The opening scene features a small family of three in Africa.
They are Bol, Rial, and their daughter Nyagak.
At this moment, the three are trying to escape the civil war in their homeland. They sneak away
from the mainland by boat, but all of the sudden, disaster struck and many refugees drown to death.
In the next scene, it appears that Bol and Rial survive,
but their child is nowhere to be found. They wake up inside a processing centre in England.
They have been living there for the past year.
They are summoned to the gym, where they come face to face with government workers,
who chatter among themselves about how Bol and Rial lost their child
last year during their escape. These people have summoned the couple
to inform them that they have been released from detention and will be given temporary housing.
Hearing this, Bol and Rial are ecstatic. They are then warned that that they are not yet citizens
and during this period they will be strictly monitored and given restrictions,
all of which they shall not break even once or they will be sent home. One of
these restrictions include that they must not move out of the temporary housing they’ve been given.
The couple gets driven out of the facility via bus, and get dropped off at a dingy neighborhood.
There, they are greeted by a social worker who gives them a tour of their new house.
He tells them that they should be grateful because the government rarely gives away
such a big house for just two people. Looking at the state of the house,
the couple doesn’t seem excited but they’re willing to give it a try.
After the social worker leaves, Rial sits down and caresses a child’s doll that belonged to
their late daughter. She takes a beaded lace off the doll and puts it on as a necklace.
At night, Bol is alone in the living room. He hears the sound of neighbor kids playing football outside.
All of the sudden, he begins hearing a girl humming from the hole in the wall.
He walks towards the hole, but then the kids’ football accidentally hits
his window and Bol shuts his ears. He begins hearing whispers and loud sounds and screams,
signifying that he is suffering from PTSD.
Once his head quiets down, he starts hearing the hums again. This time, Bol puts his ear to
the wall, until a loud thump makes him stagger backwards. He continues hearing strange noises
coming from inside the wall, so he looks into another opening in the wall and reaches inside.
He looks behind him but finds nothing, so he looks back inside the wall…
On the next day, Bol goes out to take out the trash, only to find that their front porch has
been littered by garbage. A creepy neighbor stares at him from her window and he waves
at her to be polite. He then decides to venture into town that day, to get a haircut to welcome
his new life in the country. He passes by a church after and gets summoned inside.
Apparently the churchgoers have set up a care package to welcome him and his wife into the
neighborhood. He then visits a bar and joins in as the men begin chanting Liverpool’s fan chants.
At home he excitedly tells his wife about his day.
His wife, however, doesn’t seem as excited about entering this new society, though.
Later that night, Bol awakes from his slumber
and begins hearing footsteps coming from the stairs. He goes downstairs to investigate
and finds a wallpaper peeling off the wall, revealing an ominous hole behind it.
Bol begins pulling what appears to be a rope, but then the lights go out. He begins tugging at the
rope but it keeps on going and going. Unbeknownst to him, a mysterious figure appears behind him.
The rope has finally reached its end. His daughter’s doll is attached to it. And then…
Bol looks around in fear, and when he looks back at the wall, the mysterious hole has disappeared.
Frustrated, Bol spends the rest of the night peeling the wallpapers off the wall. Rial wakes in
the morning to his handiwork. Though confused, she proceeds to clean up the mess. As she opens the
door to the closet, she is welcomed with a vision of her child lying in the back of a crammed truck.
Meanwhile, the husband is at the grocery store, buying tools to fix up the house.
That day, Rial decides to go out of the house for the first time. She decides to go see a doctor,
using a map handrawn by their social worker to guide her way. After some time, it appears that
she is lost. While she tries to navigate her way back, she comes across three black schoolboys,
and asks for help with directions. However, they only make fun of her accent.
She finally arrives at the clinic and gets herself checked up. The doctor tries making
small talk by pointing out the scars she has, but this only relives her past trauma. She
begins telling the doctor that she gave herself the scars when she found her family butchered,
and that there are two tribes at war with each other back where she comes from.
Finding this information morbid, the doctor is at loss for words.
She also tells the doctor that she lost her child, Nyagak, when she and her husband crossed the seas.
Rial arrives home to find a schoolgirl taking a piss in her backyard.
She goes to the living room and sits on the floor to rest right when a set
of apples fall out of her grocery bag and roll down on the floor.
The apple stops inside a gaping hole that suddenly appears on the wall. Rial stares in shock.
