The images cycle past like slides in an art history class—medieval images etched in the “twilight language of magic,” the professor tells the class. She adds that the language was meant to obscure the truth from the uninitiated while revealing it to those who could read the signs.
In Reunion, that professor, Ellie (Emma Draper), is writing a book on the origins of science in magic. Her academic interests intersect with her life as well as frame the film. “Linear time is a modern concept,” she insists. Ellie is trapped in recurrence, an unceasing return to events gone bye. New Zealand director Jake Mahaffy handles time with deft sophistication in this sophisticated psychological horror drama. The past comes around and round again when Ellie revisits the house where she grew up.
The house is an ideal mise en scene for a ghost story, all dark wood, stained glass and intrusive wallpaper whose floral thickets whisper entanglement. Ellie’s father Jack is immobilized in a wheelchair and mute—until the name of her stepsister Clara comes up. Ellie sees Clara in the shadowy halls and in the upstairs window overlooking the overgrown garden. What’s wrong is that Clara is dead.
And this isn’t where Ellie’s problems begin—or maybe it is? She arrives at the house as it’s about to be sold looking wan, her face blotchy, her hair limp. She’s pregnant and on meds. Her ex-fiancé was abusive (or did she abuse him?). Writing a book on deadline is stressful, and so is her mother Ivy (Julia Ormond). It’s hard to say at first whether Ivy is a concerned mum or a menace. Is she helpful, manipulative, overprotective, neurotic, keeping secrets—all of the above?
The complicated back story comes together like warped pieces on a ruined puzzle board through flashbacks, nightmares, apparitions and conversations. Ivy is busy packing the house’s cluttered memories into boxes and feeding the paperwork to an outdoor fire but whether boxed or burned, the past won’t rest.
Reunion is out on Video on Demand, Friday February 5.
