| Director | Michael W. Smith, Ryan Smith |
|---|---|
| Genre | fantasy film |
| Country | United States |
In 2012, Ana, a nurse who once wanted to write horror fiction, meets Freddy on a bus. Freddy, a graphic novelist, chats her up. Surprisingly, they live on the same street in a small town, Pearl, but their conversation is cut off when the bus crashes. Ana wakes up at home, late for work. Though it is daytime, it appears to be twilight. When she arrives at the hospital, it is deserted, though she hears an enigmatic, barely-intelligible audio recording from a wall of patient health-monitors. Outside, loud music draws her to Freddy's house. The two go exploring.
At the police station, they find all communications channels dead. They cannot drive far because of a tall wall of black fog, The Darkness, through which lightning flickers. It encircles Pearl and menacingly advances toward their street. Unable to drive through it, they retreat to the center of town, which inexplicably reverts to August 23, 1992. At a diner, Freddy unsuccessfully attempts to get the attention of passers-by. Ana watches herself as a child celebrating her 11th birthday with her beloved Aunt Lu, who raised her. While Aunt Lu wants to talk, Ana persists in writing a story about a knight and a monster. Outdoors, Freddy finds a flyer for a carnival at the Pearl Fairgrounds.
Shifting back to 2012, they return to the fog, and Freddy measures its rate of creep; it will reach the town center in three days. They conjecture about their situation and whether they died in the crash. Ana thinks they might be spirits; Freddy suggests alternate dimensions and parallel universes. Remembering the audio recording at the hospital, Ana brings Freddy there. They are surprised to hear a real-time conversation in which doctors discuss cutting off life support for Ana in three days, as she has been in a coma for two months. Ana explains that after her Aunt Lu's own protracted coma and death, she signed a living will.
Freddy speculates that the fog is a representation of Ana's dying brain. He suggests that the only escape from their predicament is through The Darkness, though proximity to it sickens them. They enter it and find a locked door surrounded by thousands of keys; Freddy experiences déjà vu. A horrific monster appears and chases them, but they manage to escape. Freddy takes her to his childhood home to find a boat, hoping they can escape by river. His house is lit up, and it is August 23, 1992 again. He relives an incident in which his kind stepfather, Phil, attempted to bond with him after Freddy got in trouble at school. Phil suggests a game of ball, but (like Ana earlier) Freddy wants to keep writing his comic book. Phil tells Freddy that he can go to the carnival that night with friends.
They revert to 2012 and discuss the pleasures of story-telling. Freddy shows Ana the comic book he'd made, Behind the Veil, containing his illustration of a locked door and thousands of keys. In turn, Ana shows him her drama about the monster. Realizing that they must replay the day that changed their lives, the two go to the carnival. Young Ana takes joy in her time with Aunt Lu, who says that when they return home, they will have fun acting out Ana's story. Freddy sees his younger self with schoolmates, bigger boys who harass him and then dare him to go to a "real haunted house." As they leave, Ana and Freddy observe an exchange of glances demonstrating a mutual attraction between their younger selves. Ana tells him her Aunt Lu died in a terrible accident that night and that they are reliving the events in order.
Roaring, the monster reappears and they run, reverting to 2012. They hide in a school, where Freddy for the first time sees the creature from young Ana's play: it has an enormous mouth full of long teeth, and the key to the locked door is in its chest. They set a trap, but it fails, and they hole up in the movie theater and then the church, knowing that The Darkness will envelop them in the next few hours. As Ana becomes increasingly ill, Freddy leaves to confront the monster by himself. Ana is horrified to see it drag him away, and then she is back home in 1992.
There, young Ana is performing her play with Aunt Lu, herself as the knight and Lu as the monster. During the play's climax, Freddy's friends coerce him into petty vandalism that results in an accidental fire and Aunt Lu's coma. Back in 2012, a bloody and battered Freddy appears and apologizes before sinking into unconsciousness. When the monster appears, Ana kills it and takes the crucial key from its corpse. The Darkness creeps through the windows, but she drags Freddy to his magic door inside the fog, and when the key opens it, she pulls him across the threshold. In the hospital, Ana wakes up and staggers to find Freddy, whom she learns has already been released. His caretaker explains that Freddy has partial amnesia and remembers little except the crash itself. Using his sketchbook and an emotional embrace, Ana helps him to remember their shared experiences.