Haunter 2013

Lisa Johnson, the ghost of a teenage girl who becomes aware that she is dead, haunts a house in northern Ontario with a quiet, unsettling presence. Her family—parents and a brother—live there without realizing the truth of their own deaths, and they are trapped in the same day they were murdered in 1985. As Lisa grows more conscious of her spectral state, she discovers an eerie ability: she can reach out to people who exist in different timelines, touching moments that belong to others who inhabited the same house. A pale, ominous man appears to warn her to stop, a chilling reminder that some doors should not be opened. Nevertheless, she pushes ahead, using personal items from victims who died in the house to forge connections with Olivia, a member of a family living there in the future who will become the next set of victims.

With the help of Olivia and the spirits of other murdered girls, Lisa begins to move through the timelines of those who vanished, gradually unraveling the house’s long history. She uncovers the truth behind the place and its previous resident, Edgar Mullins, a serial killer whose coffin of crimes continues to echo through time as he possesses the fathers of the families who reside in the house, carrying out murders long after his own death in 1983. As the pieces fall into place, Lisa guides her own unknowingly dead family toward the acceptance of their fate, a process that awakens them to their new reality and empowers them to assist her in the fight against Mullins.

After her family finally escapes to the afterlife, Lisa remains behind to confront Mullins and end his terror. The battle is tense, with Lisa nearly being swallowed by Olivia’s body as Mullins shifts his focus toward new victims. She summons the spirits of Mullins’s past victims, creating a chorus of ancestral witnesses that stalls his next move long enough for more of his victims’ echoes to rally to her side. In a dramatic moment, Mullins is incinerated in the furnace where he once killed; Olivia’s father regains control of his body, shaken but lucid enough to recognize the new, fragile peace that has been earned. Lisa reassures him and Olivia that they can rebuild a happy family in the afterlife, then says a bittersweet goodbye to Olivia before drift­ing into sleep. Yet she awakens to find her family by her side on their birthday in heaven, freed from the loop that Mullins had trapped them in and finally able to move forward together.