Following her father’s sudden passing, Mia carries a bit of guilt that her busy life as a New York gallery owner put her relationship with her dad on the back burner for a seemingly brief bit of time. Of course it was in this brief stretch that his life came to a close, so I can understand why she’s beating herself up. The disturbing dream-vision of her father the night before she receives the word of his death further unsettles. Mia flies home to Italy to collect her papa’s ashes from the crematorium where the excellent, atmospheric opening of the film took place. Yeah. We know the spookiness is on the horizon. She plans on burying the ashes next to her mother on the family property. It’s going to take a few days for paperwork to be sorted and Mia is warned that it’s illegal to open the urn and spread the ashes without the permission of the Italian government. I don’t blame them for hammering this home, Mia’s been in America for a bit and we are a selfish batch of monkeys. So, this leaves Mia on her isolated family property while she’s waiting to get permission to lay her father’s cremains to rest. She opens the urn to place in her mother and father’s wedding rings and fixes up the house while crying. Luckily, she’s able to communicate with her best friend/business partner and he’s able to offer up some levity during this awful stretch. It takes almost no time for spooky shit to ramp up and Mia may be spooked but she also sees it as a chance to communicate with her much-missed dad. She’s convinced he’s pierced the veil because there’s something he needs to tell her or maybe even warn her about. It also may be driving her insane. A convenient medium pops up because what’s a small Italian village without one? She lets Mia know that her father asked for her assistance because he was being haunted by something and needed help. This will lead to contact and a revelation of just what malevolence is in the works. A very small and likable cast carry the familiar haunting story (executed well enough) on a small budget and may deliver some stilted performances but that’s the cost of performing something in a second language. It doesn’t bother me a bit and it’s my kind of indie horror because it comes off like a foggy recollection of Insidious presented with a production budget that wouldn’t cover a small percentage of that movie’s catering. I love me an underdog and this is a capable one.
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