In Reunion Ellie (Emma Draper) returns to her family home to reunite with her mother Ivy (Julia Ormond) and catatonic father (John Bach) as they clean up after her grandparents’ death and prepare the house to be sold. Ellie is quite pregnant and Ivy seems rather obsessed with the grandchild.

As they spend time together we learn that Ellie is mentally ill, just left her abusive boyfriend, and there are family secrets she has a hard time remembering. While there, Ellie works on her thesis on the subject of the source of modern science through medieval alchemy, a topic Ivy doesn’t approve of, as being “too dark” for a pregnant mother-to-be.

“I’m excited for you, I could never get pregnant,” says Ivy. “You had me,” corrects Ellie. “Aside from you, of course.”

From the beginning, we sense that something is wrong, and it seems like Ivy is gaslighting Ellie–though Ellie accepts such things as being told she’s sleeping in the guest room, not her own old bedroom, with grace, as Ivy tells her, “You always did have a bad memory.”

Old childhood friend Gus (Cohen Holloway) is working on household repairs, and sometimes helps with the father’s care. The father mostly sits in a wheelchair and stares at a certain wall in his room, speaking only rarely, at one point poking Ellie in the forehead and proclaiming, “Imperfect!”

The course of the film is Ellie coming to terms with what happened in her childhood. She tries to find a lost vase that was somehow important to the child Cara. She has nightmares and waking visions and feels “something is wrong with me.” Ivy seems to be trying to care for her daughter, but also seems to be convincing her of her helplessness and potential danger of getting overexcited.

In part Reunion is pregnancy horror, à la Rosemary’s Baby: what is actually growing in Ellie’s body? She has had no ultrasound and has a deep distrust of doctors. Her nightmares often feature a grotesque, bloated infant half her size latching onto her breast to nurse, biting and bleeding her.

We start to wonder if there’s something truly supernatural about the house beyond the visions of someone with an unspecified mental illness coming to terms with lost memories. Who is Cara? What does she want? Why does Ellie have a black, viscous goo oozing out of her ear? “When you’re pregnant, your body goes through changes,” says Ivy, but clearly that’s not the answer. What is she hiding? What is Ellie hiding from herself?

The many questions raised start to pile up, and you’d be forgiven for wondering as the progress bar progresses if the film will answer them all. That, I shan’t spoil, but the solutions will feel satisfying and macabre to some viewers, and like an empty cheat to others. Not so much a “what a twist!” as something developed and foreshadowed clearly, but in a direction one would tend to not consider. The Prestige also does this, which split audiences sharply on whether it was a “fair” solution to the mystery or not.

Reunion has an oppressive mood, the acting is precise and adept, and the script is interesting and kept me involved throughout–mostly asking myself “What?” a lot. Overall, Reunion is worth the watch and I, for one, will eagerly seek out anything else from writer/director Jake Mahaffy to see where else he is willing to go.

7.5 out of 10 Dollops of Viscous Black Ear Goo