After a man comes to a psychiatrist claiming to be pursued by a demon, unable to penetrate the man’s psychosis, the psychiatrist ignores his professional ethics, begins to investigate, and realizes his patient may, in fact, be telling the truth. (THE SIXTH SENSE meets Polanski's THE TENANT)

SYNOPSIS:

Much like J. Sheridan Le Fanu, Alfred Hitchcock, M. Night Shyamalan, and others, I was drawn to the idea that our perceptions can subvert reality, perhaps leading us astray, perhaps even to our doom.

COMPS: THE SIXTH SENSE, DON’T LOOK NOW, IMAGES, THE TENANT, VERTIGO

A celebrated Chicago psychiatrist, DR. MARTIN HESSELIUS, finds his career in jeopardy due to unfounded charges of malpractice after a tragedy involving a patient’s treatment. Once hailed as “The Avenging Angel,” the “Profiler” responsible for the rescue of a dozen children from a bizarre satanic sex cult, his “expert witness” testimony at another patient’s trial resulted in the sadistic killer going free to torture and kill again.

As his practice falters under the notoriety and bad press, a man, JOSEPH SHORE, comes to him in desperation, claiming that he finds himself being pursued, hounded... by a demon. The man, in an unhappy marriage, and with a troubled, 17 year-old stepson, now finds himself in a kind of waking nightmare that only he can see. Shore struggles in the shadow of his wife’s dead husband, the stepson’s father.

With the malpractice court case ahead, Hesselius attempts to find an attorney. He fears that he might, now, lose his career. Desperate for redemption, he sees Shore’s case as a lifeline. He meets Shore’s family, wife LAUREL, and stepson, JESS, and begins to understand the strain they are all under: In an effort to save his marriage, Shore has been attempting to help Jess. The boy has an interest in photography. He shoots in black and white, mostly dark subjects. And he seems to have come under the influence of a bizarre friend and the friend’s charismatic, mysterious, and menacing father, RODERICK VAN DAMME, a former stage illusionist. Somehow, apparently, Jess has developed an attraction to the Van Dammes and their weird circle.

Shore describes first seeing his demonic apparition in some photos Jess shot at a ritual in the woods conducted by Van Damme and his band of cultists. It’s a sexually-charged WOMAN: pale, slender, yet voluptuous, with black eyes, long, dark, form-hugging dress to match, and short, white, spiky hair. Even at the figure’s distance, and in the growing darkness, she stares into Jess’s camera, seeming to lock eyes with Shore. There’s an angry, deranged look in them. He’s forced to look away. Earlier, Van Damme had given Jess a large, very old book to study. Shore wonders if the book may have some connection to his demon.

What follows is a series of uncanny events as Hesselius penetrates further into the case. Shore describes the enigmatic woman as: disturbing, strongly erotic, even arousing, yet chilling, exuding evil. Based on certain details Shore relates, he begins to think that his patient hasn’t been deluded, that somehow, something more is going on. Violating his professional ethics, in his off-hours, Hesselius begins to follow his patient.

And then, he, too, sees his patient’s demon, and begins to come under her spell.

But when Shore decides the psychiatrist’s therapy is going nowhere, his desperation a vow to find help elsewhere. He vanishes into the night. Hesselius fears that his patient may become suicidal, even dangerous to those around him. When he tries to offer his patient’s wife comfort, they become uncomfortably attracted to each other. And then, through a private investigator, FRANK TEDESCO, Hesselius learns Shore has an old apartment to store his belongings—but he never seems to sleep there. Instead, Tedesco says he’s drawn to crowds, perhaps to avoid letting himself become alone or isolated. When not at work, he stays out late at bars and clubs. He sleeps outside, and in the bus and train stations, anywhere with people around.

