In the picturesque lake house that her late husband Owen (Evan Jonigkeit) built for them, grief-wracked Beth (Rebecca Hall) sips brandy and ponders the unsolvable enigma that is his suicide. One night, for no apparent reason, he rowed out into the middle of the lake and shot himself with a gun she didn’t even know he owned. Speaking to a friend, she explains that she was the one who wrestled with depression while he was her rock — to her, his choice to end his life is inexplicable.
For a certain value of “inexplicable,” that is. Even stranger is the mounting evidence — to her, at least — that Owen’s presence remains in their house, manifesting as a knock on the door, a glimpse of his naked form by the lake, and, gradually, more insistent, and frightening phenomena. This is, of course, in addition to the more physical and emotional traces of Owen’s existence: his clothes, his things, his digital footprint.
Combing through these, Beth finds evidence of secrets: among them, photos of women that bear a striking similarity to her. Was he carrying out an affair? Better, perhaps, to focus on his small but ominous occult library, complete with scrawled notes in the margins. Owen led a second life hidden from Beth, but why was it hidden, and how expansive was it? He was the center of her world, but was she his?
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