House of Last Things 2013

Unhappily married couple Alan and Sarah reunite when she is released from a mental hospital. Alan, a classical music critic, announces that he has bought tickets to Italy for them both and introduces Kelly to house sit for them. Although reluctant to leave for a foreign country so soon after her release, Sarah eventually agrees. The setup feels calm at first, with the promise of travel and a chance to rebuild what’s fractured, but the air is thick with tension and unspoken resentments that will soon surface in sharp, unsettling ways. The prospect of getaway becomes a stage for buried guilt and fragile psyches to surface.

Flashbacks reveal that Alan and Kelly have been having an affair, and Alan intends to stress Sarah to the breaking point, so that she will again attempt to commit suicide. Meanwhile, Jesse, Kelly’s petty criminal boyfriend, pushes her to allow him to stay in the house with her. Kelly refuses, and, upset that she allows her disabled brother Tim to move in, Jesse storms off. The dynamic inside the house grows increasingly claustrophobic as loyalties blur and danger quietly tightens its grip. A sense of wrongness oozes from the walls as old wounds reopen.

Jesse later steals Alan’s car and prepares to sell it to a friend, but he reconsiders his actions when he finds Adam, a child who has been abandoned at a local supermarket. Taking Adam back to the house, Jesse proposes that they ransom him. Shocked by the suggestion, Kelly attempts to return Adam to his parents but can not get any information from the child, who seems comfortable staying with them. Panicking over what to do next, Kelly listens to the radio and television broadcasts, but none of them mention a missing boy. Kelly becomes suspicious that something is wrong, but Jesse dismisses her concerns. Tim sees visions in the house, and his behavior becomes erratic. When one of the visions reveals to Tim that Kelly and Alan plan to run away together, he tells Jesse, who reacts nonchalantly. The tension intensifies as paranoia spreads, and the house begins to feel like a trap.

In Italy, Alan and Sarah argue over whether they should return to the United States early, and both become stressed from visions and flashbacks, one of which reveals that Adam is their dead child. Drunk and responding to a haunting flashback, Alan becomes defensive about Adam’s death. While Sarah is driving their car, Alan says he covered up the fact that he accidentally killed Adam while playing golf in the back yard, and Sarah becomes distraught. As her driving becomes erratic, Alan insists that she pull over, and they become involved in a fatal car accident. Kelly, Jesse, Tim, and Adam hear the accident broadcast over the entertainment center’s speakers in the house. The scene folds the couple’s secret into the present, making the tragedy feel inescapable and immediate for everyone remaining inside.

As time goes on, Kelly’s and Jesse’s personalities shift to become more like Alan and Sarah’s. Jesse becomes interested in golf and classic music, dressing well, and starting a family. He urges Tim to stop cursing and get a job, and asks Adam to call him “dad.” After an initial period of sickness, Kelly begins baking pies and acting as a mother to Adam. Confused by the changes in Kelly’s and Jesse’s personalities, Tim becomes alienated and ultimately commits suicide. When Kelly locates a photo book full of pictures of Adam, the two of them bond, and a breeze blows out the candles on a birthday cake for Adam, signaling a dark, unnerving fusion of identities that seems to have overwritten the family’s past with something new and dangerous. What begins as a desperate bid for control spirals into a haunting reshaping of every relationship.