- Directed by Ivan Kavanagh
- Written by Ivan Kavanagh
- Stars Rupert Evans, Anronia Campbell-Hughes, Hannah Hoekstra, Kelly Byrne
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 32 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tt6C_X_8wA
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
A film archivist finds footage from a murder over a hundred years ago that leads him to learn of terrible events that happened in the house he’s living in. Things build in what some might call a tense psychological horror thriller and what some might call tedium to endure. The Horror Guys are of split opinion on this one.
Spoilery Synopsis
David addresses a theater full of children, “Who wants to see ghosts?” He and Claire are with the National Archives, and they are going to show the kids some old films. OK, it’s not ghosts, it’s just old films of people who would all be dead now.
Later, David and his wife, Alice, talk to a realtor and go in to look at a house. He spots a manhole in the backyard. She loves the house, and we fast-forward to five years later. Their young son Billy talks about being afraid of the dark, and monsters that might be in the dark.
The next morning, David and Billy walk to school, past a nasty old restroom and a canal. At work, David watches old 1902 crime scene videos– from his own house. A man killed his wife– in their bedroom.
David and Alice go to a party for her work colleagues. He watches her talking to Alex, and the two seem close. At work, it’s clear that Claire likes David, but he’s oblivious. He watches more crime videos and sees a body being pulled out of the canal after the 1902 murder. He dreams of himself as the killer.
The next night, David follows Alice as she secretly meets up with Alex; she is having an affair. On the way home, he runs into someone strange, “The master wants her. Give her to him.” He dreams of killing Alice. He then passes out in the nasty restroom after vomiting everywhere.
The next morning, David talks to Detective McNamara to report Alice missing. There’s a search party as the police look for Alice. McNamara soon finds out about Alex, but David pretends not to have known. Alex has an alibi for when Alice went missing. McNamara says, “It’s always the husband. Every time.”
They soon find Alice’s body in the canal. There’s no evidence of foul play, and the coroner says she probably fell into the canal and drowned accidentally. Alice’s mother says Alex has been so devastated by Alice’s death that he’s checked himself into a hospital. She seems shocked that David doesn’t care about that.
David tells Claire about his weird experiences the night that Alice died. That strange man from the restroom must have killed Alice, right? David researches those 1902 murders, where a man killed his cheating wife and then killed himself in the canal. He looks at old photos concerning many different murders.
He seems obsessed with all of this and starts hearing things behind his wall. He pokes a hole in his wall looking for what’s doing that. Then he checks out the manhole in the backyard. He sends Billy away with the Nanny, Sophie, for a few days. Later, he confides in Claire that he thinks there are ghosts in his house.
David does a Zoom call with Billy and sees a ghost in his hotel room. David then runs across town to get there, but Billy’s fine when he arrives. They all come back to the house. Sophie is confused and warns that she wants to quit; She thinks David is nuts. He tells her that if she leaves, she won’t be safe. David locks her and Billy in the closet; for protection, or because he’s loony? When he does let them out, Sophie quits.
David thinks he sees a woman standing next to the canal and tries to film her. He takes the film to Claire to develop, and she suggests that he may want to go talk to a professional. That night, David and Billy spread flour all over the floor to pick up footprints.
In the morning, McNamara is there in David’s room. They found Alex’s hammer in the canal, but it has David’s fingerprints on it. David tells the detective about the ghost from 1902. McNamara laughs and asks the government to take Billy away. They decide to wait for a psychiatrist’s opinion, but David refuses to see one.
David goes down into the manhole one night and wanders through the tunnels, which lead out to the canal. He thinks the 1902 guy would kill babies and throw them in the canal.
Claire brings him the developed film and wants to know whether or not David killed Alice, but he won’t say that he didn’t. They watch the film, and now she sees it too. The ghost crawls out of the projector and drags Claire inside the film. McNamara is waiting outside, where David only says, “I didn’t do it.”
David and Billy run through the sewer under the house. David then remembers killing Claire himself. Then he remembers killing Alice too. Down in the sewer, he watches a demonic version of Alice giving birth to a baby. He and Billy fall into the canal, but he releases Billy when the ghosts drag David down to his death.
Billy and Grandma stop at the house to pick up Billy’s toys before the house is cleared out. Billy hears David’s voice talking to him from a crack in the wall. “Do you want to stay with us forever?” On the way home, little Billy jumps out of the moving car to his death. The realtor gets a glimpse of Billy upstairs before he closes the door.
Happy ending?
Commentary
It starts out as one of those “is he crazy or is it real” stories, but it’s clear that David’s not quite right in the head from the beginning. He’s just “out of it” from the get-go.
This is… tedious, to say the least. It’s all just David hallucinating things. There are some good visuals and a few creepy moments, but overall, it’s just David probably imagining things. If there had been some reason to believe the ghosts were real, this might have been better, but the film really goes out of its way to make David seem genuinely unhinged.
The final ten minutes were pretty good, but the rest of the film was a cliched slog.