian's help and the two discuss next steps while the city moves on around them.

That evening Ingrid returns to the Woodstock house. Snow begins to fall as she drives north; the countryside looks quiet and the small rental appears isolated. She parks and walks up the path toward the house with the lawyer's contact details and Damian's reassurances ringing in her head. From the back patio she sees Martha lying in a lounge chair, motionless. The bedroom door is closed. Ingrid runs across the yard and lifts the lounge chair's blanket. Martha is cold and still. Ingrid checks for a pulse and then discovers a small handwritten note folded inside Martha's coat pocket. The note thanks Ingrid for coming and asks, with directness, that Ingrid contact Michelle. Ingrid reads the words as if they are both instruction and farewell.

Ingrid calls emergency services and reports Martha's death. Officers arrive at the house and begin processing the scene. A police officer who presents as devout and doctrinaire -- described by Ingrid later as a religiously fundamentalist officer -- questions Ingrid with a probing formality. The officer interviews Ingrid on location and insists on knowing whether she was aware of Martha's intention to take her life. Ingrid tells the truth: she knew Martha had bought euthanasia pills and that Martha had planned to die, and she says she had agreed to be present but did not actively assist in the act. The officer reacts with skepticism. He points out to Ingrid that they have evidence suggesting Martha had reached out to another friend before asking Ingrid to join her. The officer states this sequence to suggest that Martha had solicited different companions for the act and may have hidden her true intentions from those who declined. The officer's tone implies that Ingrid could be treated as an accessory if any assistance is proven. He presses Ingrid for precise details about the pills: where Martha obtained them, whether Ingrid observed ingestion, and whether Martha had made other contingency plans. Ingrid provides as much factual information as she can but does not invent observations she did not witness.

As detectives photograph the scene and the house yields up small traces of the night, Ingrid finds herself moved to a secondary interview room at the precinct. There an investigator continues to press her about knowledge of Martha's procurement of euthanasia pills. The investigator asks whether Ingrid removed any items from the house, whether she set any timer devices, and whether she arranged Martha's medications. Ingrid answers that she did not handle the pills, did not lock or unlock doors on Martha's behalf, and that she discovered Martha outside on the lounge chair. The officer remains unconvinced that Ingrid is merely a witness; the implication of collusion hangs in the room until Ingrid asks to contact Damian and the lawyer. She places the call and requests they come to the police station.

Damian arrives with the attorney he lined up at lunch. The lawyer immediately takes charge of the conversation with the officers, citing existing precedents and insisting that Ingrid has no obligation beyond reporting the death and cooperating with the investigation. The lawyer demands that no charges be brought without corroborating forensic evidence of assistance, then arranges for Ingrid to be released pending further inquiry. The attorney explains that euthanasia remains a legally fraught issue and that suspicion naturally falls on those present during the act. He advises Ingrid to avoid leaving the state and to supply a sworn statement when appropriate. Damian stays with Ingrid as the lawyer negotiates release terms and to offer emotional steadiness.

As police continue to collect physical evidence at the house, they discover a modest dossier of Martha's preparations: notes, lists of phone numbers, a receipted order for the pills. The investigation reveals that Martha had indeed contemplated death for some time; officers find messages showing she had reached out to at least one other acquaintance to request accompaniment during her planned death. The detective who examined these items informs Ingrid that Martha had been systematic about the plan, which is one of the reasons they view the case as non-accidental. The religiously devout officer's earlier insinuation that Martha had asked someone else before Ingrid underscores the police view of Martha's death as self-determined but premeditated. In their report they note the closed bedroom door, the outdoor body, the note of thanks, and the record of the purchase of euthanasia pills.

