Marie Dumont (Hayley J. Williams) has never gotten over the death of her son Maurice's (Laurence Belcher) twin Jacques at birth. Their lonely rural French village has been hit by an outbreak of diphtheria that has claimed several of the town's children (while many of the husbands have been recruited by the army). Maurice has always had a special relationship with his dead twin that frustrates mother who behaves coldly towards him; wishing that Jacques had been the one to survive. A quartet of mothers grieving for their children lead by Madame Armand (Bonny Ambrose) convince Marie that Maurice's contact with Jacques will allow him to serve as a medium to contact the town's other lost children. Jacques refuses to speak to them but afterward Maurice tells his mother that Jacques is not alone anymore. When one of the mothers turns up mysteriously dead, it becomes obvious that Jacques and the other children want to be reunited with their loved ones: but on the other side.

While the adult performances are okay, it is Belcher's extraordinary lead performance that is most striking, skillfully embodying both the threatened and sinister child archetypes of the horror genre. Pier Luigi Santi's cinematography is attractive and the color saturation is refreshing given the recent horror movie trends of bleach bypass and digitally drained color palettes. Both the interior and exterior settings are consistently striking and give the impression of having been depleted of existence (appropriate given the recruited men and dead children). Where the film does stumble is firstly in the use of the teacher Prevost (Rod Hallett) and his doctor wife (Beth Winslet, sister of Kate) musing about Maurice from their respectable professional perspectives (pseudo psychologist and physician) throughout. There's also a lamely choreographed climactic fight. The use of CGI is well-conceived but not so well-realized and it is in these and the possession scenes that the film could be mistaken for a more mainstream American horror entry. On the whole, it's a nice (if somewhat predictable) little horror film with a unique if not always convincing setting (shot in Italy but set in France and cast with English actors playing rural French villagers). Think of THE OTHERS without the pretension.