What They Had

Bridget lives away from her Chicago hometown, but a crisis brings her back: her mother Ruth, who has Alzheimer's disease, wandered out into the snow on Christmas Eve and was found only the next day. Bridget's brother Nick urges her to come home, and together the siblings try to persuade their father Bert that Ruth needs professional care. Bert refuses, convinced that she belongs at home with him. The visit also pushes Bridget to reckon with the family history and choices she left behind.

What They Had is a 2018 American drama written and directed by Elizabeth Chomko, her first feature film. Hilary Swank plays Bridget and Michael Shannon plays Nick, with Robert Forster as Bert, Blythe Danner as Ruth, Taissa Farmiga as Emma and Josh Lucas as Eddie among the cast of twenty-three credited performers. The film runs 101 minutes.

It was released in October 2018. On IMDb it holds a rating of 6.7 from roughly 5,100 votes, while on TMDB its rating is 6.5 from a much smaller number of votes. A film critics' rating of 7.2 from 119 reviews places it above both audience figures, indicating that reviewers responded to the film more warmly than general viewers did.