Logline

Everything is not what it seems in Raina Shepherd’s world.   When her parents leave for the day and her brother and son seemingly show up out of nowhere, what unfolds is a number of searing revelations from the Shepherds’ collective pasts that rock this already fragmented family to the breaking point.

Synopsis

Raina Shepherd, a 42-year-old quirky woman with a wild imagination and a flare for painting, has barricaded herself in her parents’ living room where she has strewn about her mother’s dresses and bras. From the basement, she has dragged up items that belong to her father including his workbench, buckets of clay and ceramic animal figurines that he sculpts.

Raina’s parents, Mercedes and Cliff Shepherd, own a successful ceramic shop where they sell animal figurines. These animals have become “friends” to Raina. She takes on their voices and has conversations with them and her parents.   The Shepherds play along with Raina and oftentimes indulge her eccentricities.   They even “act out” the moment the Shepherds met at the Grand Canyon when they were teenagers and instantly fell in love.   Raina and her mother are planning a trip to the Grand Canyon to visit the very spot where the Shepherds met.

But is the trip in doubt and is there something more going on with Raina? Why does her mother bring up a psychiatrist and keep reminding Raina to take her medication? And why does the living room look like a hoarder’s nest?

When her parents leave for the day, her brother Daniel (a 35-year-old teacher of literature) and her son Griffin (a mute 18-year-old recent graduate) show up from California, seemingly out of nowhere, shocking Raina. They are not prepared for what they find – a woman whose nature becomes increasingly unhinged and who is obsessed with her artwork and photos dug up from the past, all while taking on various voices of the animal ceramics. Daniel, like his mother, questions Raina about her medication but he must walk a tightrope around her erratic behavior.

Raina is drawn to her son as he bears a striking resemblance to a boy named Mark – his father. The tension is palpable and in a moment of “mistaken identify” Raina is hurdled into a memory from the night Griffin was conceived at a circus.

This painful memory leads Raina into another one she relives with the help of her parents. Mercedes and Cliff recall the night many years ago when Griffin moved out of the house and moved in with his uncle Daniel in California following a tragic incident that left the boy unable or unwilling to speak.

In the course of their tumultuous visit that lasts for weeks and while dealing with deep, hidden wounds of their own, Daniel and Griffin have entered a world that Raina has created and where everything is not what it seems.   What unfolds are a number of searing revelations from the Shepherds’ collective pasts that rock this already fragmented family to the breaking point.