Rattlesnake

Rattlesnake follows Katrina Ridgeway, a single mother driving from Arizona toward Oklahoma with her young daughter, Clara. A flat tire leaves them stranded on a lonely road in rural Texas, where Clara is bitten by a rattlesnake. A strange woman saves the girl, but Katrina learns that the rescue demands another human life before sunset. The movie has a bleak, slow, supernatural thriller tone, with most of the danger taking place in bright desert daylight.

Katrina spends the day trying to decide whether any stranger deserves to die for Clara. She first considers an old man in the hospital, then targets Billy, an abusive boyfriend she meets at a bar. The story shows Katrina wrestling with guilt, fear, and the need to protect her child, and it ends with her killing Billy after a snake attack leaves him helpless. The film treats motherhood, personal responsibility, and the price of a life as its main ideas, while the ghosts and visions keep the moral choice unclear.