An isolated woman in recovery experiences terrifying visions as she struggles to process the loss of her late husband.

SYNOPSIS:

Our story begins on a cold and rainy night in a diner with Kate, a young woman caught in the precarious balance of being in recovery for drug addiction and newly widowed after the loss of her husband, Chris, to an overdose. Kate, full of anger and unrealized potential, is living in a world urging her to move on but she doesn't know how.

Her husband's life insurance is balking- they don’t cover overdoses. From our opening diner meeting with her encouraging tough-love ex-punk sponsor Adhira, herself twelve years sober, to AA meetings, filled with stories of resilience- nothing seems to pull Kate back into her life.

And in the midst of all this, Kate has begun enduring terrifying mid-night waking episodes known as sleep paralysis where she is conscious but unable to move or speak. From the dark she gets the unnerving sense that something, or someone, is watching her.

Paranoia begins to color Kate’s point of view. We see her interact with people that seem to come with the best intentions, but for Kate, these interactions are suspicious and alienating.

Night after night, as her sleep paralysis episodes become more frightening, from phantom tapping to a gravelly voice calling her name from the shadows, a growing suspicion about their true nature begins to claw at Kate, until finally, she takes matters into her own hands to seek out the truth.

Kate learns that in the mythology of every ancient and modern culture, a common - and I mean frighteningly common - belief is that sleep paralysis is a gateway between the living and the dead. The Shipibo Shaman among many other spiritual leaders thought they could gain access to that gateway through psychedelics like ayahuasca and psilocybin.

Desperate and fearful, Kate goes to a walk-in clinic, but her attending doctor, overworked and underslept, simply offers sleeping pills, promising that sleep disorders are common and these are sure to knock her out.

On her way home, Kate stumbles on someone from her past - her drug dealer. When she gets home, she’s got sleeping pills in one hand and a baggie full of psilocybin, or magic mushrooms, in the other.

This leads to the final and most explosive sleep paralysis sequence, full of moving walls and a black dog with red eyes, frothing at the mouth, emerging from the dark. At its climax Kate steps into what seems like an alternate dimension, where she finds…

Chris.

And in this final scene between lovers existing on different planes, Chris gives Kate what she’s been looking for all along- a reason to keep going.

‘If you don’t stop looking for the worst in yourself, he tells her, the darkness will keep chasing you.’

Kate wakes, and for the first time, we see hope in her eyes, healed by the power of connection and a love that transcends time and space.