After the formalities at the station, Ingrid follows up on Martha's final request: she attempts to locate Michelle. Using contact information scribbled in Martha's papers and by placing calls to numbers found among Martha's old paperwork, Ingrid tracks Michelle down in the city. Michelle at first does not answer, and when Ingrid reaches her she is cool and defensive. Their initial conversation is terse; Michelle relays that she has kept her distance from Martha for years. Ingrid tells Michelle that Martha has died and reads the note's contents aloud, emphasizing Martha's gratitude and her expressed wish that Michelle know. Michelle reacts first with disbelief, then with a mixture of regret and anger. She asks questions about Fred and demands to know why Martha never told her certain things. Ingrid explains the conversation Martha had with Fred's wife -- how Fred had died during a hallucinatory attempt to save someone who did not exist and had thereby perished in a house fire -- and she relays how those events damaged the family. Michelle hears these details and in the presence of Ingrid's directness begins to process a lifetime of unanswered questions.

Ingrid invites Michelle to the Woodstock house. Michelle arrives later that day, wrapped in a heavy coat, her face set and guarded. The snow has thickened and the yard shows a dusting over the lounge chairs where Martha lay. Michelle approaches the back patio and steps hesitantly into the small, sagging house. She inspects Martha's room, reads the note, and sifts through Martha's sparse possessions. At the request of Ingrid, Michelle sits with her on the lounge chairs outside; they lie down together under blankets and look up at the falling snow. The two women exchange few words at first; then Michelle begins to ask questions about the person her mother was, about the moments leading up to Martha's death, and about the absence she felt while growing up. Ingrid answers with the factual specifics she knows: the hospital diagnosis, the purchase of the pills, the rehearsal with the closed door, Martha's solitary preparations. Michelle alternates between anger and grief, and eventually she allows sorrow to surface.

After a period of time spent together on the lawn chairs, Michelle opens up about her childhood confusion and bitterness. She admits that repeatedly asking about Fred and receiving evasions from Martha hardened into a conviction that Martha had abandoned them intentionally. Michelle acknowledges that she held Martha responsible for the gap in her own life and that she had not allowed herself to forgive what she now realizes was an accumulation of trauma and secrecy. Ingrid listens without offering moral judgments; she recounts only actions and what she observed: Martha's decision to buy the pills, her insistence on the closed-door signal, the practice that morning when the breeze shut the door, and the eventual discovery of Martha's body outside. Michelle asks whether there are legal steps to take; Ingrid mentions the officer's skepticism, the lawyer's involvement, and the possibility of an official inquiry, but she avoids speculating beyond the factual record.

The film ends with Ingrid and Michelle lying side by side on the lounge chairs as the snowfall increases. They watch the flakes collect on Martha's empty chair and on the roof of the small house. The final scene fixes on Martha's closed bedroom door as seen through the window, then shifts outward to the two women in the yard. They remain silent for a long stretch, breathing in the cold and letting the sequence of events -- the hospital confession, Martha's explanation of Fred and the hallucination that killed him, the purchase of euthanasia pills, the closed-door rehearsal, the lawyer's arrival, the police interrogation, and the note requesting Michelle's presence -- cohere into a factual accounting of what has transpired. The camera follows the slow accumulation of snow across the lawn chairs and the lonely house in Woodstock, and the film concludes with Ingrid pressing her hand against Michelle's until the screen fades to black. Martha's death is recorded in the official reports as a self-administered ingestion of euthanasia pills; she is discovered on the lounge chair with a note thanking Ingrid and urging contact with Michelle. The final image is of Ingrid and Michelle together on the lawn, isolated beneath a soft, falling winter, both alive and confronted by the precise facts of a planned, solitary death.

In the end, Martha quietly carries out her plan to die by taking the euthanasia pill alone in the rented country house, without Ingrid in the next room. Ingrid, who wakes to find Martha gone and a note asking her to find and contact Martha's estranged daughter Michelle, must deal with the police but is released. She then succeeds in bringing Michelle to the house where Martha died; mother's friend and daughter lie side by side on lounge chairs in the falling snow, sharing a silent, fragile connection that closes the story.

