28 Days

Gwen Cummings is an alcoholic who spends her nights in a drunken haze with her boyfriend, Jasper. They arrive late and disheveled to her sister Lily's wedding, where Gwen knocks over the wedding cake and drunkenly steals a limousine, crashing into a house. Given a choice between jail time or 28 days in a rehab center, she chooses rehab. Gwen is introduced to a variety of patients: hypersexual cocaine addict Oliver, former doctor Daniel, mother of two Roshanda, older addict Bobbi Jean, and Dutch immigrant Gerhardt, and is assigned as roommate to teenage heroin addict Andrea. Angry and resistant, Gwen refuses to take part in treatment or admit she is an alcoholic. Throughout this, Gwen struggles with flashbacks of her addict mother, who died of an overdose when Gwen and Lily were children. On visiting day, Jasper slips Gwen a bottle of painkillers and they sneak off for an inebriated day together. Cornell, the facility's director and a recovering addict himself prepares to kick Gwen out to serve her jail sentence, but she still denies that she has a problem. Storming back to her room, she takes one of her smuggled pills, but spits it out and tosses the bottle out of her third-story window. After spending the day suffering withdrawal symptoms alone, she climbs out of the window to retrieve the pills. She falls, severely sprains her ankle, and is rescued by Eddie, a new patient. Finally convinced that she has a problem, Gwen asks Cornell for another chance and begins to participate in the recovery process. Jasper visits and proposes to Gwen with champagne, which she throws in the lake. Returning to her room, she stops Andrea from cutting herself, and grows closer to her and their fellow addicts, who warn that Jasper does not take her sobriety seriously. Gwen learns that Eddie is a professional baseball player, and they share an impulsive kiss but form a friendship instead. Discovering that he is a fan of Santa Cruz, Andrea's favorite soap opera, Gwen and the group begin watching it together. Lily attends a group therapy session, revealing that a drunken Gwen ruined her wedding with a humiliating speech, and leaves in disgust when Gwen dismisses Lily's feelings. Andrea will soon be released, and Gwen arranges a farewell skit for the group to perform. Jasper shows up unannounced, and finds Gwen with Eddie; picking a fight, he insults them both and Eddie punches him, straining his friendship with Gwen. She discovers Andrea dead in their bathroom from an overdose and commits herself to restoring her relationship with her sister. They reconcile and Gwen leaves the facility after completing her course of treatment, but not before Eddie warns her that Jasper is dangerous to her sobriety. Jasper offers to make amends, but Gwen realizes he is unwilling to change to support her recovery. Leaving him and their old party friends at a bar, she encounters a horse on the street and can lift its hoof on her second try (after asking for help), an activity she struggled with in rehab. She breaks up with Jasper and is later reunited with a sober Gerhardt at a floral shop. In a mid-credits scene, Eddie recognizes an actor from Santa Cruz who arrives as a new patient.

Plot from 28 Days (film)CC BY-SA 4.0