At night, the husband returns to a homecooked supper. While they eat, he tells her that he’s
excited about the opportunities this country presents and that he wants to start a family.
She keeps a solemn look and begins telling him a story about a poor man from her village
who became a thief so that he’d be able to afford a house. One day, the man stole from an apeth,
A.K.A a night witch. And thus, once the house was built, the apeth also lived there.
The walls of his house began pronouncing whispers and dead people started living in the house too,
and the apeth did not stop until the man was dead. Hearing the story, Bol looks nervous.
Rial then tells him that there is an apeth who has followed them here.
She then tells him that they must leave and repay their debt,
so that they can get their daughter back.
They then begin to argue. Bol doesn’t want to come back and
wants to move on from their daughter’s death.
Later that night, Bol is peeling more wallpapers out of the walls
right when the light in the other room goes out.
He hears footsteps of someone running in the other room and more humming. And then he sees this:
He hears more running sounds and the candle in the room suddenly blows out.
He shines his flashlight into the living room and sees their daughter,
Nyagak, tied up and saying “Mama” over and over again.
Nyagak jumps menacingly and slams a knife to the floor before backing
away to the corner of the room and disappearing.
Bol then begins hearing noises coming from all over the house. He runs outside, overwhelmed.
When he enters the house again, his wife is standing on the stairs. She
knows that he just had an encounter with the apeth. They hear noises coming from
the closet and he finds his daughter’s doll inside when he goes to investigate.
Bol is now convinced that everything that they brought from their homeland is cursed and so
he decides to burn everything, including his wife’s necklace,
despite her objection because it’s the only reminder of her daughter she has left.
The next day, Bol spends the day rewiring the electricity in the house
so they don’t have to rely on candles anymore. When he finishes,
he finds his wife in the kitchen, seemingly having a conversation with an unseen entity.
During supper, Bol shows that he is adamant that they should stay here and wants his wife
to blend in with the community. Rial refuses to leave her identity behind and fully assimilate
with this new culture. He tells her that she should stop focusing on imaginary things,
AKA the ghosts. Rial only looks at him and tells him that the apeth spoke to her
and has told her that they can get their daughter back.
Bol tries ignoring her, and resumes eating his supper, right when he is transported back
to his past. A body of water surrounds him and strange whispers can be heard in the background.
He sees rotting corpses under him when he looks down.
Corpses rise from the dead and start coming toward him, but then… Bol wakes up.
The scary figures disappear when he turns on the light.
But then he starts hearing his daughter ask for help and a set of footsteps appear on the floor.
Bol switches the lights off again and the footsteps cease.
He turns his head…
He turns the lights on again and this time, various voices are asking for help.
He walks around the room and finds his daughter standing by the light switch.
Spirits of dead people surround him and reach for him.
Nyagak climbs on his back and puts a knife to his throat. Bol reaches for the light switch again and
the spirits disappear when the lights are back on. All…except Nyagak. She crawls inside the walls,
making Bol livid. He picks up a hammer and begins beating the walls in his rage.
On the next day, Bol arrives at his social worker’s office for a weekly report.
The social worker could see that something’s wrong and points out that Bol smells bad.
Bol insists that he’s fine, and on the process, accidentally holds a glass
too tight and breaks it to pieces.
He walks out of the room to avoid further questions.
At home, Rial finds that her necklace is back on the table
and sees Nyagak peeking from a hole in the wall.
When Bol arrives home, the social workers pour out of a van to investigate the house.
They seem pissed when they see the state of it. The social worker tells him that he’s going to
report the state of the house but Bol begs him not to and promises to repair the house.
But then, Rial enters the room and tells the social workers about the witch and ghosts that
have been haunting them. The social workers, of course, think she’s crazy and leave right after.
As the couple watches the social workers go, Rial tells Bol to stop idolizing the westerners
because they look down on people like them. She then tells him that she’s leaving,
with or without him. He insists that this is their home now and that she musn’t leave.
Bol proceeds to seal all the exits of the house and starts a ritual to summon the apeth
so they can finally talk eye to eye. He waits for hours until he falls asleep,
and when he finally does, he is in the audience of the apeth.
In a bone-chilling voice, the apeth tells him that he is a thief and that he must
repay his debt by cutting open his own flesh. In return, the apeth shall resurrect Nyagak.
Bol then asks why won’t the apeth come kill him instead.
The apeth doesn’t answer, prompting Bol to realize that everything the apeth conjures up is nothing
but an illusion and that the apeth cannot actually touch him, much less hurt him.