Now, the ending in expanded, scene-by-scene narrative:

Night has settled over the rented house in Woodstock. The rooms are mostly dark, with only a few lamps throwing warm pools of light over the rich colors of the furnishings Martha chose. Earlier, the two women had eaten, talked, and moved through the familiar routine they have built during these last days: conversation, small domestic tasks, intermittent laughter, and the quiet pauses when pain or fatigue make speech fall away.

At some point in the late evening, Martha and Ingrid say goodnight in the hallway. Martha is in her nightclothes, her movements slower, her body thinner and more fragile than when Ingrid first saw her again at the hospital. Her face, however, is calm. She reminds Ingrid, as she has before, of the rule they agreed upon: in the morning, if her bedroom door is closed, that will mean she has taken the pill and is dead. Ingrid listens, standing in the dim hallway, and accepts the reminder without argument. The understanding between them is practical on the surface: Ingrid will respect the door and then follow the detailed instructions Martha has given her about what to do after the death, so that Ingrid is not legally implicated.

They say goodnight. Ingrid goes into her own room. Martha closes her door only partway, leaving it slightly open for now. The house falls quiet, filled only with the soft sounds of the night outside: faint wind in the trees, distant traffic, occasional creaks of old wood.

Later, sometime in the night, Martha is alone in her room. The door is closed. She takes out the euthanasia pill she obtained earlier, the one she had shown and described to Ingrid when she first explained her plan. She follows the plan she has long prepared. There is no one else in the room. She takes the pill, arranging herself in the bed according to her own instructions, intent on sparing Ingrid the sight of struggle or disorder. The act itself is unseen; the camera, or our attention, remains outside that closed door. What happens next is only known by its result: when morning comes, Martha is no longer alive.

Morning arrives. Light pushes into the house through the windows, gray and pale, the kind of light that comes with cold weather and, soon, snow. Ingrid wakes in her room, momentarily unaware of what day it is in their private calendar. Then she remembers. Today could be the day the door is closed.

She steps into the hallway. The house is very still. Along the hallway, Martha's door is now shut. Ingrid sees the closed door and has to confront the meaning Martha attached to this simple, ordinary image. She crosses the short distance to the door, stands in front of it, and feels more than she says. Although they had agreed that the closed door would be the sign of death, Ingrid's reaction is not purely procedural. She hesitates, processing the fact that the signal they discussed is now real.

Despite their agreement, Ingrid does not simply turn away. Instead, she quickly discovers that Martha is, in fact, not still alive; the closed door truly marks the end of Martha's life. The film does not linger in the room or on the body. The fact is established: Martha has carried out her plan alone and is now dead in that room.

Ingrid then finds the note Martha left for her. The note is clear and direct. In it, Martha thanks Ingrid. She acknowledges what Ingrid has done for her by being there, by agreeing to stay in the house and be "in the room next door," even though Martha, in the end, chose to die without anyone present. The note also includes one specific request: Martha asks Ingrid to contact her estranged daughter, Michelle. This request is practical and focused, naming a concrete action Ingrid can take after Martha's death.

With the note in hand, Ingrid now has two responsibilities: to alert the authorities according to Martha's careful instructions, and to reach out to Michelle as requested. She calls the police and reports the death. Officers arrive at the house. The mood shifts from private intimacy to official scrutiny. The rented country house becomes a scene to be processed.

Inside, a religious fundamentalist police officer takes charge of questioning Ingrid. He is skeptical when Ingrid explains that she was not aware of the exact timing of Martha's suicide, and that she did not assist in administering the euthanasia pill. The officer challenges her account, focusing on the evidence that Martha had previously asked someone else to be with her in the same role before Ingrid agreed. He reveals that they know Martha approached another friend earlier with the same request to stay nearby during her planned death, and that Ingrid was not the first choice. By bringing this up, he implies doubts about Ingrid's ignorance of the precise plan.

The questioning is firm, even accusatory, but there is no violent confrontation. Ingrid remains in the room with him, answering what she can. She holds to her version of events: she agreed to be in the house, in the room next door, but she did not physically help Martha take the pill. The focus of the scene is on the fact that the authorities see this as a suspicious death and that Ingrid's role is being examined.

