A young couple is taken to a cottage in the woods for counseling following the disappearance of their daughter and struggle to identify what’s real and what is a figment of their mental recovery.

So … you know this one. A couple haunted by a lost child go somewhere new and only the wife Helen (Elma Begovic) sees spooky things and maybe she’s crazy. Or maybe she’s just being gaslighted for some nefarious reason.

After their daughter has been missing long enough that everyone encourages them to consider her dead, the tragic parents agree to seek help from a therapist (Sean Ballantyne), who suggests they all go to his secluded cabin in the woods.

Soon, Helen begins hearing things that lead her to believe that the spirit of her daughter is haunting her. As she moves toward apparent madness, her husband (Michael Lipka) grows increasingly frustrated and even angry. Meanwhile, Dr Stevens seems intent on repairing their marriage, though even he begins to feel unsafe around her.

Dear filmmakers: that thing you do so often lately with the spooky thing happening behind a character, so the audience sees it but they don’t? It can be pretty scary, and there’s always some satisfaction in knowing something the characters don’t yet know. It’s the very definition of dramatic irony.

But.

If the whole point of the movie is to show or question that character’s point of view, this gag undermines the intent. Either the spooky thing is real but pointless or is fabricated by an inept conspirator that fails to be seen by the target. “Is it real or isn’t it?” brings tension to a story. This brings a flaccid “boo!” that undermines that tension.

And of course by law no movie can be made without a twist ending. It’s not very surprising, to be honest, and then the denouement is literally anticlimax. (That’s one for you English majors out there.)

It’s just old, well-trodden territory performed in a lackluster, self-sabotaging way that utterly fails to deliver anything the viewer would find satisfying.

Is this mourning woman experiencing something supernatural? Or is she just craaaaazy?