Things Heard and Seen-- My take on the movie with spoilers!
PLOT SUMMARY: Catherine has just moved into a new house with her family. Her husband is having an affair. He makes fun of her eating disorder. To top it all, she can sense a presence that seems to be warning her of danger.
How much do you really know a person?
Staying under the same roof, eating your meals together, sleeping on the same bed...basically spending most of your time with that person.
So imagine the shock when the person you thought you knew, was a liar.
This is what forms the crux of the story of Things Heard & Seen.
And then towards the end, things sort of turn bizarre.
THINGS HEARD AND SEEN Movie Plot
The movie begins with George and Claire driving home. As soon as he parks inside the garage, a drop of blood smears his windshield.
George looks up and sees blood oozing through the space in the ceiling.
He rushes upstairs, finds his daughter Franny standing in front of the TV, and gathers her in his arms and runs out.
The movie then goes to a flashback a few months earlier. The year is 1980 and George along with his wife Catherine are holding a party to celebrate George's new job offer in another state.
The women praise Catherine's trim figure and when she is offered a piece of cake, eats a bite and then rushes to the bathroom to throw up.
George's parents don't impress easy and don't care if Catherine is doing well in her class at her local art college.
Well, from what we see, later on, Catherine's art is hardly praiseworthy. She does need a lot of work.
Anyway, the family moves to the new house and it is obvious Catherine isn't too excited to see the whole house and wonders why anyone would leave behind a piano.
Their move to the new house is watched by two boys who promptly arrive at their doorstep and offer their services to babysit and do odd jobs around the house.
Before that, Catherine was checking her weight and clearly not pleased that all her throwing up hasn't been actually helping. She is considering giving up salads or not drinking any more or her protein shakes, when something falls on the scale and shatters the glass. Now Catherine can't check her weight anymore.
After the boys, Eddie and Cole pitch their little business, Catherine decides to hire them while her husband wants her to get another quote. But Catherine gets the last say.
The day George visits the library with Franny, he spots a girl carrying a book on Caravaggio. George uses a bit of trivia he knows about the artist to flirt with the girl Willis.
She is barely impressed and goes over to Franny to indirectly state that George needs to pay attention to his wife more than others.
That doesn't deter George, and when he sees Willis again on his run in the morning, he sees Willis walking her horse.
Willis too is attracted to him and has confided in Eddie that it is because he is dishonest. Poor Willis is sad that she gets attracted only to cheaters.
She plays hard to get and then lures George to the bedroom where she is waiting for him in her underwear.
Meanwhile, Catherine feels a presence in the house and finds a ring stuck to the window sill with a weird engraving of two people holding each other. She immediately decides to wear it and fortunately it is exactly in her size. She immediately sees something golden pass in front of her and gasps.
Her daughter too sees a woman every night sitting on the rocking chair and watching her and breaking her cute lamps.
George is becoming quite popular at college where he is teaching, enough to get an invitation from Judith after she appreciates the tiny paintings on his office wall.
Then there is Floyd, the chairperson, who is impressed with George enough to give him a gift on souls.
Catherine is nice and polite at Justine's house and the woman takes a liking to her, enough to confide in her about how she is unable to have children and reveal her workshop where she weaves scarves. Catherine asks her to make something for Franny and Justine tells her she will put it along with the order George placed for his mother.
On the ride home, Catherine mentions how much she enjoyed Justine's company. George makes a fat joke and Catherine doesn't think it's cool. George is clearly high from the weed Justine's husband Bram gave him and acts like a jerk to which his wife screams at him to stop the car and then gets out and walks in a huff. The couple fights and it ends with George pushing Catherine after making a remark about her eating problems.
At this point, it seems Catherine developed eating problems because George apparently makes unkind remarks about women who eat well and maybe Catherine wanted to be stick-thin so that George wouldn't leave her.
Even after George pushes her and she ends up getting hurt, she still gets into the car showing that she is willing to put up with a lot to save her marriage.
When they come home, Eddie is shocked to see Catherine with a cut on her face but knows better than to intervene.
He has after all witnessed domestic violence himself.
Turns out Eddie and Cole used to live in that house before George bought it. While Eddie tells Catherine that his parents died in a car accident, later on, the truth is revealed at a party in the house that their father had murdered all his cows, then turned on the cars in the garage and closed all the windows and doors to suffocate his family. The boys somehow managed to survive but their parents don't.
Catherine finally understands why there is a weird stench in the basement.
But she still thinks she is being haunted by the ghosts of the first owners, the Smits.
