Changeling

Plot

In 1928 Los Angeles, single mother Christine Collins (Jolie) returns home to discover her nine-year-old son, Walter (Griffith), is missing. Reverend Gustav Briegleb (Malkovich) publicizes Christine's plight and rails against the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) for its incompetence, corruption and the extrajudicial punishment meted out by its "Gun Squad", led by ChiefJames E. Davis (Colm Feore). Several months after Walter's disappearance, the LAPD tells Christine that he has been found alive. Believing the positive publicity will negate recent criticism of the department, the LAPD organizes a public reunion. Although "Walter" (Devon Conti) claims he is Christine's son, she says he is not. Captain J. J. Jones (Donovan), the head of the LAPD's Juvenile Division, insists the boy is Walter and pressures Christine into taking him home "on a trial basis".

After Christine confronts Jones with physical discrepancies between "Walter" and her son, Jones arranges for a medical doctor to visit her. He tells Christine that "Walter" is shorter than before his disappearance because trauma has shrunk his spine, and that the man who took Walter had him circumcised. A newspaper prints a story that implies Christine is an unfit mother; Briegleb tells Christine it was planted by police to discredit her. Walter's teacher and dentist give Christine signed letters confirming "Walter" is an impostor. Christine tells her story to the press; as a result, Jones sends her to Los Angeles County Hospital's "psychopathic ward". She befriends inmate Carol Dexter (Ryan), who tells Christine she is one of several women who were sent there for challenging police authority. Dr. Steele (Denis O'Hare) deems Christine delusional and forces her to take mood-regulating pills. Steele says he will release Christine if she admits she was mistaken about "Walter"; she refuses.

Detective Ybarra (Kelly) travels to a ranch in Wineville, Riverside County, to arrange the deportation of 15-year-old Sanford Clark to Canada. The boy's uncle, Gordon Northcott (Harner), has fled after Ybarra unwittingly alerted him to his visit. Clark tells Ybarra that Northcott forced him to help kidnap and murder around 20 boys and identifies Walter as one of them. Jones tells Briegleb that Christine is in protective custody following a mental breakdown. Jones orders Clark's deportation, but Ybarra makes Clark reveal the murder site. Briegleb secures Christine's release by showing Steele a newspaper story about the Wineville killings that names Walter as a possible victim. "Walter" reveals his motive was to secure transport to Los Angeles to see his favorite actor, Tom Mix, and says the police told him to lie about being Christine's son. The RCMP capture Northcott in Vancouver, Canada. Christine's attorney (Pierson) secures a court order for the release of the other unfairly imprisoned women.

On the day of the city council's hearing into the case, Christine and Briegleb arrive at Los Angeles City Hall, where they encounter thousands of protesters demanding answers from the city. The hearing is intercut with scenes from Northcott's trial. The council concludes that Jones and Davis should be removed from duty, and that extrajudicial internments by police must be reviewed. Northcott's jury finds him guilty of murder and the judge sentences him to death by hanging. Two years later, Christine has not given up her search for Walter. Northcott sends her a message saying he is willing to tell her what happened to Walter on condition that Christine meet him before his execution. She visits Northcott, but he refuses to tell her if he killed her son. Northcott is executed the next day.

In 1935, David Clay—one of the boys assumed to have been killed—is found alive. He reveals that one of the boys with whom he was imprisoned was Walter. David, Walter and two other boys escaped, but were separated. David does not know whether Walter was recaptured, giving Christine hope he is alive.

The Lovely Bones

Plot

On December 6, 1973, in Norristown, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia, Susie Salmon takes her usual shortcut home from her school through a cornfield. George Harvey, a 36-year-old neighbor who lives alone and builds dollhouses for a living, persuades her to have a look at an underground den he has recently dug in the field. Once she has entered it, he rapes and murders her, dismembers her body, puts her remains in a safe and dumps it in a sinkhole. Susie's spirit flees toward her personal heaven.

The Salmon family refuses to accept that Susie is dead, until Susie's elbow is found by a neighbor's dog. The police talk to Harvey, finding him odd but seeing no reason to suspect him. Susie's father Jack, on extended leave from work, begins to suspect Harvey, a sentiment his surviving daughter Lindsey comes to share.

One day Len Fenerman, the detective assigned to the case, tells the Salmons that the police have exhausted all leads and are dropping the investigation. That night in his study, Jack looks out the window and sees a flashlight in the cornfield. Believing it is Harvey returning to destroyevidence, he runs out to confront him, armed with a baseball bat. The figure is not actually Harvey, but Brian, one of Susie's classmates who is dating Susie's best friend Clarissa. As Susie watches in horror from heaven, Brian beats Jack with the bat, breaking his knee. While Jack recovers from a knee replacement surgery, Susie's mother, Abigail, begins an affair with the widowed Detective Fenerman.

Trying to help her father prove his suspicions, Lindsey sneaks into Harvey's house and finds a diagram of the underground den, but is forced to leave when Harvey returns unexpectedly. The police, however, satisfied with Harvey's explanation, do not arrest him, which allows him to flee Norristown. Later, evidence is discovered linking Harvey to Susie's murder, as well as to those of several other young girls. Susie meets his other victims in heaven, sees into Harvey's traumatic childhood, and realizes that he has made several unsuccessful attempts to stop killing.

Abigail leaves Jack, eventually taking a job at a winery in California. Her mother, Grandma Lynn, moves into the Salmons' home to care for Buckley and Lindsey. Lindsey and her boyfriend, Samuel Heckler, become engaged, find an old house in the woods owned by a classmate's father, and decide to fix it up and live there. Sometime after the celebration, while arguing with his son Buckley, Jack suffers a heart attack. The emergency prompts Abigail to return from California, but the reunion is tempered by Buckley's lingering bitterness for her abandoning the family.

Meanwhile, Harvey returns to Norristown, which has become more developed. He explores his old neighborhood and notices the school is being expanded into the cornfield where he murdered Susie. He drives by the sinkhole where Susie's body rests and where Ruth Connors and Ray Singh are standing. Ruth, Susie's former classmate who had felt Susie's spirit rush past her immediately after she was murdered, senses the women Harvey has killed and is physically overcome. Susie, watching from heaven, is also overwhelmed with emotion and feels how she and Ruth transcend their present existence, and the two girls exchange positions: Susie, her spirit now in Ruth's body, connects with Ray, who had a crush on Susie in school, and had made plans to go out with her a few days before the murder. Ray senses Susie's presence, and takes advantage of the fact that Susie is briefly back with him. In Hal Heckler's (the older brother of Lindsey's boyfriend Samuel) bike shop they find a room to make love, as Susie has longed to do after witnessing her sister and Samuel. Afterwards, Susie must return to heaven.

Susie moves on into another, larger part of heaven, occasionally watching earthbound events. Her sister gives birth to a daughter, Abigail Suzanne. When stalking another young girl inNew Hampshire, Harvey is hit by a huge icicle and falls down a snow-covered slope, dying from the wound. At the end of the novel, Susie's charm bracelet is found by a Norristown couple who know nothing of its significance, and Susie closes the story by wishing the reader "a long and happy life."