Behind You 2020

The narrative unfolds in 1979, starting with Beth and her boyfriend, Charles, sharing a quiet moment in her room while her younger sister wanders the house. The tranquility is abruptly shattered when Beth hears her sister scream. Rushing with Charles to find her, they discover her transfixed by a mirror, pointing at something unseen. Suddenly, a pair of hands reaches out and grabs her.

Fast forward forty years into the future, two young girls, Olivia and her sister, Claire, are taken to stay with their aunt Beth after the passing of their mother, with their father decidedly absent. Olivia, the elder, arrives with her sister who carries a stuffed bunny, her sole means of communication due to her deep trauma. Aunt Beth appears reluctant to welcome them into her home, imposing strict boundaries that forbid them from entering her study or the ominous basement, a directive their stuffed bunny obediently seems to accept.

During dinner, prepared by Charles, it becomes clear that he is far more amiable than Aunt Beth, who continues to wear a frown. The strange stew that Charles cooked is met with mixed reactions—Olivia finds it edible, while Claire has a close call after discovering it contains peanut butter, necessitating a swift EpiPen intervention from Olivia to save her sister’s life.

As the night deepens, Claire is drawn to eerie whispers compelling her to breach the very rules Aunt Beth established. Venturing into the study, she uncovers Beth with a wine glass in hand. In a drawer, Claire stumbles upon a key that leads her to the basement where dusty mirrors reside. Here, she senses a familiar presence, believing she can communicate with her mother through the glass. Encouraged to chant specific words to unlock the mirrors, Claire unwittingly invites something sinister into their world.

The next morning, Claire shows Olivia an old newspaper clipping revealing Aunt Beth’s dark past—her conviction for the murder of her own parents and sister. Realizing their lives are in jeopardy, Olivia hastily contacts Camilla, their caretaker, who agrees to come over urgently. Their escape plan, however, is thwarted when Claire begins to exhibit increasingly peculiar behavior, expressing a desire to remain in their aunt’s house and devouring dinner ravenously. The uneasy exchange between Beth and Charles indicates something is amiss as Beth suspects the girls have entered her study.

While locked away, Olivia witnesses Camilla arrive only to be abruptly dismissed by Charles. Soon, Camilla returns with a firearm she discovered in Charles’s car, ready to confront Beth and Charles, but the situation spirals further into chaos.

As they try to escape, Claire is grief-stricken over abandoning her bunny, prompting Olivia to search for it, only to find blood staining the car windows—Camilla has been gruesomely slaughtered, and little Claire has gone missing. When she confronts Beth and Charles, the horrific truth surfaces: the house is a prison for a malevolent entity desperately seeking entry into the living realm. Beth explicates her remorse over having to kill her sister to safeguard the world from this evil.

Determined to stop the entity without resorting to murder, they devise a plan involving breaking mirrors to reveal and combat the spirit lurking within. However, this attempt quickly escalates into tragedy as Olivia discovers Claire laid out on a plastic sheet, with Beth and Charles preparing to commit an unspeakable act.

In a desperate plea, Olivia argues that Beth never truly sought alternative methods to defeat the entity and merely seeks bloodshed. Charles, moved by her words, reluctantly decides to aid Olivia. Their risky scheme involves feeding Claire peanut butter to induce choking, hoping to expel the spirit and then revive her with an EpiPen. The attempts are grueling as it takes multiple EpiPens to restore Claire.

Ready to flee the next day, the girls are shocked to find the exits barred. Beth rushes in, warning them of the entity caught between realms, which harms Charles by driving a shard of glass into his throat. Claire, believing this is her fault, uses the incantation to draw the evil within herself. In a heart-wrenching act of sacrifice, Beth recites the words first and hands Olivia a shard of mirror; the entity swiftly manifests in a swirl of dark smoke, possessing Beth. Without hesitation, Olivia stabs her aunt.

The arrival of law enforcement and emergency services brings mixed emotions, but Olivia is relieved to be reunited with Claire. A police officer informs them that the shocking incident will be classified as a murder-suicide. As the last candle flickers and extinguishes within the isolated house, a haunting sense of finality permeates the air.