Despite their efforts to resist, Hesselius and Laurel have now fallen in love. With his career in shambles, and his court case looming, the psychiatrist redoubles his efforts to resolve his patient’s case. Laurel has concluded that her husband has become unbalanced. But, shadowing Shore relentlessly through the city, Hesselius now believes his patient is in the grip of some external and very real evil. He suspects Van Damme. So…

Hesselius investigates them and the book they used in the ritual. He finds it’s a rare and ancient tome of satanic ceremonies and incantations. The weird father and son practice a bizarre religion and may have somehow persuaded Jess into joining them. Van Damme has a huge servant, CLAUDE, who does his dirty-work for him, had, in fact, come after Hesselius. When the investigator, Tedesco, turns up brutalized and dead, the psychiatrist suspects Van Damme ordered Claude to do it. So now, Hesselius and Lauren may be seen by Van Damme as obstacles to Jess, and so, perhaps, targets.

With his court date now just ten days away, Hesselius finally secures an attorney. And as his obsessed patient’s behavior becomes more bizarre, Hesselius tails Shore to a bluff over the water where Shore gazes down for long minutes. Hesselius wonders if he may be planning to act out, perhaps hurt or even kill his wife, enraged that she ever doubted him. And then Hesselius watches as Shore lures her to a rendezvous in an old abandoned warehouse. Realizing Shore has snapped, Hesselius intervenes. Impossibly, however, Shore disappears.

Then, in a COMPLETE REVERSAL of what WE THOUGHT WE’VE JUST SEEN:

Laurel is shown to have not been attacked by her husband, but rather by the actions of a delusional Hesselius believing he is defending her… against... no one. Shore, it turns out, has been dead for days—a suicidal leap off that bluff—and Hesselius has somehow been, himself, obsessing, with Shore as his demon. (OUR PERCEPTIONS have been completely subverted: For some time, now, while Hesselius followed his patient, WE’VE BEEN SEEING only VISUALLY-INCOMPLETE DETAILS of people WE THOUGHT were Shore. But, in fact, they were strangers that WE and Hesselius, both, had, through OUR OWN POINTS-OF-VIEW, and the now-obsessing psychiatrist’s escalating delusions, come to believe were his patient.)

Laurel had been informed of her husband’s suicide by the police prior to the psychiatrist’s “thwarting” of the “husband’s” attack. WE learn that Jess had not been lured into the cult, and, in reality, they had nothing to do with the case, were, in effect, RED-HERRINGS. They were actually after Jess’s substantial inheritance from his deceased father, due to be released on his 18th birthday. Jess had just hung with them for his photography.

So now Laurel realizes that Hesselius is, himself, disturbed, has become delusional, seems to believe that Shore is not really dead, and, bizarrely, that he’s planning to kill her. In the midst of his hallucination, the psychiatrist rushes off, intent on following his long dead patient. Despite it all, she realizes that somehow, irrationally, she still loves Hesselius, and she won’t give up on him. She manages to call him. And…

He tells her he’s following “Shore,” probably to that bluff (where Hesselius earlier followed her husband and where Shore leaped to his death). It had been a favorite place to walk when Laurel and Shore first met. She goes there, finds Hesselius alone, and confronts him with the truth. It triggers his delusion that Shore is stalking her, and suddenly, they are in another “confrontation” with the nonexistent husband, still livid at her treachery. OUR POINT-OF-VIEW shifts between Laurel and Hesselius’s delusion: she denies her husband’s presence, despite what appears to Hesselius (and US, through his POV) being in the very face of it. Hesselius’s obsession boils over in a rage, and a struggle ensues. Facing Laurel at the precipice, but “seeing Shore,” the obsessing Hesselius shoves her back to stop “Shore” killing himself, but, falling backward in opposition, loses his footing, and, clutching at nothing, Hesselius plunges off the bluff. Laurel screams.

In a coda, WE SEE her in a hospital room, injured, but apparently alright, speaking to someone, perhaps her son, or Hesselius? OFF CAMERA. But as WE move in, and OUR VIEW shifts, WE SEE that she is alone in the room. WE realize that her husband’s doctor, once her lover, died in the fall, and that she is now obsessed, herself, speaking to the nonexistent Hesselius, now her demon.#