Upon this discovery, Bol gets cocky and begins making fun of the apeth. But then…
The apeth forces Bol to relive the trauma of his daughter dying, while Bol begs for him to stop.
Back in reality, Rial finds a distressed-looking Bol sitting in a trance.
He has peed his pants out of fear. Rial uses this opportunity to unscrew the door and escape,
but Bol wakes up and stops her. She fights against his grip.
Bol falls to the kitchen floor and Rial locks him in.
She unlatches the window and makes an escape. She then stops in bewilderment when she
realizes that she is no longer in an English neighborhood, but instead back home in Africa.
A good friend of hers embraces her and Rial hugs her with joy. The friend takes Rial inside, where
the rest of Rial’s friends welcome her happily and embrace her like the long lost friend she is.
When the celebration quiets down, Rial speaks in her native tongue,
and says that she knows this is just a dream. She begins crying.
We are taken to a flashback, where Bol arrives at that same building, looking for Rial.
Bol finds her and embraces the shaken Rial, while rapid gunshots can be heard outside.
Bol lovingly guides her to walk away from the scene,
and we are welcomed with a sight of Rial’s friends all lying dead around the classroom.
The two hide away from the feuding tribesmen and make their escape in the dark,
while the sounds of explosions and guns blazing rage on in the background.
They keep on walking until the next day, where they find a bus leaving
town and beg to be allowed in, among other desperate people who fear for their lives.
The bus conductor says only those with children are allowed in. Meanwhile, two trucks with men
carrying machine guns are approaching and begin shooting at the people. Desperate,
Bol finds a lost child in the crowd and decides to pick her up and claim the child to be his.
Bol and Rial are finally allowed in. Just as the bus leaves, a woman in the crowd pounds on
the bus window and starts calling the child’s name, Nyagak. It is the child’s real mother.
The child struggles to escape but Bol keeps her in his grip and quiets her down.
We get back to Rial inside the classroom. One of her friends tells her that she has no daughter
while the rest stare in judgement. Rial cries in guilt and regret as she remembers her past,
where the three try to cross the sea with a boat but it toppled over and many drowned.
A British rescue team arrives and picks up those still alive.
Nyagak, however, is not among the survivors.
Rial begins sobbing heavily. She then hears the ominous voice of the apeth, who tells her: I can bring her back.
Rial then gets handed a knife and is told to sever Bol’s flesh,
promising that he will give Nyagak back in exchange.
It turns out that Rial was passed out outside the house the whole time.
Bol carries her back inside and she glances at the kitchen knife.
Bol moves to sit across from her on the dining
table and Rial begins hearing Nyagak’s voice calling for her.
Rial stands up and enters the kitchen. When Rial washes her hands,
she hears a noise behind her, and when she turns around…
Bol has severed his own flesh. Rial comes up to him in shock.
It appears that Bol has decided to make amends for his past.
Bol voices his regrets, saying that he should’ve tried harder to save Nyagak,
and he admits to seeing visions of the tragedy on the boat, as well as ghosts of those who
died back home. He tells Rial that she must go, because the apeth is coming.
With a heavy heart, Rial exits the room.
Meanwhile, the kitchen floor begins to crack and the entire building shakes. Suddenly,
a hole forms on the ground and a monster-like figure climbs out of it. It is the apeth.
He lays astride Bol, reaches for his injured arm, and begins pushing his hand inside Bol’s flesh.
In the other room, Rial listens in horror.
A figure of a child, Nyagak, comes up to her and takes her hand.
The apeth keeps his promise afterall.
Rial reminisces about Nyagak,
while Bol resigns to his fate in the other room. Rial then makes a decision:
she takes off Nyagak’s hand and sneaks up behind the apeth, slitting his throat and killing him.
In the next scene, Rial welcomes several social workers into her home.
They enter and begin taking pictures while Rial and Bol stand nervously and wait for
their verdict. It appears that some time has passed since the incident and Bol
and the dents on the wall have been fixed. The social worker seems happy with their progress.
He asks them if they’re still seeing ghosts, and Bol tells him that ghosts of your past
follow you and never leave. All you can do is try to face them and learn to live with them.
The social workers then leave calmly. After they leave,
we are shown that Nyagak’s ghost still lives in the house, as well as ghosts of other refugees.
Bol and Rial have now learned to accept the fact that they live with these ghosts
and now they’re ready to move on with their lives.