This movie vividly shows how an enabler/codependent can be just as sick as the addict themselves. It reminds me of a story I read about walking down the street and falling in the hole. I can't get out. I walk down the same street, see the hole and fall in anyway. Walk down the street, see the hole and walk around it. Take a different street. Only you can make the decision to change. Addict or no. Brilliant movie

Kate is planning a surprise party for her brother Seth. But when she gets there she finds he has relapsed and is high on heroin. That's it, that's the whole premise. Other than balloons being in the movie, they bare no part of the overall story. Plus there's no build up, not getting to know either Kate or Seth before his relapse. The movie is under 80 minutes and there's barely anything to it. And the little there is drudges on and feels more like 4 hours than 74 minutes. We don't know enough about either of the main characters to get invested or really care what happens to them, I don't mean to be cruel. Just being human beings isn't enough to care if Seth lives or dies. After all, these are fictional people. And the INCREDIBLY original message that heroin is bad is hammered home. This isn't a plot to a movie, this is an episode of the "After School Special" they barely stretched to barely feature length.

I felt so compelled to write something about this movie after watching that I'm on the internet writing about it....what a terrible message. I understand what the writers were going for but they definitely fell way short of that already convoluted and shortcoming ideal that severing ties is the best way to save an addict. The sister clearly cared and the message your giving is give up on them like everyone around you is telling you to do? The message is to teach healthy relationship techniques to limit co-dependance. The sister could have easily still drove him to rehab or detox what does driving someone and telling them no have to do with your power.... as a recovered addict I like the idea of shedding some light on the people effected around an addict but boy they did a horrendous job. I believe the biggest issue as a society we face with addicts, metal health issues, and the homeless is that of prejudice from the way the pharmacist acted to the dad saying "I wish he would just get over it..." a humans will to do better comes from others perception on the impact their life has on the people around them. If they're shooting herion in the bathroom with water from the toilet they already hate themselves enough no to want to life anymore, if they people around them and they're loved one's are so selfish that all they think is, "Well they did it to themselves" they aren't wrong but severely mistaken on that persons core values.... I'm so mad that an abomination of a movie advertising it help towards the family of addicts. If you treat you family like they treated Mr. Franco you can most certainly plan to put them in the ground.... if that's what you were going for then good....but unlike you people I don't believe that your pasty mistakes define you enough to have society leave you behind....we did this to our own people now stop blaming them, or anyone and get over the prejudice and help your fellow man/woman.

This sibling story of addiction is rich with performances by Jacobsen and Franco and also naturalism. Naturalism filmmaking at it's finest. This film does an excellent job telling the story of and entire family struggling with a loved one's addiction.

This was really good. Heartbreaking, but good... Really shows the difficulties that families go through with an addict family member, and the tragic cycle that drug addiction is. Loved the imagery of the "boat" and of drowning... Really helped to have an impact.

Although bringing an important issue to light, it was not executed very well. because it takes place over the course of one night, it seems a little bit superficial, I would love to feel a stronger connection to the characters. It also has heartbreaking portions just because it includes parts through the child's eyes. Didn't have me on the edge of my seat.

A movie a little tasteless. It would like to be more, but it fails. There are some good ideas, like the metaphore with the water, but i don't know, it seemed everything an end in itself. There are many better movies about drug addiction than this, that seems barely decent to me. Good the main character, but the rest it's really "meh".

not too bad, watchable story

Was very heartbreaking and could hit home for many people. Watched interviews about this movie to discover it is based on someone’s true experience.

One of the best portrayals of addiction while parenting and withdrawal and the highs and lows of how the drug affected his moods. The way this movie showed me exactly how selfish the disease is made me very emotional..it was very short however as real as it gets..this movie nailed it. It wasn't afraid to reveal all the horrific stages of withdrawal from defecation to enabling and I appreciate the raw delivery.

The acting was good, but the plot made no sense. Surely heroin addiction would not be hard to research! This is a sister with prior experience with an addict, and yet she doesn't know what to do. Here are the misses: 1. If you have an addict in withdrawal crisis in your car, head to an ER. They all know what to do. 2. An addict doesn't go from talking on the way to a party to extreme withdrawal in a matter of minutes. 3. I don't understand why the addict turned manic after getting a fix. Heroin addicts turn sleepy. 4. Why in God's name wouldn't you take a sleeping toddler from your car and hand her to her grandparents before driving around a city at night in a drug crisis? Most importantly, the movie is prejudiced against addiction. We need to accept that addiction is a disease (medically recognized), and relapse is part of the disease. If the brother was depressed and suicidal in the past, and became suicidal again, would you say drive yourself to a clinic? No, you would drive him. So drive your brother to an ER, kiss him, tell him you love him, then safely take care of his daughter!

Absolutely terrible, first of all the thought that Franco was even anywhere close to acting the way a junkie does when he is in detox was laughable. He ran the whole spectrum of symptoms in a matter of approximately two hours. Then he sends his sister to cop for him and on top of that doesn’t have a kit with him? Not even close on this one. I feel like this was acted out by people who have at most watch a couple of episodes of intervention.

One of Face Franco's best performances. This is a great movie. I hope because it's on Netflix that the general public get to see it.

Dave Franco's acting as the struggling drug addict was amazing.

Cartoonish it's so unrealistic, shrill, and judgmental. Who wrote this? A 22 year old who just finished their first undergraduate class in Psychology? A Youth Pastor? The whole premise of the movie is absurd. A woman is throwing a party for her boyfriend, and on the way to pick up her brother, misses the party by deciding she needs to help her brother kick his heroin addiction- right here, right now, with no help from anyone, ditching her party and not telling her family or friends what she's doing. Why? What kind of sense does that make? Who would do that? It wasn't an emergency. It could have waited until tomorrow, and a real person would have gotten help in that situation. The movie explicitly tells the audience, no, his sister had to drop everything and find a rehab right then, right now, or she'd be a terrible person. And she's not the terrible person, he is. I could go on, but the point is this is someone's deeply co-dependent, shrill imagination of drug addiction. It's not realistic. The movie makes dumb mistakes, like thinking the brother was going to die from heroin withdrawal, (you can't), or that purchasing needles in a pharmacy would cause a real pharmacist to heap shame and insults on the buyer. Does the idiot who wrote this movie realize that people legitimately inject themselves with medicine all of the time, and a pharmacist wouldn't react that way to the purchase of syringes? The movie caricatures and insults people in the inner city, who look like they're zombies wandering around a war zone. Has the writer ever been to the inner city? The droning narrative of some strange book on tape throughout the movie, which obviously intends to represent an allegory about drug addiction, is trite, not instructive or illuminating. Overall, very surprised so many people bought into this depiction of a serious problem, and it's a shame it was such an unrealistic portrayal.

Very heartbreaking but shows how much a sibling is willing to sacrifice for the other sibling.

Franco and Ryan earn a feather in their caps for this one, although it's more of a one act play than a feature film.

The acting was good but it didn’t have to take that long to tell a story with such a heavy-handed metaphor...

‪6 BALLOONS is grounded and raw, often frustrating but always real. Jacobson and Franco are excellent. Like Franco’s character, it doesn’t always make the decisions you want, but it’s tragic and challenging.‬ ‪Watch it on Netflix.‬

SLOW WATCH, BUT GREAT TAKE ON FAMILY STRESS.