Working as an audio engineer for movies, Joan (Sasha Frolova) is constantly haunted by and obsessed with sounds. This auditory fascination ends up being particularly vital when she ends up back in her family’s New England mansion to tend to her father, a once-prolific artist who was severely burned in an accident and is now bedridden. While reconnecting with her dad’s hired help, Joan can’t shake the ghosts of her past, largely tied to her mother’s long-unsolved disappearance. But something else isn’t right. Initially just figurative, those ghosts may in fact be literal and are possibly connected to her father’s dabbling in the occult. As Joan is about to find out, the truth is much scarier than she could’ve imagined.

Oppressive in its creepiness and assured in its filmmaking, writer-director Henry Chaisson’s feature debut is first-class nightmare fuel horror. Befitting its protagonist’s work in the audio field, the film’s sound design is excellent, functioning as its own terrifying character within a Gothic world not lacking in unsettling imagery and other unnerving denizens. Simply put, Recluse will leave fans of bleak, haunt-your-dreams horror shook.—Matt Barone