After seeing the preview for this film, I decided that I was too scared to watch it. After it was available at Redbox my sister surprised me by renting the dvd. It was surprising both because I had told her that I felt too scared to watch it and she herself hadn't expressed interest in seeing this picture. Since she had gone through the effort of renting the dvd, I felt that I might as well watch the movie.
This picture opens with a mysterious death of a man named Paul (played by Billy Burke). At the time of his death, Paul was married to Sophie (played by Maria Bello) and they had a son together named Martin (played by Gabriel Bateman).
Martin has an older half-sister named Rebecca (played by Teresa Palmer) who lives on her own. Rebecca is "struggling" with setting up boundaries with her hook-up Bret (played by Alexander DiPersia). Bret obviously wants to be officially exclusive with Becca but Becca has been doing her best to dissuade him of that idea. While Becca is dealing with Bret she gets a call from a social worker saying that her brother apparently hasn't been sleeping well at home because he keeps falling asleep in class.
Bret takes Becca to the school to get Martin to take him home for the day. As they are returning to Sophie's house, Martin claims to have heard his mother talking to her friend Diana (played by Alicia-Vela Bailey). To Becca, Diana is just a euphemism for their mother's mental problems so she angrily assumes that her mother's mental problems are affecting Martin just as she had been affected as a child. Soon the frightening truth comes to light (so to speak) and it's up to Martin and Becca with some help from Bret to try to save themselves and their mother from Diana.
Another reason that I had been reluctant to watch this film was the knowledge that Diana had been given permission from Sophie to stay in the house with her, potentially putting her children in harm's way particularly the young Martin. I was disgusted and horrified at the idea that a parent would subject their children to something like Diana. After watching the film and seeing the explanation of why Sophie would allow Diana into her life, I understood although I didn't entirely forgive.
The film was better than I expected and I wasn't as scared as I worried that I would be. The picture unfortunately relied a little too heavily on predictable jump scares. I was pleased by the unexpected intelligence and resourcefulness displayed by Becca, Martin, and Bret in particular. The movie ended somewhat surprisingly. The entire cast was great.
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