Overview
Emily is the central character of Screwdriver. She is portrayed by AnnaClare Hicks. Emily is thirty-three and comes to California after Sean, her longtime partner in Nebraska, leaves her. She stays with Robert, an old high school friend, and Robert’s wife Melissa.
Emily is physically slight, with lean pale arms, a sandy-blonde braid, a sharp collarbone, and raw cuticles. She arrives with a worn canvas suitcase and a near-empty box of cigarettes. Her art, vegetarian habits, and religious beliefs become early points of pressure inside Robert and Melissa’s house.
Role in the Film
Emily first accepts the house as temporary refuge. Robert recalls their high school past and tells her that Melissa has agreed she may stay for a week. Melissa gives her a Zygoprep smoothie, praises her sketching, manages her food and drink, and touches her in ways Emily does not fully welcome.
As the stay continues, Emily’s physical condition worsens. She becomes sleepless, itchy, thirsty, cracked-lipped, and disoriented. She briefly leaves the house to buy art supplies, but Melissa treats the trip as a breach of order and removes Emily’s cigarettes and paintings. Robert then draws Emily into Robert’s chamber exercise, where she is taught to understand the house as a place of protection and the outside world as temptation.
Emily begins to accept Robert and Melissa’s account of reality. She tries to contact Imani, fixates on Elouise’s photograph, and later drives Sean from the house after reading him as the tempter predicted by Robert’s exercise. During the private celebration that follows, Robert and Melissa turn on her after she admits Sean came to the house. Emily retaliates by taunting Melissa about her stored eggs and Robert’s interest in other women.
In the bathroom, Emily finds the screwdriver that echoes Robert’s exercise. She wounds the center of her left palm as a stigmata, then discovers prescription bottles hidden in the locked medicine drawer. Robert and Melissa force their way in, remove her, and lock her overnight in the dark guest bedroom. Emily wakes with fragmented memories and accepts a new phone, an offer to stay, and a place in the household. She is last seen curled with her head in Melissa’s lap while Robert walks toward the shoreline.