Keyhole (2012) Plot Summary & Timeline

Ulysses Pick leads a violent break-in into his former home, forcing its way through a police cordon with a hostage and a stuffed wolverine named Crispy in tow. The crew’s second-in-command, Big Ed, tries to take control and eject the recently deceased gangsters who nevertheless seem to roam as if alive, demanding they identify themselves with a chilling command: Those of you who have been killed, stand facing the wall. The tension inside the house thickens as the story’s voice-over narrator, the ghostly Calypso, hints that something deeper and haunted lies within these walls. The house is not just empty space; it bears sorrow that lingers long after the inhabitants have moved on. It’s a place that once sheltered Ulysses, Hyacinth, and their four children, and its current state hints that happiness may fade, but sorrow can tighten its grip forever.

Ulysses arrives cradling a drowned young woman named Denny, who paradoxically remains alive in her injuries and blindness, able to hear the thoughts of Ulysses as he wanders through rooms filled with reminders of his past. The apparition Calypso explains that Hyacinth remains in Ulysses’s old bedroom at the top of the house, bound by chains that seem to stretch with a life of their own. The pair join the gang, who are puzzled by the plan and puzzled by why the police have not yet stormed the place. Ulysses deflects questions, hinting that the storm outside will keep law enforcement at bay, while Big Ed grows more impatient and brutal as he confronts the leader’s secrecy.

A spectral chain of events unfolds as Calypso reveals a strange power: Hyacinth’s room is not just physically protected but tethered to the past, with Calypso’s chains able to reach far enough to torment Big Ed through supernatural whiplashes. In a startling act, Ulysses removes the gang’s guns and discards them into the house’s furnace, hoping to sever the violence from the home. Ogilbe, a gangster, misreads a noise as a threat and vanishes into a grim fate after he attempts to engage with one of the ghosts. A whisper of fate accompanies each strange turn, and a stray bullet kills Heatly, a reminder that violence within these walls has a cost. Ulysses reveals a conflicted memory: he had taken Heatly in as a victim, intending to torture him as punishment for the death of one of his sons, but, in a twist of feeling, grows to love Heatly more deeply than any of his own sons. The grim irony deepens as Manners, Ulysses’s surviving son, watches unseen and remains forgotten by his father, who fails to recognize him at that moment.

After disposing of Heatly and Ogilbe in the central bog—a secluded garden within Hyacinth’s labyrinthine house—Ulysses gathers a few essentials: his scout knife, the stuffed wolverine Crispy, Denny, and Manners. He leads them forward, ordering the gang to stay put and leaving the untrustworthy Big Ed under guard. Denny is asked to focus on reading Ulysses’s memories rather than drowning in fear, and she recounts a memory of Ulysses coming home to Hyacinth, who runs naked with the family’s dogs. That recollection reveals the complex, uneasy love between them, even as it exposes how Hyacinth remains emotionally distant. The journey continues as Ulysses contemplates the first of many locked doors, each a symbol of the hidden layers he must unlock to reach the truth.

In Hyacinth’s top-floor bedroom, Calypso’s nightmare of a drowned girl shakes Hyacinth, while Calypso pleads for release from his chains. Ulysses communicates with Hyacinth through the keyhole of the first locked door, offering his knife and urging her to pretend he’s not there to facilitate the opening of what lies beyond. Denny, aided by the memory-printing power of the house, sees the room as it once was and helps Ulysses to navigate the past. A ghostly memory reveals Brucie, Ulysses’s other son, playing Yahtzee in a concealed cubbyhole, though Ulysses does not recognize him or the milk-drinking ghost Ned. Calypso’s narration indicates that Manners—the hostage who watches from a distance—may be the sole living son, but his identity remains unrecognized by Ulysses for the moment. The gang, meanwhile, begins to construct an electric chair, a macabre tool that mirrors the house’s fixation with memory and punishment.

A doctor, played by [Udo Kier], arrives to examine Denny, and he shares a sorrowful tale about the death of his own son earlier that day, a tragedy compounded by a wasp attack. In a neighboring room, Denny bathes Manners, and Ulysses remembers comforting Hyacinth amid her grief. A moment of dark humor arises as Denny discovers a hidden passage that passes by the “cyclops”—a bizarre wall feature described as a penis sticking out of the wall, a detail that underscores the house’s strange, dreamlike geometry. Calypso begs Hyacinth to release him so that he can stop Ulysses, who he believes poses a greater threat in his path to forgiveness than in his earlier thirst for revenge.

Ghosts and gangsters drift through the house, attempting to restore its former glory even as the doctor confirms Denny’s drowned condition. Manners frees himself and reveals that he loves Denny, aware of her relationship with him only after the fact, and he tries to revive her with little success. Ulysses returns to the gang, only to be strapped into the homemade electric chair powered by pedaling. The chair proves ineffective against a man who is already dead, revealing the cruel twist of fate that the memory of execution has already claimed him.

With memory fully restored for the moment, Ulysses orders Big Ed to be electrocuted for his insubordination before he hurls Heatly and the chair into the bog. He then leads Manners and Denny into the next room, where Manners relives a fond memory of Hyacinth. Calypso’s plea for release continues as Hyacinth begins to untie his chains, while Manners guides Denny toward a desktop family organizer he invented to relay messages through pneumatic tubes. Ulysses interrupts Heatly, who is about to have sex with a memory of his daughter Lota, a moment that ends tragically when Lota dies of cancer and throws herself into the bog to join Heatly in death. The family bond grows complicated as Ulysses pursues a fragile connection with Manners, while Manners remains distant and contemplative, absorbed in his own memories.

As Hyacinth rearranges the house in his absence, Calypso is freed by Hyacinth’s act, and Manners answers a ringing phone that interrupts Ulysses’s search for the truth. Ulysses enters the master bedroom to confront Hyacinth, his memories colliding with the present. In a fatal moment, he kills Chang, and Manners’s memory catches a final image of Denny heading out for a midnight swim. The upstairs becomes a gallery of recollections as Manners remembers the moment Ulysses praised one of his inventions, while Hyacinth looks on with a quiet, knowing smile. The ghosts fade away, the bullets vanish, and the house settles into an eerie stillness.

In the end, Manners stands alone with his memories, a gun in his hand, at the threshold of a doorway that he cannot or will not fully cross. The house, once a place of family life and violence, is stripped down to memory’s clean, lucid outline, and Manners is left in a quiet, almost sacred, limbo between what once was and what might still be within the walls of this haunted home. > “I’ll be right back.” > “That penis is getting dusty.”