After the death of his father (Erik Athavale), college student Rodger (Richard Harmon), accompanied by his girfriend Beth (Sara Thompson) and is best friend Jordan (Echo Andersson) returns to his hometown for the funeral and to sort out the inheriance. For this, Rodger moves back into his dad's house with Beth and Jordan, also to resolve many childhood issues, like why did his lond-deceased mother (Gwendolyn Collins), a brilliant physician, never let him into her office in the basement. When Rodger, Beth and Jordan go through his dad's things though, they come up with many unexpected things though, like Rodger was in psychotherapy as a child, something he cannot remember anymore. He tracks down his therapist (Marina Stephenson Kerr), but she remains evasive about his past, tells him he just had an imaginary friend who he was scared shitless of though. Rodger actually has to break into the good doctor's office though and later blackmail her to find out the "imaginary" friend was actually the friend of his deceased sister (Zoe Fish) and might not have been as imaginary as first thought. Which kind of falls in line with the fact that apparently there's another entity (Kristen Sawatzky) in the house with them, an entity that might be ghost or demon or something even worse. And whatever-it-is has apparently scared Rodger's dad to death, and later also kills Beth - and now Rodger, who only slowly begins remembering things from his past through hypnotism, tries to destroy whatever's haunting the house, and he's sure an equation he has found on his mother's whiteboard, is at the center of things ...

Now I won't lie, this movie is incredibly convoluted and far-fetched - but it's held together by strong storytelling and well fleshed out characters that this hardly matters, and the movie really manages to draw you in without ever suspending disbelief beyond breaking point. And a very solid directorial effort that relies much more on atmosphere than sensationalism, and some very grounded performances to balance the occasional outrageousness of the plot see to it that this has turned out to be a pretty tense genre piece.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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