twicely fresh

The real conflict of the movie was about pitting her self preservation instincts against her empathy, and it's specifically in a gendered way (I'm sure there are racial aspects as well, but I haven't finished rotating those in my brain yet). When she forgoes self preservation in her attempts to help Keith and AJ, it definitively comes back to bite her in the ass, leading to her capture in the former instance and her near re-capture and severe wounds in the latter. However it is notably her empathy/her ability to read the Mother that allows her to survive as well as she does.

This theme is repeated in the third act twist, where the well meaning retail employee helps Frank prepare for a birth, and unwittingly assists in the prolonged torture of one of his victims.

Paired with the number of times in the film that men refuse to take women's concerns seriously (Keith with the room, AJ denying his rape accusations when it's very clear he did something wrong, the cops refusing to believe Tess, the homeless man who insists that Tess leave AJ behind, etc) I think the film manages to say something interesting, if not very subtle, about the gendered nature of care in society.

Keepin’ secrets, are ye?