Your House Is My House

Using extra-sharp garden shears, Kate Graham (30s) prunes the flowers and shrubs on her impeccable front lawn. She owns the most elegant house in her tree-lined neighborhood. Approaching Kate with an ancient Kodak camera around his neck: Christoph Bradford (30s), an odd, flat-faced man with an oversized Adam’s apple. He compliments Kate on her house and asks her if he can photograph it. After learning that Christoph is an architecture buff, Kate allows him to take pictures. The conversation turns sour. Christoph wants to get a picture of Kate alongside her house. After she refuses for privacy reasons, Christoph asks Kate to photograph him in front of the house. Kate reluctantly agrees, just to get weirdo Christoph out of her hair. She snaps the photos and hands the camera back to him, eager to get back into her gardening. Christoph, of course, will not leave Kate’s life so easily. After an online yoga session that night, Kate looks out her window and spots Christoph standing on her front lawn, gawking at her house, completely out of place. She rushes outside, but he’s gone. Nothing but darkness and shadows. After a restless night, Kate dreams of Christoph lurking in her house with his camera. The sound of the snapping shudder mesmerizes Kate. When she awakens in the morning, she has a strong suspicion that Christoph hides her house and conducts a painstaking search. Later that morning, she discovers eerie photographs from Christoph in her mailbox. In one shot, Christoph stands in front of Kate’s house, his face gruesomely blurred. Kate quickly retrieves the video feed from her doorbell camera. The footage shows Christoph depositing the photos in her mailbox and standing ominously by Kate’s front door with wide, unflinching, disturbing eyes and an odd grin. By fast-forwarding the video, Kate discovers that Christoph stood in her doorway for more than two hours. At one point in the footage, he brings his face uncomfortably close to the camera. Is Kate watching him, or he is watching Kate? Kate tries to upload the doorbell camera footage to the Police Department, but her laptop freezes. That night, Kate spots Christoph on her lawn again, and she rushes out to confront him. He asks if he could get a look at the inside of the house. Kate is outraged. “Would you like to see some magic?” he asks her before tossing powder in her face. “Now,” he says, “let’s go inside my house.” In Kate’s powder-induced delirium, a bizarre ritual unfolds. From out of the dark corner comes a deformed puppet that resembles Christoph. It dances around menacingly with its hard little shoes tapping on the wooden floor. Kate tries to run, but the puppet follows, catches her, and dances on her head. A shocking vision emerges: Kate herself has transformed into a puppet. Kate wakes up the next morning on the couch. The puppets were apparently a nightmare. Christoph greets her and thanks her for staying at his house. Kate tries to correct him, but she cannot. “You can leave now, but only if you are ready,” he tells her. As he guides Kate out of the house, she spots her garden shears and tries to grab them—a desperate attempt to stop Christoph. But he takes the shears away. He leads Kate outside and says goodbye to her, thanking her again for visiting. Kate is powerless to fight back. Christoph whispers something in her ear and sends her off. She stumbles for a distance. She doesn’t seem to realize anymore that the house was hers. She roams into the street and sits down ahead of an oncoming car and imminent death. While this happens, Christoph cuts down Kate’s flowers with the shears, making himself quite at home in his new house. A month after Kate’s death, her younger sister, Liz, meets with an attorney. She’s stunned to learn that Kate’s house is now under Christoph’s name. Somehow there was a legal transfer of the property and Liz has no standing to contest it. The news devastates Liz. How could Kate give away the beloved family house to a complete stranger? Liz drives directly from the lawyer’s office to Christoph’s (Kate’s) house, ready for a confrontation. She’s shocked to see that the house has fallen into disrepair already, with boarded up windows and dead shrubbery. Liz pounds on the door, but Christoph doesn’t answer. Liz checks with a neighbor, who oddly approves of Christoph’s “renovations.” Liz storms off, but Christoph secretly photographs her before she goes. Alone in her apartment amid the documentary filmmaking equipment of her profession, Liz drowns her sorrows with alcohol. She tearfully stares at a picture of her sister. Liz’s face hardens into defiance. She’s not going to let this happen. She’s going to fight back, starting right this moment. Back to Christoph’s she goes. She drunkenly pounds on Christoph’s door but gets no answer. A couple of candles are lit inside, providing dim/creepy illumination. Liz snoops around in the darkness, trying to catch a glimpse at the interior. When she circles back to the front door, it’s wide open. She steps cautiously to the threshold, calling out to Christoph without reply. As Liz steps into the hallway, she doesn’t realize that Christoph has snuck onto the front lawn with his camera. He takes her picture and the front door slams, trapping Liz in the house. She pounds on the door to get out, but soon falls silent. An ominous wind blows. At sunrise, Liz wakes up on the cold, damp lawn. She has no memory of what happened or how she got on the lawn. On her finger is a plastic heart-shaped ring that likely came from a gumball machine. She pulls it off her finger and rushes home. At home, Liz struggles to remember what happened, and eventually passes out from exhaustion. She dreams of being in Christoph’s dark house and finding her sister wrapped in puppet strings. When Liz tries to free her sister, she becomes wrapped head to toe in string. Liz wakes up and hears an ominous sound in her closet—tap, tick, tap—puppet shoes dancing on the hardwood floor. Liz flings opens her closet door. No puppets in there, but she finds the heart-shaped ring she left on Christoph’s lawn along with a long section of puppet string. Somehow, Christoph got into her house, but she sees no sign of him now. Liz retrieves the string and dumps it into the toilet, but cannot bring herself to flush it down. She becomes mesmerized by the string and pulls it out of the toilet. “These strings are for me,” she chants woodenly before