YMMV / Dolores Claiborne

• Awesome Moments: Vera fires one of her maids for talking with an old high school acquaintance she hasn't seen in years. How does Dolores respond? By getting in her employer's face and Calling The Old Woman Out, even at the risk of losing her job. Even better, it works, and Vera tells Dolores to rehire said maid.
• Jerkass Woobie: Vera is gradually revealed as one. Early on, Dolores notes about her employer demonstrates "three kinds of bitchiness", the last variety stemming from how she was an old, disabled woman trapped in her house. She also is visibly depressed by how distant her children are, most notably during the eclipse when she's convinced they'll return to Little Tall Island to see it with her, only for them to not show up. It's made even worse when it's revealed that her children died many years before in a car accident, and Dolores hypothesizes that Vera was trying to convince herself that she could will them back to life. Ultimately, this leads to Vera running in a panic and falling down the stairs and electing to die rather than suffer anymore from her "dust bunny" hallucinations and the grief of her lost children.
• Moral Event Horizon: Joe St. George crossed it when he is eventually revealed to have sexually abused his daughter. It's no wonder that Dolores takes Vera's advice to plot his death and make it look like an accident by having him fall down a hidden well in their yard.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The "dust bunnies" appear to be nothing more than a bizarre hallucination experienced by an old woman. However, Dolores sees them in a dream and gets an idea of how terrifying they really are, especially when one bears Joe's face.
  • Dolores' murder of Joe is appropriately laced with Nightmare Fuel. The crowning moment goes to how despite being injured by the fall, Joe manages to crawl out of the well and grabs Dolores' ankle, trying to pull her down with him, all while grinning like a maniac. Afterwards, she's haunted by the memory of his call. "Duh-LOR-riiiiiisssss..."
• Squick: The scene wherein Vera deliberately shits herself and flings the stuff all over the room, in order to spite Dolores.
  • The scene where Joe sexually abuses his daughter Selena, forcing her into giving him a hand-job in flashbacks.
• Values Dissonance: After finding out that Joe cleaned out the savings account she opened, Dolores blasts the bank officials for their blatant sexism — that even though she was the one to open the account and the only one to ever make deposits over the years, all Joe had to do was give them a BS story about misplacing the bankbook and they allowed him access to the account, something that would never have happened if the roles were reversed. Security measures and improved attitudes would never let this happen today.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The film has some of the smoothest transitions between past and present you'll ever see, complete with convincingly making Kathy Bates appear to be at two different ages up there with any similar effort from the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
• The Woobie: Dolores and Selena. Dolores is a victim of physical abuse by the hands of her alcoholic husband, and struggles to help her daughter who suffers from depression and alcoholism after her sexual abuse by her father. After the accidental death of Joe, the two are constantly harassed by the neighborhood and police day and night, forcing Selena to leave her home and leave Dolores to stay behind and serve her snobbish employer, Vera, as a maid. Dolores' life goes downhill once again when Vera tries to commit suicide by tumbling down the stairs and finds herself accused of murdering her employer.

---