Shelley 2016

Elena, a young Romanian woman, takes a job as a housekeeper for a Danish couple who choose a radically secluded life. They live in a lakehouse with no electricity, relying on self-sufficiency—growing their own food, raising chickens, and keeping only a landline to connect with the outside world. The setting is quiet and eerie, and Elena initially feels uneasy about the isolation, yet she finds it easy to blend in with the couple’s routines so far from ordinary life. She also meets Leo, a spiritual healer and friend of Louise, who works to ease Louise’s recovery from surgery by cleansing what he calls bad energy from her body.

Elena and Louise quickly form a strong bond. Elena confides that she is saving money so that she and her son—who lives with Elena’s parents—can have a home of their own. Louise opens up about her own trouble conceiving and then asks Elena if she would consider becoming a surrogate mother for her and Kasper. In a difficult but hopeful decision, Elena agrees, and she is implanted with one of Louise’s frozen eggs.

From the moment the implantation seems successful in her doctor’s view, Elena’s life takes on an unnerving shift. She notices a cascade of strange signs: the chickens react with fear when she approaches, she begins to hear and see things that aren’t there, and her dreams turn darker. In one nightmare she gives birth to a dead baby; in another, Louise appears bloodied and speaks of someone named “Shelley.” As the pregnancy progresses, Elena loses weight and is exhausted, her gums bleed, and her cravings grow both unusual and unsettling. Leo, sensing a troubling energy around her belly, worries about what may be growing inside. Elena insists the baby is healthy and that the pregnancy is proceeding normally, insisting that the child is a girl, even as the ultrasound machine suddenly fails and won’t cooperate when she asks to see the baby.

As the pregnancy deepens, Elena’s condition worsens to the point where Louise must assume caretaking duties. A bath scene becomes a turning point: Elena withdraws into intense pain when water touches her, and she lashes out at her own belly while crying to have the child removed. Later, she wanders the house in a trance and attacks a living chicken from the coop. The couple fear that if Elena returns to her parents, they will try to keep her and the baby away from the world. They decide Elena should remain at the lakehouse and be cared for there until the birth. When she attempts to terminate the pregnancy with a knitting needle, Elena dies from internal bleeding, though the baby survives.

The baby is named Shelley, and she begins to display manifestations akin to Elena’s: the chickens again fear her, and she cries out in pain when water is poured on her. Leo senses a malevolent presence around Shelley and flees in fear, much to Louise’s shock. Kasper grows increasingly uneasy as he notices Shelley making strange noises that Louise does not hear, pushing him into a detached, almost shell-shocked state. Louise, confident that none of this is real or alarming, remains focused on Shelley’s arrival as the family’s new center of gravity.

One night Louise awakens to find Shelley missing and discovers she has disappeared into the night with Kaspar, who locks both of them in the car with the engine running in what seems to be a murder-suicide attempt by carbon monoxide. Louise acts quickly, rescuing Shelley and killing Kasper by slamming his head against the car door. Shaken, she sits on the bed with Shelley as an unidentified figure draped in black stands in the room before vanishing. The two women are left in the room with no clear explanation for the strange, escalating events that have just unfolded.