Life here seems smothered, flattened.
First their father dies, and then their mother. From then on, it's all regression and decay. Garbage spills across the kitchen floor, food rots and flies swarm. The cement in the basement develops a crack and the presence of the body becomes increasingly obvious. Tom, the little brother, first transforms himself into a girl and then into a baby in a crib, and Jack and his older sister develop a sexual relationship that makes them seem, paradoxically, almost as infantile as Tom.