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 Brody Campbell (Scott Graham, Livelihood, Oculus) is a washed-up alcoholic writer who can’t seem to keep a job. His oldest friend and wife, Taylor (Kristin Carter), left him for another man two years ago, taking along their daughter, Natalie (Logan Gladden). Now, Brody only gets to see his daughter on the weekends, he keeps showing up late to work with stupid excuses, and Taylor is marrying Scott (Steve Thomas, Livelihood), the man she left Brody for in the first place.
The film opens with a drunken Brody showing up to Taylor’s wedding reception, accompanied by his girlfriend dujour, the barely legal Sarah (Sarah Brandes). As he watches the new toast at the reception which is again performed by Brody’s best friend, Austin (Zak Jeffries), Brody thinks back to his wedding reception with Taylor and the speech Austin made at it. After Austin finishes, Brody walks up to the mic and makes a toast himself, to the shock and dismay of most of the guests. However, to everyone’s surprise, his toast is courteous and kind, with him choosing not to make a scene due to the fact that he was actually invited by his ex-wife. In private, Brody snipes at his ex- and her husband a little bit, but eventually just washes his sorrows away in booze until his girlfriend drags him back to his little apartment.
As he arrives home, Brody narrowly avoids getting his head split open by his former college friend, David – the protective elder brother of his barely legal girlfriend. After the confrontation, Brody finally manages to sink into alcohol-induced sleep.
So soundly does he sleep that he arrives to work an hour late, trying to come up with excuses as he stumbles into the telemarketing firm he works at (which is one of those classy ones that’s based out of a strip mall). As he makes his way to his boss’ office, he realizes that he’s used every excuse in the book at least once, including the hangover after his best friend’s wedding—which happens to be the truth this time!
His boss decides not to fire Brody, but informs him that he won’t be going to lunch, as he still owes the company an hour for being late. Despite his orders, Brody gets tired of making the repetitive phone calls and decides to sneak out to take lunch anyway. When he arrives back at his office, he is surprised to see that no one is working there except the receptionist, who has no recollection of anyone else ever working there. When he gets done looking around the office for his colleagues, certain that they are playing a trick on him, he discovers that the receptionist has now vanished as well. When he explores the building outside, he discovers that it’s completely vacant and even the sign is now blank.
When he returns home, he finds answering machine messages from his father-in-law which indicate that Brody now works for his father-in-law and has done so for a number of months. Confused by this change, Brody is even more confused when he discovers that Sarah has vanished. He goes to confront her brother, David, assuming that he forced her to leave Brody’s house, but finds that David has no recollection of ever having a sister.
Uncertain whether he’s losing his mind, Brody watches as friends and associates begin to vanish around him, the flow of time tossing him into another timeline that accommodates their absence each time. As more and more people vanish, he begins to see a pattern. The people in his life are vanishing in reverse order based on how long he’s known them. His web of friends is slowly dwindling as the vanishings work their way to his oldest friends, the ones he grew up with on Hamilton Street. In order to discover why the vanishings are occurring, he will have to explore things that he had thought buried far in his past for good.
Content
The content of this film is really impressive and well-realized.
The writing co-writers Mike Flanagan and Dave Foster is very solid, with a compelling storyline that makes you want to find out what happens next. Additionally, the different elements of the script are very well thought out and pre-planned, so there is an inherent feeling of logic to it. This is crucial to preventing folks from getting confused in suspense films.
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