The rape scene ruined the movie

She didn't chop his head off because she was still a rational human being. She sensed danger sure but not enough to kill him unprovoked.

You would think Bell would be the vulnerable one. But I agree with the replier to your post. You can't just off someone because they look like or you think they might be a problem. You have to be smarter and be on guard and wary, which none of these people seemed to be.

"Just very dumb that she actually had an axe, and stood there knowing this guy was going to rape her"

Huh? How would she KNOW that exactly???

And it's not like she put her guard down.

While plot holes do exist, I've noticed that TV & film viewers can be overly critical and judge a character's merely unlucky fate as dumb.

No. I do NOT believe that you, who has never killed someone before, would just chop someone up with an axe the moment you see them!

She had "normalcy bias". Remember, these two ladies have been out in their secluded forest home, unaware of the breakdown of society.

Then along comes someone who she knows... she's met him; he knows her name; he gave them candles. Sure, he seems a little skeevy now and is acting like someone up to no good, but she hasn't lived the type of life that would prepare her for how to react to that.

She did put up a good fight at first, showing she wasn't going to be an easy victim, but in the end she was just a very vulnerable person in a bad situation.

Notice that after that event, they *finally* took security seriously. I mean, it's easy for me watching the movie to scream at them beforehand "Take that rifle with you wherever you go! Don't trust that sketchy dude!" But for them, it took a nasty wake up call for them to realize the world wasn't the same and they needed to stop acting like it was.

So, as tough as it was to watch that scene unfold, it was eerily realistic... shockingly so.

The scene seemed plausible to me.

By the way, have you ever swung a wood axe? It is not the best weapon.

It was very unpleasant. But then again rape is awful.

That being said, you are right. It's annoying when a protagonist being stupid is a plot device. First, of course, there's her behavior wrt to the axe. But even when they were on the ground, the guys got his fingers an 1/4 inch from her mouth. And it doesn't occur to her to sink her teeth into one and crush the damn thing?

So what, in the end it turned out to be a blessing. I mean, they ended up loving the baby. They didn't want their father to die like he did either, but that's life, some things that happen are just out of our control. And so as it turned out they lost a life in what became their forest home, then gained one.