A few months after the end of World War 2, a group of friends gather in the house of one Col. Clive Hockstatter (the inestimable Larry Fessenden) to try and cheer him up; his wife committed suicide recently, and the man has understandably been down in the dumps since.
The invitees are: Marla (Anne Ramsay), an interrogator whom we learn had a reputation for using torture against enemy prisoners; Archie (Jeremy Holm), who served as Hockstatter's trigger man and is being investigated for war crimes. And Major DiFranco (Ezra Buzzington), a no-nonsense career military man and the only one who shows up in full uniform.
They all know each other from the war, and DiFranco and Hockstatter are childhood friends. Their camaraderie and love for each other is convincing, and all the characters are well drawn. This is a very well acted movie, and while the dialog is sometimes a little on-the-nose, it's very well written.
Standing apart from the main group is Bob (Ron E. Rains), Marla's husband and plus one, who didn't serve and is constantly belittled by the soldiers.
It turns out the reason that Hockstatter summoned them is that in the months since his wife has died, he's been reading up on parapsychology (metaphysics, as he puts it), and wants his friends' help to try and stage a séance to try to reach his wife.
The others reluctantly agree - and of course things go very, very wrong. But the movie has more things in mind than ghosts amuck; the fantastic components are correct and accounted for, but once they play out a new character is introduced (Kristina Klebe), and the movie turns the screws as the characters divide along ideological lines and confront each other regarding her fate.
There's not a lot subtlety on display here, to the point where the themes are clearly articulated by the cast at multiple points. That doesn't make it any less powerful, though: the degree to which these people can't escape a war that's been over and done with for months, the ease with which they fall back on attitudes that were acceptable in war time (or not, in Archie's case), and whether that makes them bad people or not... It's engaging, compelling, and well thought out.
Ted Geoghegan's direction is crisp and precise, with a lot of attention paid to blocking (the camera tends to move around a bit, but you always know where everyone is). The writing could stand to be a little tighter, but a little flab is understandable on a script this dialog-heavy and character-driven. All the actors are excellent, with Fessenden in particular showing some heartbreaking vulnerability. The genre elements are intrinsic to the story but take a back seat to the character work, and while there are some great, horrific moments most of the tension lies in waiting to see who snaps first. It's not psychological horror, it's a psychodrama with a seam of gonzo horror.
It's a bit of a face about from the writer/director's first movie (the excellent We Are Still Here,) which also had a psychological component but errs heavily towards horror-movie mayhem. As it happens, he does the opposite just as well.
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