While She Was Out had good bones, but in the end, doesn’t work. A woman’s Falling Down.
 SPOILERS The movie works as an urban legend prequel: how a monster was created at Christmas, but people have to think of Basinger as the monster & how we are sympathetic to her. The idea of a violent woman as such an aberration that even after being brutally killed off one by one, the guys haven’t figured out that they should be afraid of her & run away instead of continuing to pursue her. Once she starts defending herself–whether by smoking, talking back to her husband in the car, leaving a nasty note on someone’s car, cursing out & pushing punks, which were the correct things to do, when she rightfully & violently defends herself, there is some invisible line that she crosses & her defense becomes out of proportion. Remember that Jason was a drowning victim & Kruger was a victim of vigilante justice, burned to death, punished without a trial. Real lesson of this movie: don’t mess with suburban moms, especially if they take pilates.