Synopsis:”Chance is a word void of sense; nothing can exist without a cause.”–Voltaire
As the film opens, we see a bloodied disheveled Sara in a car in a garage realizing that she’s blocked in by a car in front of her as tears continue to roll down her cheeks and are immediately shifted back in time to a shot of the item that got her there. It’s an antique photograph of an old white couple in a horse and buggy, the man with a menacing grimace and the woman with a large small and a large brimmed hat covering her eyes. 
In the kitchen next to the painting we see a young interracial couple, Sara and Jonathan, cleaning up after dinner in a house full of antique art and artifacts, mostly from other cultures. As Jonathan’s phone goes off, he darts past Sara to grab it and dismiss it before she can see who’s calling, exposing a large bruise on his arm. He brushes it off and begins an appeal that he’d clearly been eagerly anticipating all night: a seance to try to contact the couple in the photo. Sara says no, seeming to be saying no to this for the 100th time. As Jonathan continues to persuade, she gives in, we begin to get a sense of unease at their dynamic without any solid reason at this point. 
In a darkened living room after the two have gone to bed for the night a smart speaker suddenly turns on and starts playing the 1919 song “Someday You’ll Know” by Henry Burr (licensed via Artlist) as the camera travels in slow flashes down the hall into their bedroom where Sara finally wakes up to hear the music. She looks over at Jonathan next to her in bed, and after a moment of hesitation, she gets up and we follow her down the hall to the smart speaker. She unplugs it, turns, and is startled by Jonathan standing at the bedroom door behind her at the end of the hallway. Relieved that it’s him, she fails to notice how odd he looks, possibly assuming he’s just half asleep, until he pulls the bedroom door behind him closed as if blocking her from seeing what’s inside. She pulls back confused and we cut to her waking up in bed next to him again.
After a second of fear, she attempts to go back to sleep. But just then, the music starts again, just like it had before. Unsure if she’s dreaming, or if she was before, she gets up and walks to the speaker again, even more shook, but still not choosing to wake Jonathan, especially after the lingering unease from what we can assume was a previous dream. But after she unplugs it this time, nothing/no one is behind her in the hall and the bedroom door is still wide open and lit by nightlight. She calmly walks back down the hall and into the bedroom, but stops just after walking in the doorframe. We can’t tell why she’s not moving or getting back in the bed, but we can tell that there’s a reason that she stopped. As we cut to her in the room, we can hear a snickering laugh and begin to see a thin, pale, elderly white man dressed in a sort of white clergy robe lingering behind her next to the door frame and an additional eerie out of place snickering on top of his as she turns to see him and freezes. He lunges towards her choking her. She grasps at his hands until we see that she is actually still in bed and grasping at Jonathan’s arm (the one with the bruises), choking her in her sleep. She pushes it off and rubs her neck unsure what to be more afraid of.
The next day as Sara’s leaving the house in gym clothes, just as she’s walking past Jonathan’s car in the driveway, she gets a call. It’s Jonathan. She looks behind her, wondering why he would be calling already when she just walked out the door, but dismisses it and exits a front gate covered in Tibetan freedom flags. We cut to the house at night. Jonathan is inside on a heated phone call, presumably returning the call from earlier. Behind him in the shadows we can see the figure of the sinister looking figure that choked Sara the night before. He’s arguing about whether or not something belongs to him or to the person on the phone, and seems far more menacing than the sweet cheerful character we met in his opening scene.
As he’s hanging up, he realizes Sara is just getting home from the gym and caught the tail end of his call. Even though he quickly shifts into the version of him that we saw before, she’s clearly concerned. He acts as if nothing is wrong at first, but as she brings up getting rid of the antique picture again because it makes her uncomfortable, he starts making comments about the way she dresses and trying to shift the topic to her going out dressed that way. She’s taken aback and as they start to yell at each other about it, three loud distorted sounding knocks interrupt them. He dismisses it as raccoons in the attic, but Sara’s not buying it and knows that something is wrong. He makes another comment referencing their earlier fight and insisting that she’s safe with him now, which quickly gets them back into arguing as the camera pans to the deeper cause of what’s causing problems between them, the antique picture on the wall. 
The next day, we see Sara home alone reading about conduits on a demonic possession and demonic attachment website, desperate for answers to what’s happening. But as we’re watching her, strange noises start again, seeming to be coming from over where the picture is. She dismisses it at first, but the noises grow louder. So she hesitantly gets up and begins walking towards it to see what the noise is, but just as she’s reaching it, someone begins aggressively knocking on the front door.
As she opens the front door to their house, she sees a young black woman who seems confused to see her there and is holding up a key, that presumably no longer worked on the door. Despite Sara’s protests and confusion, the woman pushes past her and immediately goes in as if she knows the place and grabs the picture off the wall to leave with it.
Once Sara finally gets the woman to stop, it becomes clear that this is someone who knows Jonathan. The woman explains that the picture is of her family, and that he broke in and took it when they broke up so that he could still have something of her. She warns Sara that the picture is just a picture and explains that Jonathan is the real danger. Sara is frozen processing as we cut to her chopping carrots in the kitchen still in a daze from all the new information. 
Jonathan enters from offscreen wanting to know why she isn’t answering his calls, but in a faux cheerful tone. We hear him loudly throw down his things in a bang causing her to cut herself with the knife. He starts yelling furiously about the picture being gone. Sara confronts him about what his ex said and he becomes even more enraged. It becomes clear he’s having trouble holding it together and deciding when to keep his mask up. As she’s yelling about being worried about him and not looking in his direction, we see him tightly gripping the rubber handle of the cast iron skillet on the stove. We stay on the stove as we hear him bash her in the head with the pan and her fall to the ground mid sentence. 
We wake up with her on the floor hazily in and out of faintly hearing him pacing and yelling about not being able to trust her, as the pale sinister man in the long white clergy robe follows him closely behind like a shadow almost coaching him. Everything from the counter is now scattered around her, as if Jonathan threw a fit after she was out. The sinister man figure slowly backs away to hide again as Jonathan starts to pull together his story to himself out loud, rehearsing, not knowing Sara is already up and holding the knife at him that she was using to cut carrots. He turns to her and the two argue back and forth through her tears about who he really is, but ultimately he convinces her to hand over the knife.
As he turns his back, she bolts for the door. He grabs her and pulls her to the counter. At this point, we cut back and forth between a distant shot of her screaming in the car and banging the wheel and extreme close ups of their fight, to show that the blood covering her is both of theirs. The lights around her begin to flicker out in the garage. So she sits, unable to leave, as she’s still blocked in by his car, presumably with him dead or severely wounded inside the house, and a bloody phone with their smiling picture on the background next to her, not knowing how she got here.
But as the audience, we know that the reality is, that it is the picture that got her here, as much as it was Jonathan. We see how historical oppression of all types, be it gender, racial, religious, or political, continues to infect the hearts and minds of the people we love and change them into people we don’t recognize, and to show the true last resort heartbreak behind most oppressions and revolutions. 

Directed by Lisa Singletary (USA)