Newly out of the nest, Meagan Mullen, begins to experience unsettling activity centered around her bedroom in her new home that seems more like an apartment. She is fresh out of college and this is her first time living on her own and to deal with the emotional turbulence of the new experience, she video blogs for her friends and family. Said friends and family are interviewed in between footage of the blog and old family video to let us know that something went very wrong. Especially since her father and brother are speaking of her in the past tense. Mom may be in denial. A moving door while she talks to the webcam is the first hint that something may be going on and Meagan’s mental state slowly unravels. As the footage gets stranger, mom is confused, dad thinks she’s just moody and her brother believes she’s just being self-indulgent. Meagan believes she’s being haunted and she has fits where she doesn’t seem to be herself, even failing to recognize her boyfriend and visiting best friend as she sits in a stranger’s lap. It’s all caught on camera so there’s proof of weird shit but nobody seems willing to accept that something has seriously gone south with the affable young woman, even if it’s just mental illness and not paranormal. Ouija board shenanigans give Meagan the name April as the person who died in her house and she develops an obsession with the subject. It’s an unsolved murder that happened in her home less than a year ago, so I don’t really blame her for taking a swan dive down that particularly gruesome rabbit hole. Her brother comes to visit and witnesses some supernatural bullshit but thinks his sister has set it up and it’s all a load of crap. Naturally, this makes Meagan feel even more alone. A girl he met while he was visiting shows up at the house for their date and she senses something in the house. Kim immediately offers to help contact whatever energy is hanging around but warns her that if she has a demon, she’ll be unable to do much of anything. We then get a quick interview with a paranormal expert who (I believe) is a clerk (maybe owner) of a liquor store. It’s nice he took time out of his day to offer some tidbits about the supernatural. Back to Kim, attempting to contact the other side and admitting in an interview that she’s no expert and never tried this before. It doesn’t go well and Kim has a seizure. Even after witnessing it firsthand, her brother still refuses to accept that there’s no logical explanation for all the spookiness. Meagan spirals out into dangerous waters and be it schizophrenia or dark forces from beyond, there ain’t a happy ending in the works. It gets boring in bits but the cast is solid (for the most part) and do a good job mixing in grief and frustration to form a complete picture of a tragedy that really could have been (and should have been) avoided. Any goodwill it had built goes down the shitter when the truth is awkwardly revealed and things stumble to the close. I had a couple people tell me that it really wanted to be Lake Mungo but outside of the strong focus on families and their trauma over loss, I didn’t really see much of a resemblance in the spookiness on display. So please, do not go in comparing it to the perfect Lake Mungo… in fact, it’s best if you never compare anything to one the best horror films of the last few decades. You’re just setting yourself up for failure and maybe a little anger.
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