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It's 1995, and gay couple Aaron (Ari Cohen) and Malik (Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman), together with Aaron's daughter Kayla (Jennifer Laporte) move into a small town, where gay couples are still a curiosity item and homophobia is still an accepted attitude. Now despite this, Aaron makes an effort and seems to fit right in, becoming best friends with the neighbours Marshal (Lochlyn Munro) and Tiffany (Chandra West) in no time, while Malik sees homophobic conspiracy everywhere - and at least with some justification, as someone has broken into the house and spraypainted insults on the walls. That said, he also has fallen victim to a brutal homophobic attack a dozen of years ago, so that makes him hyper-sensitive to the point of paranoia - which is really triggered when an elderly neighbour hands him a mysterious warning ... and then dies the following day. Based on the dead man's warning, Malik starts to investigate and finds out that there was a lesbian couple living in their house that died under mysterious circumstances ten years ago, and some of the things they went through resemble what they're experiencing to the T. Thing is, Malik starts to have lapses in memory, as if he was drugged, and eventually photos of him having sex with a local turn up, something he swears he hasn't done, but Aaron kicks him out due to overwhelming evidence.

Having taken up residence in a nearby motel, Malik continues to investigate, and what really ticks him off is finding a photo from ten years ago, also showing Tyler (Ty Wood), teenaged son of Marshal and Tiffany - not looking a day younger than he does now. This all is enough proof for him to pack a gun and at a neighbourhood party shoot Marshal, whom he perceives to be the center of all evil, dead. Of course, this lands him in jail - but the game's not over yet by a longshot, and that's not necessarily a good thing ...

A very cool piece of slowburn horror settled somewhere between haunted house horror, paranoia thriller and tale about witchery that makes the most of its deliberately slow build-up and does a great job creating an atmosphere of unease while having the viewer question the film's "reality" throughout - also helped by some very grounded performances by all involved. And the finale that wraps everything up in a surprising way sure packs a punch.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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