- Director: David Keating
- Writers: Brendan McCarthy, Brendan McCarthy
- Stars: Aidan Gillen, Eva Birthistle, Timothy Spall
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 30 minutes
- Link: https://amzn.to/3ptsDqt
Synopsis
Patrick and Louise are happily married and have a daughter, Alice. Patrick is a veterinarian, and Alice loves hamsters, dogs, and all the animals. At least she did until a German Shepherd mauls her when she lets it out of the cage. They rush her to the hospital, but it’s too late. Credits roll.
They want to get away from it all, so they move to the little town of Wakewood. Louise gets a job as a pharmacist, and Patrick starts working on farm animals.
A woman and her niece come into Louise’s drug store for an inhaler, and their prescription is from last year; the girl hasn’t been into the store in nearly a year.
Louise is still broken up about the loss of Alice, and she wants to leave Patrick. On the way out of town, their car breaks down. They walk across a field and find a strange cemetery with odd gravestones. They find a farmhouse, and out back is a group of people having some kind of “ritual.” Louise and Patrick see Arthur, the leader of the town, and he sees them.
When they arrive home, they find Arthur waiting for them. He’s just “checking in to make sure everything is all right with you both.” That’s it; he leaves. Creepy, but nothing more.
The next day, Louise sees the little girl again, and she’s shivering strangely. “I’m going home today,” the girl explains. “I can’t wait to go back!” Later, she sees a procession leading the girl out of town. “Alice has a lovely voice,” states the girl as she walks past. The girl’s aunt explains that there’s something strange about Wakewood, and maybe Louise wants her daughter back.
At work, one of Patrick’s friends, Mick O’Shea, is killed by a huge cow that crushes him. They tell Arthur that they want to leave town, and Arthur says he can bring Alice back life for three days as long as Alice has been dead for less than a year. They can say goodbye properly. Patrick thinks it’s nonsense, but Louise believes it. Patrick cryptically says to her “If we have to lie, isn’t it worth it?” Lie about what?
They tell Arthur they want to try. “How long has your daughter been buried?” He asks, and Patrick says eleven months, two weeks. Alice will be perfectly normal for three days, but she must stay within the limits of the town. They must also remain in the town… forever. They agree to all this. The couple asks Mrs. O’Shea about the use of her husband’s dead body for the ritual. “You don’t know what you’re asking,” says Peggy O’Shea. They need some physical part of Alice, so they dig her up and break off a finger.
Patrick and Louise do the ritual, which involves most of the town. They burn and then cut open Mr. O’Shea’s corpse. Out pops Alice. They take her home, clean her up, and she looks perfectly normal.
The next morning, everything is perfect, and everyone is happy. Alice is back, and they spend all day playing. They hit a dog with their car, and Patrick takes the dog to this office to patch up. Arthur stops in and reminds them that they only have three days to say goodbye.
Mrs. O’Shea comes around and offers Alice a ride on her pony. Mrs. O’Shea has questions for Alice, that she records on a system very similar to the one Arthur used with Patrick. O’Shea explains, “She isn’t right. You need to take her back!” Alice walks past the city limits sign, and starts bleeding excessively. When they bring her back, she heals up instantly.
That night, the townspeople come to them, “You have to follow the rules.” Patrick insists on his promised three days. Arthur knows something odd is going on; something just isn’t right this time.
The next morning, Patrick finds the dog torn to pieces. Louise blames the villagers, but Patrick thinks it was Alice. Alice asks “When is the baby coming?” And Louise gets a pregnancy test; there is a baby on the way.
It’s time for Alice to go back to the woods. Alice goes to Arthur’s house and kills him and two men there, leaving Arthur for later. Mrs. O’Shea is next; She gets stabbed through the neck and then hanged. Patrick is finding mutilated animals all over the place.
The parents find Alice, “Am I dead?” She asks. He sticks her with a syringe full of animal euthanizing poison. They carry her through the woods. “I don’t want to go back,” she whispers to Patrick.
Arthur finds Patrick in the woods. The parents lied about how long Alice had been dead; it was more than a year. Alice is stalking her through the forest. Louise tricks Alice into crossing the town line, and she collapses. She then picks Alice up and carries her back across the line to where the villagers are waiting to complete the final ritual and burial.
Louise is then pulled down into the grave as well. Arthur prevents Patrick from helping her. He explains “They’re gone, Patrick; You won’t find them. I tried to warn you that there would be consequences.”
Patrick then does the ritual to get Louise back for three days. Louise is quite a bit more pregnant at this stage (do people age in the afterlife?). He’s got all his surgery tools ready to go; he’s going to remove the baby surgically. There’s always a loophole.
Commentary
From the trailer, I was expecting “Pet Sematary” mixed with a little of the “Wicker Man.” I hit it dead on before even starting the film. It’s little isolated town in the UK countryside with a supernatural secret that involves raising people from the dead.
The actual ritual was really complex, interesting, very graphic, and more than a little gory. It moves quickly; Alice is dead before the credits, and the town’s secret is revealed within the first half hour. Some deaths are pretty gory as well. The ending scene was a nice little surprise. You have to wonder what he was thinking and how that was going to work out for him.