Teenager Imogen Day and her parents Samantha and Will move to Montana to escape the past. Desperate to make a new life for herself, Imogen must overcome new tormentors, old secrets, and a strange presence in the house.

 Well-meaning parents Samantha (Scottie Thompson) and William (Nick Farnell) move across the country to a rural part of Maine to help their daughter Imogen (Autry Haydon-Wilson) escape the fallout from a viral video. The family gets their new country home cheap on account of the previous owner, a seemingly normal artist, killing his wife and daughter inside before taking himself out. Unfortunately, secrets have a way of finding their way home. As the family tries to settle into their new place, its history begins to absorb them. Townspeople whisper and Imogen’s classmates speculate as secrets bubble to the surface. Sadly, Broken Ghost hasn’t the slightest idea how to provoke these ingredients to a substantial payoff.

Things in the new home begin slowly. TV’s turn on, items disappear or move, drawings are spotted in odd places along the ceiling. Then William discovers a disturbing mural painted on the walls inside the home from the previous artist. As William continues to unearth revelation after revelation in the new home, Imogen takes a new name and tries to blend in at her new high school. This proves difficult as she has vision issues and has to wear sunglasses pretty much all of the time to help her see. The mother, Samantha settles into their new life by finding a new job in town and having drinks with her new co-worker at the local bar. As William peels back the layers of the new home, Imogen’s fight for anonymity becomes more difficult and Samantha’s social life in the new town takes a dark turn.

Screenwriters Abe Pogos and Catherine Hill have a multi-pronged narrative that they are trying to entertain us with. This is a technique often used in slow-burn, psychological mood pieces as a way to keep things moving along. I hate reporting it, but while the storyline is mildly entertaining, the backstories are more difficult to swallow. Characters make rash, unreasonable decisions, or at times lack the emotions to properly convey the gravity of things. In one scene Cath (Joy Brunson) recounts to Imogen the brutal tragedy that took place inside her new home as the two sit casually in a car just outside the cursed dwelling. in another headscratcher moment in the third act mother, Samantha does something that makes absolutely no sense aside from being slightly intriguing and setting up a payoff later in the film.

To their credit, all of the actors shine with the material they have. Farnell and Thompson pull their weight with inexplicable actions and dialogue that struggles to sound natural while Haydon-Wilson’s Imogen is the likable loner with a sordid past. Even Brunson and Tony (Frank Lotito) get by with what they are offered. Then there is the absolutely beautiful cinematography from John Garrett that makes this picture look like a million bucks and the crisp production design from Lindsey Moran. Josh Rathmell‘s editing is also noteworthy.

Broken Ghost isn’t as interesting as it hopes to be, nor is it as clever. Despite a third act that outshines what came before it, nothing truly seems to add up. Enjoy this film for the look and feel the photography and the performances.

Broken Ghost is available now for rental