Directors: Severin Fiala, Veronika Franz
Writers: Sergio Casci, Veronika Franz
Stars: Riley Keough, Jaeden Martell, Lia McHugh
Run Time: 1 Hour, 48 Minutes
Link: https://amzn.to/38JA6vu
Synopsis
Laura cries in the bathroom. She’s not looking forward to what’s coming. Aiden and Mia are her children, and they don’t care for their father’s girlfriend, Grace, very much. Laura is taking the kids to be with her ex, Richard, and Laura. He wants to finalize the divorce, so he can marry Grace. Laura goes home and kills herself rather than deal with it all. This leaves the children a psychological mess to deal with.
Six months pass, and Richard still plans to marry Grace. Richard wants Grace, Aiden, and Mia to go up to the mountains for Christmas, and he’ll join them later. The kids do some research and find that Grace was the sole survivor of a suicide cult (think Heaven’s Gate).
They drive up to the lodge in the mountains and the kids finally get to meet Grace. It’s all very awkward. The kids say grace before dinner, and Grace looks shocked; she may not be totally over her “religious experience.” Grace falls through the ice and nearly dies, but at least Mia gets her doll back. This is not a happy family. Richard is going to have to go back to work for a few days, so he shows Grace how to use his gun; she’s already a fantastic shot.
As soon as Richard leaves, the kids start ignoring Grace. She eats alone and stares at the creepy painting in the dining room until she has to turn her back on it. Grace watches the children as they sleep, but has flashback to the bodies of the suicide cult. The next evening, Grace wakes out outside in the snow, but no, it’s just a nightmare. They all fall asleep drinking hot chocolate and watching horror movies.
The next morning, they wake up and find that the power has gone out, the water pipes have frozen, and they’re snowed in. All the food in the fridge is gone, and so are the Christmas decorations. Even the dog is missing. Maybe most importantly, Grace’s medications and all the jackets are missing.
She starts hearing and seeing things that night. She dreams that the children are suicide cult victims. When the morning rolls around, she’s standing in the children’s bedroom, unmoving and unresponsive; she really needs her meds. She packs some food and sets off on foot towards the nearest town. She gets turned around and ends up walking right back to the lodge.
Aiden finds a photo of him and Mia that says, “In loving memory.” He starts to think that they are all dead. Would they even know it if they died? Not long after, Aiden shows Grace the obituaries for all three of them. Aiden hangs himself, but he won’t die; he says they need to confess their sins before they can die.
They finally find the dog, frozen outside. We then see the kids open up a closet where all the stuff was hidden. They know about it all the time. Aiden admits none of it was all real.
Aiden can’t make the generator work, and all their phones really are dead by now. It’s also too late for Grace, who knees in hot coals; her full religious training from the suicide cult is coming back to her. She screams in pain from her self-inflicted burns all night, as the children have to listen. Their prank has gone way too far.
Richard has been trying to call since yesterday, and he leaves to head up to the mountains. Grace brings in a gun and corners both children. We see Richard arrive and go inside looking for everyone, and Grace shoots him. Aiden and Mia run away and take the car, but they can’t drive and get stuck right outside the front door. We then see all four of them, including dead-Richard, sitting at the dinner table. Grace then duct tapes over their mouths, just like the suicide cult did, and then she picks up the gun…
Commentary
Well, that ended darkly.
The moral of the story seems to be “don’t trigger former suicide cult members.” Good advice. Very good advice, right along with “don’t steal people’s medication.”
Between scenes in the regular story, they have interspersed scenes form Mia’s doll house, and it’s a very detailed and realistic-looking toy. There’s a lot of creepy footage just from these scenes. The whole “she’s replacing your mother” situation is a goldmine of tension and conflict, even without the other stuff thrown in.
There was a scene where they all sat around a proper heater, and things started to get weird right after. I assumed that they had all died during the night. When Aiden started suggesting exactly that, I changed my suspicions so that maybe the father knew exactly what would happen to Grace in this case, and he had some unknown reason for wanting the children dead. The truth, that the children were behind it all, seemed a little far-fetched that two children would come up with a plan this complex.
It wasn’t boring, it moved fairly quickly, and I was unsure what was going on almost the entire time.