Manhattan Baby 1982

On holiday in Egypt with her archaeologist father George Hacker and her journalist mother Emily Hacker, nine-year-old Susie Hacker receives a mysterious amulet from a blind woman. Almost immediately, trouble follows: [George Hacker] loses his sight after entering a previously unexplored tomb, and though his vision returns in New York City, the amulet’s influence starts to ripple through the family. Susie, her younger brother Tommy Hacker, and their au pair Jamie Lee suddenly gain access to strange, dimensional doorways that flicker in and out of their lives, pulling them toward places beyond normal sight.

When [George Hacker] regains his sight, he can only recount the design on the tomb’s wall to a colleague named Wiler, a clue that tugs Emily and their circle deeper into what happened in Egypt. At Emily’s office, as she and a colleague named Luke compile a report on the Egyptian events, a panicked phone call from [Jamie Lee] reveals the children are locked inside their bedroom. Their attempt to unlock the door triggers a dangerous chain of events: Luke is sucked into a dimensional portal and vanishes in the desert, leaving those at home to grapple with the mystery and the creeping sense that something dark has entered their world.

As the family searches for answers, a discarded Polaroid of Susie surfaces in the hands of a woman who traces it to Adrian Mercato, an antiques dealer with a warning about the amulet’s sinister symbolism. The children begin to appear and disappear from their bedrooms on what Tommy calls their “voyages,” a phenomenon that frightens their mother and heightens the sense of an unseen menace at work. When [Jamie Lee] vanishes into Tommy’s room, the boy confirms to his mother that she has not returned from her voyage, intensifying the sense that a malignant force is pulling the family into an otherworldly labyrinth.

A cobra, summoned in the blind woman’s symbolism, slithers into the office of [Wiler] and fatally strikes him as he studies a photograph of the amulet. The uncanny image resurfaces in Susie’s hand as she recovers from a mysterious attack, deepening the notion that the amulet channels an ancient power. The Hackers finally locate [Adrian Mercato], who explains the dark history behind the amulet and proposes that Susie has absorbed its energy. When the amulet is found in Susie’s bedroom, she glows with an unearthly blue light and then faints, a visible sign of the supernatural current flowing through her.

[Adrian Mercato] is brought to their apartment to test the child, and his brief, dangerous connection with Susie’s inner voice yields a startling glimpse into the eldritch Egypt that seems to feed the family’s torment. In a bid to help Susie, the doctors place her under care at a hospital, where an X-ray reveals the ominous silhouette of a hooded cobra within her chest. While Emily watches over the near-comatose girl, [Jamie Lee] returns in a startling, grotesque form—a reanimated cadaver that bursts through a wall before collapsing and dying on the floor.

A blue aura of negative energy flows from Tommy, Susie, and the dimensional doorways into [Adrian Mercato]’s home, where he recites an ancient Egyptian spell in an attempt to sever the link. That night, [Adrian Mercato] confronts the danger he has drawn into his life and tries to shield others by redirecting the curse, but the spell ends up turning on him. He is killed at his shop by the reanimated remains of his own birds, a chilling reminder of the spell’s reach. Susie finally awakens with her mother at her side, and the next morning [George Hacker], following the lingering advice to discard the amulet, tosses it into the East River to end the ongoing nightmare.

Yet, in the film’s closing image, the cycle continues. Back in Egypt, the same mystical blind woman reappears and presents the amulet to another young girl, setting in motion a cyclical curse that seems destined to travel from one generation to the next, keeping the forces of darkness alive and waiting to begin anew.