The concluding story, The Dead Girl, backtracks to the last day of Krista's life, in which she buys a toy for Ashley's birthday, and then — through a series of ugly mishaps involving her pimp and boyfriend (Josh Brolin) and a violent john who beats Rosetta — ends up hitching a fateful ride to visit her daughter in a neighboring town.
Murphy's Krista is a terror: a flailing, spitting and cursing live wire whose emotional anchor in life is a child she is too unstable to care for. In this histrionic performance by an actor who even in roles that call for sweetness and charm conveys hardness and defiance, Murphy and her disagreeable character mesh.
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