When forced to lodge with an ageing couple, a destitute young man cares for the wheelchair-bound husband in return for a roof over his head, but soon suspects the older man's disabilities are a result of horrific domestic abuse...and that he’s been lured into the house to take the older man’s place.

SYNOPSIS:

Dean Freeman is a young man living a nomadic existence. He returns home following the death of his mother from a long illness and his relationship with his father is fractured – Dean wishes to live freely, without roots or ties. But his father wants him to take over the farm that’s been in the family for generations before settling down and raising a family of his own. Fearing a future he has not chosen for himself, Dean runs away.

With little to no possessions, Dean lives as a drifter. But he soon finds himself homeless, destitute, and desperate. One sleepless night while living on the streets, Dean is mugged. He then notices a personal ad in a newspaper offering room and board in exchange for “domestic duties”.

Dean lodges with housewife, Lilith, an immaculate woman in her fifties, and her disabled husband Nigel. The pair inform Dean that they recently lost their son and that Dean will be staying in the now empty room.

He is welcomed into his new home by the older couple and soon finds a surrogate mother figure in Lilith. Against, all expectations, Dean finds himself enjoying the quiet life. At first, he doesn’t think too much of the house rule to never go in the locked room at the end of the hall, nor the loud, aggressive sounds coming from Lilith and Nigel’s bedroom each night.

But it isn’t long before Lilith becomes ever more controlling and her doting acts of kindness turn bizarre and seductive. And when Dean meets Amelia, the girl from the local corner shop, Lilith starts to show signs of outright jealousy.

Then Dean falls ill. Shortly after, he also finds needle marks hidden between Nigel’s toes and begins to suspect that Nigel’s disabilities are a result of years of horrific domestic abuse at the hands of Lilith.

When Dean discovers that he is just the last in a long line of young male tenants to stay at the house before disappearing, and that Nigel and Lilith are in fact brother and sister, he attempts to leave…but Lilith won’t let him.

Dean finds himself locked inside the mysterious room at the end of the hall - in what appears to be a makeshift delivery room. He thinks he is saved when Amelia arrives at the house, but Lilith quickly murders Amelia when she caves in her skull with an iron.

Believing that he has been trapped in the house as part of some warped plan to “replace” their dead son, Dean pleads with Nigel to help the pair of them escape from Lilith. However, Nigel tells Dean that his being there has already helped Nigel escape. Moments before Nigel takes his own life, Dean is told that he’s not there to fill the role of the son, but that of the husband, and that of the father to Lilith’s future children.

HYSTERIA