Emma has come back to collect her things after ending the relationship. Dan wants the conversation to remain open; Emma considers the decision already made.
They are not having the first argument of their relationship. They know each other’s rhythms, weak spots and tactics.
The screenplay fractures the conversation with deliberate continuity errors: objects move, a mug changes, blood or earth appears and disappears, and people occupy contradictory physical states. For the actors, it remains one continuous, recognisable breakup conversation.
20s / 30s. Tired, angry, funny, impatient and capable of deliberately hurting Dan. She has practical things to do and would like to leave.
She does not need Dan to understand why she is leaving. Protect the simplicity of: “I just don’t like being around you anymore.”
SPOTLIGHT →
20s / 30s. Hurt, needy and convinced he is trying to behave reasonably. He wants an explanation, then an explanation of the explanation.
His control is most useful when it feels plausible to him. Do not arrive as the villain.
SPOTLIGHT →No ominous pauses. No secret knowledge. No “something terrible is coming”. No signalling the continuity errors. If a hammer appears, it is not an invitation to suddenly enter a thriller. The edit and the images will do that work.
Prioritise listening and interruption over polish. Overlap. Hesitate. Get a word slightly wrong. Change direction halfway through a sentence. Allow an ugly silence. We are looking for behaviour, not a pristine recital.
Occasionally funny. Increasingly unpleasant.
The scene should be able to exist without the formal horror conceit. Remove every continuity error and we should still believe these two people once loved one another and are now having a terrible morning.
Blue → yellow → broken yellow → red → green.
A hammer appears and disappears. Keys, bag and chair states contradict.
Blood, earth and a red line at the hairline arrive without acknowledgement.
Poster, towels, trainer and clothing move through mutually impossible versions.
MiSTAKES is a visual dissection of the tactics abusers use to control a partner, told entirely in the language of continuity error.
Some show what Dan wants seen — his self-justifying version of events, edited in like his internal defence: Emma holding the hammer, photographs “proving” a nice Christmas, the poster flipping back onto the wall.
Others are truth leaking through that he can’t fully control — the mug breaking, blood, earth, burial — because he genuinely can’t hold the memory of what he did. People who do this kind of harm block it out; so does the film.
Underneath both tracks is the harder reality: Emma isn’t grey-rocking. She’s engaging, defending, explaining herself — which is human, and exactly what someone running DARVO needs from her to keep working. These truths are sometimes seen — Emma covered in dirt, blood running down her forehead — because nobody can hide everything.
The mistake in the title isn’t the continuity errors. It’s EMMA staying in the room and attempting dialogue with a man who is not capable of that.
The film never shows both tracks colliding at the same moment. Control-track edits and truth-leakage edits occupy different beats, never the same beat. That gives the coverage a usable rule: every setup is unambiguously one track or the other.
Dan drinks from a mug once before washing it, so the mug tells us where we are in the story. Everything else lies.
MiSTAKES deals with coercive behaviour and implied fatal domestic violence. The violence itself is not depicted, but the finished film contains blood effects and disturbing imagery.
If this material relates to your own situation, confidential support is available. In immediate danger, call 999. In Scotland, the Domestic Abuse and Forced Marriage Helpline is 0800 027 1234.