Totems

Kellie and Abby are sisters whose mother Lexy has died, and their family life begins to tilt as memories and grief wrap around the house. Kellie stumbles upon a necklace that once belonged to Lexy, and she discovers that the piece can move small objects with a will of its own. Skeptical and curious, Kellie wonders if the necklace is somehow tied to her mother’s spirit, a possibility that casts a cold light on the routines of their home. The discovery draws the siblings deeper into a pattern of supernatural signs that seem to revolve around the totem-like power the necklace awakens, a force that is described in the film as a sentient presence rather than mere superstition.

As the household settles into a new rhythm with Kellie’s father James and his girlfriend Robin moving in, tension grows. Robin tries to shoulder household duties to give Kellie space to feel like a typical seventeen-year-old, but Kellie experiences this disruption as a challenge to the memory of her mother and to the fragile balance within the family. The unease intensifies when Kellie witnesses a jarring vision during track practice: a standing corpse wrapped in plastic on the bleachers, a moment that punctures the safe surface of their everyday life. Back at home, Robin is shaken by the experience, and Bernard, Lexy’s father, visits and reveals that he once knew Lexy and James as friends, complicating the past and the present in a single conversation.

Kellie’s quest for proof becomes a hunt. She decorates with Christmas ornaments on every door and installs motion detectors to capture evidence of the entity she believes inhabits the house. When the detectors finally start to beep in response to the family cat’s presence, the cat’s startled reactions and a looming threat heighten the sense that the entity is drawing closer to the living space. Kellie even confronts the possibility of burning the totem to end the disturbance, but the entity fights back with a brutal display: a bookcase topples and the cat is crushed, a devastating reminder that the danger is not theoretical.

That night, the entity grows more menacing and makes an approach to abduct Abby. The family, terrified, calls Bernard for help, and he initially refuses to believe their story. The crisis pushes him to return to the house, where he exposes himself to increasing danger as he confronts what might be a supernatural inheritance connected to his late daughter. Kellie’s boyfriend Todd appears with a fragment of knowledge about how to destroy totems, offering a thread of hope in a narrative filled with danger.

Kellie hides Todd in her room and, in a flare of desperation, shifts the blame onto Robin for the chaos that has erupted around them. In a moment of tragedy tied to Bernard’s fragile health, Kellie’s carefully staged deception uses up all of his inhaler puffs—an act that results in Bernard’s death by respiratory failure rather than direct violence, a turn of events that compounds the family’s spiraling guilt and fear.

The investigation of Abby’s safety deepens when Robin discovers a wedding ring hidden at the base of one of Kellie’s trophies. Confronted, Kellie reveals a brutal, protective logic: she tells Robin that her mother was weak and that James needed someone stronger. The confrontation escalates as Kellie pushes Robin into a bathtub, and Robin strikes her head, appearing to drown. The cycle of violence continues as Kellie ambushes Todd, striking him with a heavy object and killing him, sending Abby into a crawlspace shelter as their father witnesses the horror and the truth of Kellie’s actions.

The father’s confrontation with Kellie is desperate and fraught. He is bound and forced to witness Kellie’s attempts to destroy the totem, while she argues that their bond is the only thing that matters. Robin wakes and re-emerges to try to save James and Abby, but Kellie pursues Robin with a reckless violence that culminates in a supernatural interruption: her mother’s spirit appears, startling Kellie and causing her to stumble. In the final act of the confrontation, Kellie is fatally impaled on a jagged piece of art, the symbol of a haunted past collapsing into the present.

In the aftermath, the family retreats to a small, isolated mobile home—a tiny refuge parked in a remote, serene setting. The three of them appear to be finding a fragile peace, though the echoes of what happened linger. Abby continues to speak to someone beyond the frame, suggesting that the family’s healing will be a long process and that the presence they faced may still be part of their lives, whispering through the quiet of their new existence.

Last Updated: October 09, 2025 at 16:01