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.

SYNOPSIS:

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. 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.

With the malpractice charges approaching, Hesselius fears that he might, now, lose his career. Desperate for redemption, he sees the man’s case as a lifeline. He meets Shore’s family, wife LAUREL, and step-son, JESS, and begins to understand the strain they are all under: In an effort to save his marriage, Shore had been attempting to help Jess. The boy has an interest in photography. He only shoots in black and white, and then, only dark subjects. And he seems to have come under the influence of a bizarre friend and the friend’s charismatic and menacing father, RODERICK VAN DAMME, a former stage illusionist.

Shore describes first seeing his demonic apparition in some photos Jess shot at a ritual in the woods conducted by Van Damme and a band of cultists. It’s a WOMAN, pale and slender, with black eyes, long dark dress to match, and short, white, spiky hair. Even at the figure’s distance, and in the growing darkness, she stares into the camera, almost seeming to lock eyes with him. 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 descends further into Shore’s case. He describes the enigmatic woman as strongly erotic: 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 isn’t helping him, his rage culminates in an angry confrontation with his wife and 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, over time, and in the process, they become attracted.

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, he’s drawn to crowds, perhaps to avoid letting himself become alone or isolated. When not at work, he attends all sorts of public events. He stays out late at bars and clubs. He tries to sleep in bus stations or on park benches, 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 gone mad. But, shadowing Shore relentlessly through Chicago, Hesselius now believes his patient is in the grip of some external and very real evil.

Hesselius investigates Jess’s friends, and the book they used in the ritual. He finds it’s a rare and ancient book of satanic ceremonies and incantations. The weird father and son practice a bizarre religion and have somehow persuaded Jess into joining their cult. And they have a huge servant, CLAUDE, who does their dirty-work for them, had, in fact, come after Hesselius and, in the process, the psychiatrist suspects he brutally murdered Tedesco, the private investigator. So, now, inexplicably, Hesselius, and, perhaps his patient’s family, have somehow become seen as obstacles to getting jess, and so, perhaps targets.

As his obsessed patient’s activities and behavior become more bizarre, Hesselius follows Shore to a bluff overlooking Lake Michigan, where he looks down over the edge. Hesselius begins to suspect he’s planning to kill his wife, apparently enraged that she ever doubted him. Later, however, Hesselius watches as Shore lures her to a rendezvous in an old abandoned building. Taking action only at the last possible moment, realizing he has snapped, Hesselius manages to prevent her death.

But 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 some time—a suicidal leap off that bluff—and Hesselius has somehow been obsessing, himself, 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 WE and Hesselius had, through OUR OWN POINTS-OF-VIEW, and the 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.

So now Laurel realizes that Hesselius is, himself, disturbed, has become delusional, and seems to believe that her husband is not really dead, and, bizarrely, is 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 can’t give up on him.

They arrange to meet at the lake bluff where Hesselius earlier followed her husband (and where Shore died). It had been a favorite place to walk when Laurel and Shore first met. Picking her moment, she confronts Hesselius 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. Deluded, Hesselius jumps back to avoid “Shore’s attack,” then leaps forward to grab hold, but, clutching at nothing, he 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 possibly Hesselius, OFF CAMERA. But as WE move in, and OUR VIEW shifts, WE SEE that she is alone in the room. WE discover 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.#