shoving them into her mouth. Only seconds before choking, Liz breaks out of her trance and spits out the string. An instant later, she wraps the string around her head, mashing her nose and lips against her face. Christoph has gotten into her head and is playing games with her. Liz does a desperate internet search of the supernatural, warlocks, hypnotists, and psychics. She cannot take much more of this, so she drives to the local forest preserve with camera. When she was a teenager, Liz would come out here to practice her craft. She films random nature scenes to take her mind off Christoph. Her filming is interrupted by itchy wrists. After scratching them, Liz discovers that puppet strings are sprouting from her wrists and she’s becoming a living puppet. Desperate for answers, Liz calls a local palm reader, Savva Pushkin. In Savva’s modest shop, Liz explains her problem, and Savva is surprisingly sympathetic. Savva tells Liz that she is dealing with a particularly nasty strain of warlock known for taking property and spreading blight. These warlocks crave the proliferation of rot and chaos. They are the patron saints of slumlords. They are termites in human form. There will be no hope for welcoming, inclusive, harmonious neighborhoods so long as entities like Christoph roam free. Savva has more bad news, Liz is already half under the mind spell of Christoph, and it won’t be long before she is fully under his control. Because Savva’s hatred for this type of warlock is strong, she agrees to help Liz fight Christoph. Step one is to de-contaminate Liz from Christoph’s ever-growing spell. Wasting no time, Savva has Liz bathe in a tub of thick, sickening red solution with fleshy chunks floating it in. After soaking for an agonizing period, Savva pulls the strings out of Liz’s wrists, but they don’t come out easily, requiring a bizarre tug of war. By taking this bath, Liz has immersed herself in the battle against Christoph. Savva hatches the rest of the plan. Liz must go back to Christoph’s place and draw him close. Liz will then blow a special powder in Christoph’s face, rendering him temporarily powerless—giving the warlock a taste of his own medicine. At this point, Liz can get Christoph to renounce ownership in the property. After that Savva and her grandson, Spiro, will enter the house and finish off Christoph for good. Spiro has no skills in witchcraft, but he is a gentle giant of a man, and his raw strength will be needed to hold Christoph down. Spiro introduces himself to Liz, and he couldn’t be a nicer fellow, despite his imposing presence. The plan unfolds. Liz returns to the house and Christoph brings her inside, confident that she will do exactly as he says. As they walk amid the gloomy, decaying rooms of the house, Liz confronts Christoph about stealing Kate’s house. He asks Liz if she wants to talk to Kate directly. He thrusts puppet Kate upon her and urges her to reconnect with her. Outraged Liz tries to fling Savva’s powder at Christoph, but puppet Kate springs on Liz’s face, knocking her out. When Liz regains consciousness, she discovers that Christoph is crafting a puppet version of her. He tells her that she will live in the house with him as his wife. The heart-shaped ring is on her finger. Christoph’s plan has one problem: he doesn’t realize that Savva’s bath has provided Liz a bit of immunity to his mind tricks. She pulls out a reserve batch of power and flings it at him. Christoph falls to the floor, overpowered, meek, impotent. Liz pounces on his weakened state. She forces Christoph to confess he fraudulently attained the house from Kate, and she records his confession on her phone. Liz calls in Savva and Spiro to finish Christoph off. The warlock tries to fight them off, but Spiro manhandles him. Savva’s jumps in with her spell, which causes Christoph much anguish. He is finally getting what he deserves. Liz smashes Christoph’s face with this camera, getting sweet revenge. Just as Christoph as about to be finished off, Spiro becomes transfixed with the puppet version of Kate that sits on the table. He can’t take his eyes off the dark beady eyes of puppet Kate. Although Christoph is near death, he has managed just enough strength to entrance Spiro via the puppet. Savva notices this. “Keep your eyes off of that, Spiro,” she commands, but it is too late. Spell-bound Spiro grabs his grandmother and snaps her neck. Liz tries to stop Spiro, but he knocks her out with a blow. Everything goes dark. When Liz awakens, much has changed. She wears a wedding gown and is surrounded by a horrific crowd of visitors—strange people in strange attire. The room is lit ominously by candlelight. Puppet Kate is there too, tapping around dangerously. In a corner is Savva’s dead body, buttons placed over her eyes as a form of humiliation. Spiro is there too, a horrific wide grin on his face. He is completely under Christoph’s control at this point. The wedding guests chant and sway as Christoph comes forth and “marries” Liz. She looks sadly at the photo of Kate on the mantel, but there is nothing she can do. The ceremony concludes with a skin-crawling kiss from Christoph. But it doesn’t end there. The guests place a giant goat’s mask over Liz’s head and they make her walk around the room. Time starts to warp. Night turns to day and back to night as Liz lurches around the room in her mask. The wedding party turns into a baby shower and the strange guests cheer and gush over Liz’s pregnant belly. She clutches it in her hands. How can this be? Liz falls to the floor in labor. The mask falls off. She is horrified and confused. The crowd of visitors chant around her as she delivers the baby, which is not a baby at all but a puppet with horribly round, shiny eyes and a zig-zag mouth. The paint on the skin is dead blue. Then Liz delivers a second twin, equally horrifying. Puppet Kate dances a jig, rejoicing at the birth of new family members. Proud papa Christoph has his camera ready. The two puppet babies are handed to Liz and she takes one in each arm. Liz screams out in horror just as Christoph snaps the picture. We see the final shot: Liz’s shocked face alongside her two hellish puppet children. This family photo fades out slowly and is replaced by the façade of the house. Once beautiful, it is now boarded and dirty and devoid of life. From inside comes a muffled scream from Liz. There’s sadly no escape for her. An ominous wind blows. Slowly we fade out.