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Ally (Akasha Villalobos) has just lost her daughter Samantha (Jill
Young) in a most gruesome way - the girl killed herself by gouging out her
eyes with Ally being only in the other room. Ever since, Ally is plagued
by grieve and guilt alike, something that resulted in her being struck
with a severe case of agoraphobia. Try as he might, her husband Michael
(Major Dodge) is only of little help - so she accepts help from a
psychotherapist who was recommended to her, Jan (Peggy Schott), and Jan
prescribes her some hallucinogenic tea that will help her see her daughter
again. Being a psychotherapist herself, Ally knows this to be wrong deep
down, but her grief has made her somewhat blind to reason. And soon
enough, Ally starts seeing things, like a masked man in the garden, just
like in a picture Samantha has drawn, a young boy with no mouth (Bjorgvin
Arnarson), and finally even Samantha herself. Only, Samantha seems to be
much more mean-spirited than expected, and tries to make her mother gouge
out her eyes, just like she did. Now while Jan does her best to convince
Ally this is all part of the healing process, she also tells her about a
legend of an African eye-collecting demon that has remarkable similarities
to what's going on. Thing is, the sessions with Jan seem to not improbe
Ally's state of mind, so much so that Michael gets worried enough to call
professional help - and it's found out that the hallucinogenic tea is a
much more powerful drug than Ally would have suspected. As a result,
something's fishy with Jan. Thing is, Michael soon starts seeing the same
strange things that Ally does, only he has never had any of the
hallucinogenic tea. And the effects these things have on him seem to be
much more severe than on Ally - to a possibly lethal degree ... A
very nice piece of somewhat slowburn horror that manages to tell a very
complex and well-structured story that makes up the suspension of
disbelief that it demands with solid storytelling that doesn't take
shortcuts but works towards its shocks and manages to surprise plenty of
times along the way. And a direction that finds the right balance between
suspense and jump scares, the down-to-earth and the grotesque, and that's
big on atmosphere without suffocating the actors, and a very strong
ensemble cast make this one cool horror thriller - even before the pretty
exciting and very surprising finale.
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