An Unholy Union
Genre: Horror/Thriller/Supernatural
Director: Joanna Hogg
Writer: Rachel Hallett Hardcastle
Cast: Elizabeth Olsen, Aubrey Plaza
Plot: A home video footage montage of a wedding flashes in and out. Maddie (Aubrey Plaza) and Lily (Elizabeth Olsen) are newly engaged, deeply in love, and excited for a fresh start together. We see them dancing, the speeches, and the final dance of the night together.
Maddie, a free-spirited artist with a flair for dark whimsy, is eager for creative inspiration, while Lily, a meticulous and quietly intense writer, craves stability and belonging. When Lily inherits a remote mansion on the coast from her estranged family, it feels like fate—a place where they can escape the world and build the life they’ve dreamed of.
On the drive there, they share plans for their future. Maddie imagines an art studio with an ocean view; Lily envisions a study with a grand window for her writing. They talk of quiet mornings, shared dinners, and nights by the fire, but as they approach, the mansion looms before them—a dark, towering structure with ivy-covered walls and windows that seem to stare back at them. Maddie, charmed by the gothic atmosphere, jokes that it’s “like something from a haunted fairy tale.” Lily, however, feels a sinking dread. Her mother’s cryptic warnings about the mansion echo in her mind, stories of tragedy and loss that she’d once dismissed but now seem to take on a new, foreboding weight.
Maddie is enchanted by the mansion’s eerie beauty. Its fogged mirrors, creaking floors, and flickering lights inspire her, sparking ideas for new artwork. But for Lily, every sound and shadow is unnerving, and memories of her mother’s warnings surface in flashes. As a child, she had overheard her mother speaking of an ancestor who “sacrificed her love to the mansion,” and of others who vanished or suffered strange fates. “The house takes what it cannot have,” her mother used to say—a phrase that haunts her now, filling her with a sense of inevitability.
Subtle lapses in memory begin to unsettle them both. Maddie finds herself forgetting small details about their relationship—like the name of the café where they met. Lily sometimes struggles to recall their plans or conversations. They brush off these lapses as stress from the move, but the discomfort lingers, adding tension to their once-intimate connection.
The mansion itself seems to amplify their discord. After each argument, the air feels colder, the shadows longer, and the walls seem to press in. Hallways narrow, doors grow heavier, and mirrors scattered throughout the mansion reflect strange, distorted images—Maddie’s face frozen in a forced smile, or Lily’s eyes vacant and unfamiliar, as if someone else were watching through her.
As the days pass, Maddie’s fascination with the mansion deepens. She spends hours sketching its shadowed halls, feeling a dark inspiration that excites her. Meanwhile, Lily feels a strange pull from the mansion, as though it’s demanding something from her. She finds herself muttering lines she doesn’t remember learning—“Love eternal… beauty preserved.” At night, Maddie wakes to hear Lily murmuring these words in her sleep, her voice echoing eerily through the house.
Their arguments grow sharper, each accusation more heated than the last. Maddie accuses Lily of being too fearful, too rigid, while Lily accuses Maddie of letting the mansion cloud her judgment. Their voices echo strangely, as if the mansion itself is absorbing their anger. The air becomes thick with tension, and it feels as though the walls are closing in, trapping them in an endless maze of darkened hallways.
One night, after a particularly bitter argument, Lily feels an irresistible pull toward the basement. She descends a narrow, creaking staircase and finds an old family portrait, its faces faded and scratched out, with only one woman’s face visible—a woman who looks hauntingly like her. In a flash, Lily remembers her mother’s hushed warnings about their ancestor who “sacrificed her love,” and how her family’s history was full of tragic, mysterious losses.
Other unsettling clues soon follow. She finds cryptic carvings on the cellar walls, strange symbols that stir memories of her mother’s stories. Maddie, exploring a forgotten desk, discovers letters referencing lovers who “never returned” and a curse meant to “preserve love in darkness.” Together, they uncover an ancient journal belonging to one of Lily’s ancestors, a woman who lured her lovers to the mansion, only for them to disappear. The journal hints at rituals that bind love eternally, of “hearts preserved in shadow” and “love that ends is love wasted.”
They realize that the mansion is no mere house—it is a sentient, possessive force that traps lovers, feeding on the beauty and tragedy of their love. The mansion’s twisted intent is clear: it wants them, and it will not let them leave.
