In late 1970s England, Jack is a self-absorbed 15-year-old living in a post-war prefab with his parents, his 17-year-old sister Julie, his 13-year-old sister Sue, and his 6-year-old brother Tom. One day, while unloading heavy bags of cement to resurface the garden path, the father collapses from a heart attack and dies, marking the first crushing blow to the family’s already fragile balance. Not long after, the mother falls seriously ill and becomes bedridden, pressing Jack and Julie into the roles of primary caregivers and decision-makers in a shrinking, tense home.
What begins as a rough, uneasy partnership between the two older siblings soon takes a darker turn as Jack’s immaturity and vanity collide with a troubling, covert attraction toward Julie. As they assume the mantle of parental figures, Jack starts escorting Sue and Tom to school, while Julie shoulders the cooking and cleaning. Their dynamic slowly frays public conventions and private boundaries, turning their relationship into something intensely complicated and morally perilous.
The mother’s illness worsens, and she must leave for the hospital for a couple of months. She warns the children not to tell anyone about her absence, lest they be placed into foster care and their home be demolished. Tragically, she dies at home. In a desperate bid to keep the family together and out of the system, Jack and Julie entomb their mother in the basement, sealing her with a cement sarcophagus fashioned from the leftover bags of cement the father had bought.
With no adult supervision, the children drift further from reality. Jack begins to neglect himself, Sue retreats inward, and keeps a diary to chart her inner life. Julie starts a relationship with an older man named Derek, while Tom rebels against gender norms by cross-dressing and later regressing into infantile behavior, sleeping in Julie’s room in a crib and drinking from a bottle. The house grows heavier with secrets and the stink of the basement becomes harder to ignore.
Derek grows suspicious of the growing odor and investigates, but Jack deflects by claiming the sarcophagus contains a dead dog, alluding to their mother’s fate without naming it outright. Tom reveals that Derek has learned the truth about the sarcophagus, and Julie’s secret is exposed to him. The following morning, Julie confides in Jack that she and Derek aren’t physically intimate and that Derek is, in reality, an immature adult living with his own mother. Their conversation grows intimate, and they cling to one another as they discuss a future built on this taboo bond and the fear that their home might be torn down.
Derek interrupts and reacts with disgust to the truth they’ve kept, yet the two siblings press on with their unsettling view that their situation is natural. The tension.”
As the moment lingers, the house seems to tremble with the weight of what has happened, and the sound of the basement’s sarcophagus being demolished echoes through the walls. Outside, police lights flicker, underscoring a world closing in on a family already stranded in its own shadows.
