The girls' parents had a car wreck...or did they?? Was that all a ruse, a story the grandmother told the girls?? Why did the shotgun go off? And later on what was the. "Why, Daddy, Why" all about? Did the dad shoot the mom?
shareHer dad shot her mother and then himself... as seen in the flashback.
imo... She lied about it because she was trying to convince everyone, AND herself, that her sister wouldn't have gone into the forest to commit suicide. And i think she was in denial herself about her parents death, because she said several times that she didn't look, but her sister did. so when she's in the cave, she finally looks and sees/accepts that it was a suicide.
I don't think she was in denial, or that this was even implied. As she's telling Aiden the story about a car wreck, we see her recalling what actually happened; hearing gunshots, and (the grandmother, I think) opening a door to another room inside - not the front door. I think her "issue," and her only one re this event, wasn't the fact that it had actually been a murder/suicide, but that Jess had seen its aftermath while she hadn't. She'd apparently kept the family's personal business personal over the years by changing the tragedy to an accident involving a drunk driver, as this version seemed to come to her automatically, if not flawlessly: "What driver?"
sharei was more unsure of whether jess saw it or sara saw it. Sara might have seen it and then buried it and convinced herself that it was Jess who had seen it. And thats why Sara was more susceptible to the forest than Jess. Jess didnt see it, it played out like the end where sara covers Jess's eyes and looks herself, and that is why Jess survives, shes depressed and romanticises suicide, because she didnt see it, she just heard about it, and there fore survives the forest, because she faced the idea of it and realized it wasnt what she wanted. Sara suppresses it and uses Jess as an excuse and it comes out when she is faced with the forest.
I think it could have been either way, though admittedly it leans more towards Jess having seen it and not Sara.
I think she just tells people that it was a car wreak rather than tell a total stranger that her father killed her mother and then himself.
shareAs I watched the scene where she explained that her parents were 'killed by a drunk driver', I saw it initially as a very bad piece of writing, because when Aiden questions her if they ever caught the guy, she says no...
...of course immediately my thoughts were, how would they know it was a drunk driver if they never caught they guy? but it also seemed strange the 'discovery of the bodies were in what appeared to be a lower level of the house.
It makes sense now that she was either misremembering the events because of some sort of self denial, or just intentionally misleading Aiden.
But my interpretation was she was in full denial about the whole situation, and the forest made her remember the truth.