SYNOPSIS:

FRANK HASSENBURGER (30s) a mortician in 1920s Louisiana, is tormented by the death of his wife, Adela. Frank, a once extroverted well-dressed man, is now a circumspect unkempt disaster. His volunteering in a poor colored neighborhood or working long hours at the hospital, does little to help him let go. BILLIE LEE (30s) who ensures Frank eats and supplies him with rum, tries to get Frank to drink a concoction that will help him move on, Frank refuses. A fight with an old foe, ROBERT AARON (30s) a conservative self-absorbed real estate investor, drives him back to his dark place, the back of his yard, were he keeps his dead’s wife body preserved in secret. Through contact with RENEE BENOIT (unknown), a beauty obsessed, voodoo witch, also known as the White Witch, Frank discovers he can bring Adela back. While he feels Renee had something to do with his wife’s death, his determination to revive Adela clouds his judgment. He fully trusts the witch and uses the concoctions she gives him to resurrect his wife. At first, life returns the way it was before her death, but as Frank tries to acclimate Adela to her old hobbies, she rejects them. He excuses her promiscuous behavior, heavy smoking, and drinking as her way of trying to adjust to coming back. However, when she manipulates him to kill Robert Aaron on Christmas Eve, he wonders whom he really brought back. Frank’s new revelation sends him to find the answer he never wanted to hear. The witch, Renee Benoit, took over his dead wife’s body. Because she marked him and took part of his soul using voodoo, he has no idea how to get rid of her without killing the body of his beloved Adela. Worse of all, Frank’s a dead man walking. Renee uses this arc to usurp him to sign over his life and house insurance, titles to buildings, and his bank accounts. She has her own secrets, too. Getting a new body has a high price. That price is souls. When she reveals her final plan to massacre Billie’s neighborhood, to save Billie, Frank refuses to go with her to EUGENE ST. PIERRE’s (30s) New Year’s Eve party. She gives him two options: he can save Billie’s neighborhood or go with her and save his aristocratic friends. Frank chooses the latter. While at the party, Frank learns she never intended to save either one of them, leaving Frank with only one choice. Let go. As the countdown begins to New Years, he dances with her on the roof of Gene’s club and allows her to slip from his wet fingers onto the concrete. Even though there’s no way to save his own life, he dies knowing he saved his friends and he finally accepts the death of his wife.