The mansion’s hold over Lily intensifies. She begins repeating lines from the journal unconsciously, her voice distant and hollow. When she catches her reflection in a mirror, her face seems foreign, her expression cold, as if another presence is watching through her eyes. Maddie, terrified, feels like she’s losing Lily, the woman she loves slipping further away with each passing day.
Desperate to escape, they decide to attempt the ritual described in the journal, hoping it will sever the mansion’s hold. As they begin, there’s a brief moment of hope—a shared look, a feeling that they might finally break free. But as they perform the ritual, the room grows colder, the temperature plummeting until their breath forms clouds in the air. Shadows creep across the floor, seeming to stretch toward them, encircling them as if alive.
The air becomes suffocating, filled with ghostly whispers that grow louder, rising to an almost mocking crescendo. Maddie and Lily exchange a terrified glance, realizing too late that the ritual isn’t freeing them—it’s binding them more tightly to the mansion’s curse. The sense of betrayal hits them like a blow, and their brief hope is replaced by despair as they feel the mansion’s intent pressing down on them, its dark satisfaction wrapping around them like a shroud.
Afterward, the house falls silent. They stumble outside, numb and horrified, reaching their car and driving away in desperate relief. But as they drive, the landscape shifts, each turn bringing them back to the mansion. An overwhelming dread fills them as they realize they’re trapped in an endless loop, bound to return no matter how far they go.
Lily’s demeanor shifts completely. Her face becomes vacant, her voice hollow as she repeats phrases from the journal she should not know. Maddie watches, horrified, as Lily’s gaze grows cold, her movements stiff and unnatural, as if she is being controlled by something else.
As Maddie tries to steer them away, she notices Lily’s knuckles whitening on the wheel, her grip tightening. For a fleeting moment, their eyes meet, and Maddie sees a twisted expression of sorrow, anger, and desperation flicker across Lily’s face, as if she’s struggling against the mansion’s grip. But the look fades, replaced by a blank, lifeless stare, her hands locking onto the wheel with a strength that isn’t her own.
The car veers off the road, plunging into a ditch. In the final, chaotic moments, Maddie glimpses Lily’s face, contorted into a mask of fury and sorrow—a tragic final image of the woman she loves, lost to the mansion’s influence.
Maddie awakens to fragments of memory—the day she met Lily, the dreams they had, the love that once felt like a lifeline. But as she opens her eyes, she finds herself hanging upside down in the car, her body bloodied and aching.
She crawls out, calling Lily’s name in desperation. She finds her lying motionless in the ditch, her face pale and still. Maddie cradles Lily’s body in her arms, her grief echoing into the empty night, her heart breaking with the realization that Lily is gone. Maddie's howling fills the air.
Dazed and hollow, Maddie begins to walk back toward the mansion, drawn by an unseen force. Her memories start to blur, each step erasing fragments of her love for Lily, replacing them with a numb, hollow acceptance. She reaches the door, her hand rising to knock without her own volition. It swings open slowly, revealing the dark, empty foyer within.
Stepping inside, Maddie freezes. Before her stands her own reflection, twisted and ghostly, with hollow eyes and a haunting smile. The figure moves with a fluid, unnatural grace, each movement a disturbing imitation of her own. Maddie feels a chill seeping into her bones, her body growing colder, as though the life were draining out of her.
Her memories slip away entirely, her love for Lily fading into the shadows. Her reflection mouths silent words, words Maddie somehow understands: “To love is to possess… love eternal, beauty preserved.”
Then, faint and broken, she hears Lily’s voice, a whisper that chills her to the core. “I’m still here… Don't worry darling… I'm still here…” It’s a final echo, a fragment of the woman she loved, lost within the mansion’s curse. The whisper fades, but the hollow ache it leaves feels endless.
Her reflection raises a bloodied hand, brushing Maddie’s cheek. The touch is cold, sticky, as though marked with something dark and binding, sealing her fate. Maddie’s vision blurs, her body going numb as she feels herself merging with the mansion, her identity dissolving into its shadows.
Outside, the mansion stands silent and still, dark against the night sky. Faint shadows flicker in its windows, and whispers drift through its empty halls—echo
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