Affection

Waking up from a nightmare in which she is horrifically injured then mercilessly run over, Ellie (Jessica Rothe) in convinced she is not Ellie.

Her husband, the cloying Bruce (Joseph Cross) and her daughter Alice (Julianne Layne) are desperate for Ellie to remember them. Ellie to start with is convinced that she is another person. She lashes out at Bruce with a poker who insists that she is recovering from extreme trauma that has left her with none of her real memories and is experiencing ones that her mind has made up to compensate.

In order to try and recover Ellie’s true memories, the family have moved to a large rural house. Isolation touted as the key to recovery. However things aren’t going to any plan and try as they might, Ellie is not latching on, with the resultant anxieties on Bruce and Alice.

Things becomes more complicated and bizarre when Ellie comes upon a large plastic bag in the forest that appears to have a body wrestling to get out. And then she notices Alice has a puncture wound on her neck, as she does.
This is an impressive debut from writer and director BT Meza as he combines horror and science fiction without sacrificing the very human element that is driving the film.

At the core there is extreme grief and a total inability of one party to deal with it and move on preferring to try and recreate something that, despite the home movies, may well just exist in their mind. This is countered by another, driven by a persistent instinct that everything around them is wrong.

As the film progresses the characters flesh out and the viewer’s perspective and sympathies become muddied by the complexity of emotions and frustrations that the characters start to display. One changes through utter despair the others through the gradual understanding of the horror they are in the middle of.

Affection had its UK premiere at Frightfest Halloween 2025