After the initial interrogation, Ingrid is allowed to leave. She exits the presence of the officer, leaving behind the official machinery that will deal with the body, the paperwork, the formal classifying of Martha's death. Ingrid has fulfilled the obligations Martha laid out regarding the discovery of the body and the involvement of the police.

Once she is free from the questioning, Ingrid turns to the other request in Martha's note: contacting Michelle. She reaches out to her, using the information Martha provided. Michelle, who has been estranged from her mother after years of resentment and distance, responds to the invitation. Details of their conversation are not expanded, but the result is clear: Michelle agrees to come to the house where her mother has died.

The setting is now the same Woodstock house, but some time has passed. The authorities are gone. The house is quiet again, but transformed by the absence of Martha. Outside, the weather has turned colder. Snow is falling, slow and steady, covering the grounds and softening the shapes of the landscape.

Ingrid and Michelle meet at the house. Michelle is now an adult, the daughter whose questions about her father and whose frustrations with her mother's choices led to long estrangement. She has not had a recent, close relationship with Martha; she did not share these final days in person. Now, her first encounter with this place comes after Martha is already gone.

The two women go outside together. They do not stand at a distance or separate themselves. Instead, they lie down side by side on the lounge chairs that sit on the property, perhaps the same chairs where Ingrid and Martha once sat and looked out at the surroundings. The chairs are positioned to face the open space, giving them a view of the gray sky and the falling snow.

Ingrid and Michelle lie there, coats on, bodies parallel. Snow lands on their clothes and hair. They share the same frame, the same outdoor stillness. They are not talking at length; the scene emphasizes their physical proximity and shared presence rather than conversation. Ingrid has fulfilled the request Martha left in the note: she has found Michelle, brought her here, and made it possible for Martha's daughter to occupy, even briefly, the space that once held Martha's final days.

The snow continues to fall. The camera, or our attention, stays on their two figures stretched out on the lounge chairs in the cold, the house behind them, the landscape slowly whitening. The image holds: Ingrid, the friend who stayed; Michelle, the daughter who arrives too late to see her mother alive but not too late to be acknowledged and included in this final setting. There is no sudden revelation spoken aloud, no dramatic gesture. The fate of each is defined by their position in this closing tableau.

Martha's fate is complete and offscreen: she dies alone in her bedroom after taking the euthanasia pill according to her plan, leaving behind instructions and a note. Ingrid's fate at the end is to be free of suspicion enough to leave police custody, to carry and deliver Martha's final message, and to share a wordless moment with Michelle at the house. Michelle's fate, as far as the film shows, is to be contacted, to come to the site of her mother's chosen death, and to lie in silent companionship beside Ingrid as snow falls, the story ending with the two of them together in that quiet, wintry scene.

There is no post‑credits scene in The Room Next Door (2024); the film ends with Ingrid and Michelle lying together on the lounge chairs in the snow, and the credits roll without any additional narrative footage.

"The Room Next Door" is rated PG‑13 and is not designed as a children's film; it deals with heavy adult themes and is better suited to teens and adults than younger viewers.

Potentially objectionable or upsetting elements (kept non‑spoiler):

• Death and euthanasia: Central focus on serious illness, choosing to end one's life, and conversations about mortality and grief, which can be very heavy for kids and sensitive viewers.
• Emotional distress: Intense scenes of sadness, fear, anger, and anxiety around impending death, strained relationships, and goodbyes.
• Strong language: Repeated use of profanity and harsh expressions, more than in a typical family movie.
• Sexual references: Adult discussions and a few suggestive remarks about past relationships and sexuality, though not graphic.
• Mature themes: References to serious global concerns (like climate pessimism) and adult regrets, which may feel bleak or unsettling.

For most children, it will likely be too somber and adult in tone, even though there's no graphic violence or explicit sex.