The Inhabitant
It’s hard enough being a teenage girl without believing that you are might also be cursed simply because of the family you were born into; seventeen years old, Tara Holden lives with her parents Ben and Emily and brothers Caleb and baby Jack, plays on the school hockey team, spends time with her best friend Suzy and boyfriend Carl, sells mended vintage clothes on Etsy, babysits for extra cash, and suffers from waking nightmares of Lizzie Borden.
Tara’s notorious ancestor who is believed to have murdered her parents but was never convicted, in a small town like Fall River, Massachusetts, everyone knows the history and the story of the curse of “the dark spirit passed from woman to woman,” and Tara’s parents are concerned about her reluctance to engage with them and her mood swings, Emily in particular exasperated with both the situation and her own feelings of helplessness, aware of her sister’s similarly erratic behaviour at the same age.
A creeping horror which presents Tara’s fears not so much of possession by a murderous urge but of the serious mental illness which runs in her family, Aunt Diane (Climate of the Hunter‘s Mary Buss) having spent her entire adult life in a secure psychiatric facility having murdered her own baby, The Inhabitant pushes Hellraiser‘s Odessa A’zion into the uncomfortable corners of Tara’s mind.
The hockey field competitive and violent, Carl preparing to leave for college in a distant town, the baby crying for attention, the father of the child she sits for sending inappropriate texts, Tara is under assault from all sides, her defences always up as a result, ready with a cutting comeback which pushes away the well-intentioned suggestion of her mother (Iron Man’s Leslie Bibb) that she talk to a professional.
With the police investigating the disappearance of two local women, both of whom had connections to Tara, she occupies her mind and her hands with fine detail sewing into the night but cannot escape the visions of a figure dressed in boots of brown leather and dresses of white lace dragging an axe though the fallen leaves of the forest, thoughts persistent and intrusive which tell her that she is destined to kill her family as Lizzie Borden did.
Directed by Jerren Lauder from a script by Kevin Bachar, it is A’zion’s powerful performance which raises The Inhabitant above expectation, making Tara believable and increasingly sympathetic as someone who habitually masks her fears with attitude admitting to herself she is far out of her depth and realising that she needs help as it becomes apparent that she is at the mercy of something she cannot control.
The Inhabitant will be available on digital download from Monday 14th August and can be pre-ordered here