After Justine presents George with more weed at the party, they sit outside on the swing and smoke away. George, high again, grabs Justine's wrists as a joke and doesn't let go. Justine pulls away and leaves in anger.
After the party, Catherine is in a terrible mood enough to not wash the dishes properly. She is pretty much moving around a clean sponge around the cup and there may not even be a little water to wash it properly.
George thinks Justine told her what he had done but Catherine informs him that she has learned the truth about the house.
Her husband tells her that he hid it from her because he didn't want to upset her but Catherine doesn't buy it. The radio takes her side by creating a buzzing static sound. George goes to unplug it but the radio continues to work. He smashes it to the floor and Catherine gives him an icy glare before suggesting Franny go meet with her grandparents during the weekend.
Catherine's suggestion isn't impulsive and she is actually scheming a seance with Floyd who too sensed a presence in the house though he doesn't believe it to be evil.
So while the cat is away...
Catherine has a seance with Floyd and members of his ghost beckoning club.
As soon as they do, a shawl or dress begins to float in the ceiling and Floyd informs Catherine that the ghost she thinks is haunting her house is someone else.
Things begin to fall apart for George soon enough. First, it is at the dinner where his parents and Eddie and Cole's uncle and aunt are present.
George's father makes an offhand remark about George's deceased cousin who was gay and a painter. When Catherine asks what he used to paint, George's mother tells her they were miniature paintings of the sea and beaches and lighthouses.
Remembering that George has those very paintings and claims to have painted them, she drops her wine glass into the soup and walks away in a huff.
She goes to the washroom to throw up and George follows her and taunts her for returning to her old ways to throw up food in order to lose weight. Catherine tells him that she's just sick...of her marriage.
The next trouble George gets into is with Floyd who tells him he's spoken with George's mentor who informed him that he had not written a recommendation letter for George.
Floyd tells George he has to reveal this to the committee and he will be fired for it.
George gets anxious and comes up with a devious plan.
Justine on the other side sees Willis at a café wearing the scarf she made for George to give his mother. She gets concerned for Catherine to the point of poking her nose where it doesn't belong.
George accompanies Floyd on his yacht and then off-screen, drowns him.
When we see him next, he's walking down the street all wet and Justine is waiting for him at the parking lot.
She asks about the scarf, George insults it by saying his mother found it to be cheap and Justine implies she saw it around someone else's neck. She drives away and George, unseen again, follows her in his car and runs her off the road.
Catherine has already made out with Eddie at this point and when she learns about Justine being in a coma, visits her and consoles her husband saying Justine is a force to reckon with.
On the way, she hears the news on the radio about Floyd being found dead.
She starts to put two and two together.
George finally attends a class he's teaching after being promoted to chairperson following Floyd's demise.
There is only one slide and it is the cover of the book Floyd gave him which shows a soul departing.
George thinks it's a prank and shouts at his classmates who simply stare at him. They find it better to stay quiet than indulge him.
George rushes home and sees Catherine's car and her packed bags.
THINGS HEARD AND SEEN Ending Explained with Spoilers!
He goes inside and offers Catherine a protein shake which she immediately starts drinking. George goes upstairs to see his daughter sleeping but all dressed up.
He loses his temper and goes downstairs to throw her suitcases out of the car. He tells her to leave all alone if she has to but that Franny cannot.
Catherine starts putting her cases back in the car when she feels dizzy. Realising that she has been drugged, she drags herself back into the house and sees the ghost of the previous tenant.
Meanwhile, George is being compelled by the ghost of the abusive husband to commit a heinous crime.
Catherine goes to the bedroom to make a call but collapses on the bed.
George comes with an axe and murders her.
The next day is the first scene where the blood that dripped on the windshield was none other than Catherine's.
A police case is launched; George pretends to be distraught. Eddie gets frustrated because he knows George had something to do with Catherine's death. Willis too wants to come clean.
The sheriff too has his suspicions but wishes there was another person who could connect the dots.
Magically, Justine awakens. She has a vision of what happened to Catherine and now sees her in a white gown with the house's previous owner; the woman who could slam doors when the couple would have a fight but did not lock the door to prevent George from killing his wife.
Justine immediately sends a cryptic to George saying she remembers everything.
George freaks out and decides to take a boat to run away.
But the collective powers of all the abused wives of the house create a path to hell in the waters for George.
The movie ends with a painting on the wall depicting a boat heading towards the fiery gates of hell. And also the original owner's wife wearing the same ring.
Apparently, if the wives wear the rings they suffer the same fate: death.
The movie is a long drama that could do with some tighter editing. The ending could be described as only bizarre.
Scare scale: 2.5/5
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