Sixteen-year-old Emily Smith-Dungy becomes fed-up with her self-absorbed family's lack of attention and affection and decides to take matters into her own hands -- taking her parents Samantha and Duncan hostage, and forcing them to undergo her "Parental Aptitude Test." Using her mother's sleeping pills, she gets both Sam and Duncan to pass out after she mixes them a Friday evening drink, and ties them up. Emily induces her 17-year-old brother Jackson to go along with her plan by letting him "document" what happens using his camcorder to create his next performance art project, and incorporates her child film-star obsessed 9-year-old sister Lucinda into the plot by telling her she has been cast in her brother's movie, with Emily as the director. Her mother's sharp tongue and father's instant case of Stockholm Syndrome battle against Emily's "intervention" goals. Emily's plan spirals out of control, just as her "Family Weekend" starts to bear fruit, when her friend Kat's twittering about the hostage taking of her parents goes viral.