In 1962, as they cope with the unsolved killing of their parents, two siblings discover six mysterious, old recordings at the family’s cliffside mansion which summon a succession of preternatural entities – each more menacing than the last.

SYNOPSIS:

Northern California, August 1962: An early-40s couple, Michael and Cassie, are traumatically killed when a car runs them down from behind as they walk together on a country road. Their grief-stricken children – eldest daughter Helen (21), son Devon (17) and youngest daughter Katie (6) must settle their wealthy parents’ estate, which includes a large vacation getaway house on the northern California coast. Helen, the only legal adult of the three and the one ultimately and suddenly responsible for everyone and everything in their lives, is also dealing with an emotional relationship with Devon that is more than just brother and sister. Helen is also obsessively convinced that a mysterious older man named Victor is responsible for Michael’s and Cassie’s brutal deaths. Meanwhile, Katie’s grief begins to manifest itself in physical illness.

That fall, Helen, Devon and Katie set about one weekend to organize the contents of the vacation home – “Cliffside.” Victor is seen taking a cab ride up the coast of California to take care of “unfinished business;” at the same time, Helen and Devon discover a box containing three old, custom-made acetate recordings in the attic. When they begin to play them, each new unsettling, otherworldly piece of music summons what seems to be angels, each one more menacing than the last. Their purpose is unknown to the older siblings, but it becomes clear that they are also there to protect Katie, whose health is now weakening by the hour. As the family struggles to escape the succession of six “light and dark angels,” it is revealed that Helen and Devon are actually stepsiblings and that the deranged Devon is the one who ran down his father and stepmother out of blind hatred for disrupting the life he knew. Meanwhile, Helen is revealed to have killed Victor – her actual estranged father – and buried him in the garden bed earlier this same day in a crime of passion when he arrived unannounced at Cliffside to make things right between them. As the final chilling music piece plays, the Angel of Death induces the independently murderous siblings to willfully do penance for their sins: Devon is drowned in a bathtub and Helen hurls herself off the backyard cliff into the ocean. Katie – her health failing from grief, is comforted by the final “silver angel” and she peacefully passes away, now reunited with Michael and Cassie … her biological parents.

HUSH THE SHADOWS