Simon (Alex Draper) takes his son Finn (Charlie Tacker) from New York out to the middle of nowhere in Vermont, where he's remodelling an old country house. As the days pass the two go through some pretty standard haunted house tropes - some appliances just won't work, there are strange noises, and they find out the house itself has a spotty history. In this case, a (distant) neighbour calls the last occupant a witch and implies she might have killed off her own family.
The film stays on Simon's relationship with his son (and to a lesser extent his estranged wife, played by Arija Bareikis) for a long time; While there are a few extremely cringeworthy lines, most of the dialog feels at least somewhat realistic and the characters are well fleshed-out. Then the supernatural elements hit like a sledgehammer, the witch makes her presence very known, and the movie careens in an unexpected direction.
Aside from one excellent scene, it's not a very scary movie - and even in that scene the built-up dread is dispelled with a ghost attack that's more laughable than shocking. That's just not where its heart is at.
The film works best when it's at its quietest; There's a lot of emphasis on the drama, which is surprisingly effective and dovetails nicely with the non-standard genre elements to earn a pretty poignant (though overextended) ending.
A quiet indie drama that happens to revolve around a haunting as well as around a father trying to repair the relationship with his family. Some of the dialog is a little iffy, the pacing is slow and some of the events don't seem to make a lot of sense if you think about them, sure. But writer/director/editor/composer/producer Andy Mitton has made a good-looking, compelling movie that holds together very well, its threads weaving a hard to classify but pretty affecting yarn.
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