Anna returns home after a stint in a mental hospital, but her recovery is jeopardized by her father's new girlfriend and ghastly visions of her dead mother.
After her ailing mother dies in a fire, teenage Anna attempts suicide and is sent to a mental institution for treatment; after 10 months she still can't remember what happened the night her mother died, but her psychiatrist, Dr. Silberling, discharges her, telling her that she has resolved her issues. Her father Steven, a successful author, brings her back to their isolated mansion near the coast, where she finds that her mother's former nurse, Rachel Summers, is now her stepmother. Anna is happier to see her beloved sister Alex, who is swimming in the sea. Alex and Anna decide to look for evidence to prove that Rachel murdered their mother, as they investigate the fire in the boathouse.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Anna returns home after being institutionalized and tries to adapt to her new home situation. Her father Steven is now living with her late mother's nurse, Rachel Summers, whom Anna and her older sister Alex believe was responsible for their mother's death in a boathouse fire the previous year. Soon after her arrival, Anna begins to receive warnings from her late mother and three children who are always silent but point her to a tragedy that occurred years before in a nearby county. All of the evidence that she and Alex gather points to Rachel having a secret past and living now under an assumed identity. Just when Anna thinks she has all the evidence she needs against Rachel, new information emerges that puts earlier events in a different light.—garykmcd
Anna returns home after being institutionalized because she attempted suicide after her mother died in a fire at their boathouse. After 10 months, Anna's psychiatrist believes that she is ready to be discharged. At home, Anna joyfully greets her beloved older sister Alex and discovers that their father Steven, a successful author, is now with their mother's former nurse, Rachel. Believing that Rachel was involved in their mother's death, the sisters search for evidence that will prove this.—Dans
Freshly released from the psychiatric clinic after her mother's tragic death, troubled and partially-amnesiac teenager Anna finally returns home to her father and his new girlfriend--her late mother's live-in nurse. As Anna and her beloved sister Alex search for answers, more and more haunting apparitions of the restless dead demand appeasement. Who knows what truly happened that fateful night at the boathouse? How much more is there to Anna's new stepmother?—Nick Riganas
Following a suicide attempt after her terminally ill mother died in a house fire, Anna Ivers (Emily Browning) is discharged from a psychiatric institution after ten months; she has no memory of the actual fire, though recurring nightmares from that night frequently plague her. Back at home, Anna reunites with her older sister Alex (Arielle Kebbel) and learns their father Steven (David Strathairn) has a new girlfriend, Rachel Summers (Elizabeth Banks), who was their mother's live-in nurse.
Anna and Alex become convinced that Anna's nightmares are messages from their mother, telling them that Rachel murdered her so she could be with Steven. The girls remain angry at Steven for moving their mother into the boathouse when she got sick, her only way of calling for help being a bell that Rachel tied to her wrist, despite the fact their mother wanted to be there. Anna meets up with her boyfriend Matt (Jesse Moss), who tells her he saw what happened the night her mother died, but Rachel interrupts before he can explain further.
Anna goes with Rachel into town so Alex can look through Rachel's possessions and Anna can talk to Matt again. The two secretly plan to meet that night, but Matt fails to show up. Anna has a ghastly hallucination of him and the next morning, his dead body is pulled out of the water, his back broken. The police state he fell from his boat and drowned.
After the sisters are unable to find a record of Rachel with the State Nursing Association, they conclude that she's actually Mildred Kemp, a nanny who murdered the children she was taking care of after she became obsessed with their widowed father. While Steven is away on business, the girls try to gather evidence against Rachel to show the police, but Rachel catches them and sedates Alex. Anna escapes and goes to the local police station, but they don't her and eventually call Rachel, who sedates Anna and takes her home.
At the house, as Rachel puts Anna to bed, Anna sees Alex in the doorway with a knife before passing out. When she wakes up, she finds that Alex has killed Rachel and thrown her body in a dumpster in their backyard. When Steven arrives home, Anna explains that Rachel tried to murder them and Alex saved them. Confused and panicked, Steven asks what Anna is talking about: Alex died in the fire along with their mother. Anna looks down to find that the bloody knife is in her hand. She then thinks she sees Alex in the door, but sees herself, covered in Rachel's blood. She finally remembers what happened on the night of the fire: after catching Steven and Rachel having sex, she became enraged, filled a watering can from a gasoline tank in the boathouse, and carried it toward the house, intending to burn it down. However, she didn't fully close the faucet and it spilt a trail of gasoline that ignited when a misplaced lantern fell. Her mother was killed in the resulting explosion, as was Alex.
It's revealed that Anna has symptoms of both severe schizophrenia and dissociative identity disorder. Flashbacks reveal that Anna has been hallucinating Alex since she left the institution, which is why no one else ever responded to Alex's presence or dialogues, only Anna's. She also remembers killing Matt at their planned meeting by letting him fall off a cliff and break his back after he revealed that he saw what she had done. She finally remembers killing Rachel, who wasn't a murderer but a kind woman trying to make the family work; Anna had only imagined her as homicidal.
The next morning, as Anna is arrested for murder, the police question Steven, who reveals that Rachel changed her last name three years earlier to escape from her abusive ex-boyfriend; her real name was Rachel Worshinsky. When Anna returns to the mental institution, she's welcomed back by the patient in the room across from hers, whose nameplate reveals she is the real Mildred Kemp.
