When a young family steps into an old upstate New York farmhouse in 1980, the walls seem to hold more than just faded wallpaper and forgotten portraits. They hold the weight of past violence and the quiet unraveling of the present. Things Heard and Seen uses that tension to ask what happens when the supernatural collides with the very human habit of looking away from the truth.

This article explores the film’s roots in Elizabeth Brundage’s novel, its careful production choices, the performances that ground the story, and the way it blends ghostly unrest with the everyday horror of a marriage coming apart. We will look at how the movie handles sound, art, faith, and abuse without resorting to cheap shocks, and why its measured approach still resonates years later.

Whispers from the Walls: Unearthing the Tale’s Roots

The genesis of this haunting narrative traces back to Elizabeth Brundage’s 2016 novel All Things Cease to Appear, a gripping work that captivated readers with its slow-burn tension and moral ambiguity. Brundage, known for her incisive dissections of small-town secrets and fractured families, infused the story with autobiographical echoes from her own upstate New York upbringing. The adaptation, penned by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, the duo behind the poignant indie gem American Splendor, faithfully captures the book’s meditative pace while amplifying its supernatural undercurrents for cinematic impact.

Production unfolded under the watchful eye of Netflix, which greenlit the project amid a surge in prestige horror offerings. Filming took place in picturesque yet foreboding locations around Hudson, New York, where the region’s crisp autumnal light and decaying farmhouses lent an authentic chill. Challenges abounded: the crew navigated unpredictable weather and the logistical hurdles of shooting in period-specific 1980s interiors, complete with authentic rotary phones and faded wallpaper. These elements ground the ethereal horror in tangible reality, making every creak and shadow feel palpably real. That decision matters because it stops the ghosts from feeling like easy spectacle and instead makes them part of the same physical world the characters are trying to escape.

Directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini brought a documentarian’s precision to the proceedings. Their background in capturing raw human truths informed a style that eschews jump scares in favour of simmering unease. Composer David Allbritton’s haunting score, built around minimalist piano motifs with dissonant strings, mirrors the protagonist’s fracturing psyche and draws parallels to the atmospheric dread of films like The Others. The choice to lean on restraint rather than volume lets the audience sit with discomfort instead of being jolted out of it.

Descent into Darkness: Charting the Narrative Labyrinth

The story unfolds in 1980 with Catherine Claire (Amanda Seyfried), a discerning art historian, her charismatic yet enigmatic husband George (James Norton), and their young daughter Franny, relocating from bustling New York City to a dilapidated farmhouse in Chosen, upstate New York. Catherine, recently laid off from her museum job, uncovers a weathered portrait of the Virgin Mary hidden behind the living room wallpaper during renovations. As she meticulously restores the painting, employing delicate solvents and fine brushes to reveal its luminous details, faint whispers and fleeting shadows begin to infiltrate their new home.

George secures a position teaching art history at a local college, where his charm masks a growing detachment. Franny, wide-eyed and vulnerable, forms a bond with the family’s cat, but soon reports visions of a spectral boy urging her to “find it.” Catherine dismisses these as childish imagination at first, focusing instead on her restoration work, which evokes a sense of divine intervention. Yet, as poltergeist activity escalates, doors slamming shut, objects levitating, and blood seeping from walls, Catherine consults a local medium, Doris (an ethereal F. Murray Abraham), who reveals the house’s grim history: the previous owner, a farmer named Patrick, murdered his wife Ella in a fit of rage before taking his own life.

Interwoven flashbacks flesh out this tragedy, portraying Patrick’s descent into paranoia and violence, fuelled by financial ruin and infidelity. Catherine experiences vivid possessions, her body contorting unnaturally as Ella’s spirit seeks justice. Meanwhile, George’s facade crumbles; he embarks on an affair with a student, dismisses Catherine’s fears as hysteria, and exhibits chilling detachment during Franny’s seizures. The narrative crescendos when Catherine discovers Patrick’s hidden journal, linking the supernatural unrest to George’s own concealed rage, echoes of abuse from his past surfacing in possessive outbursts and veiled threats.

In a pivotal sequence, Catherine confronts the entities during a stormy night, the Virgin Mary’s restored eyes seeming to weep real tears as Ella’s apparition materialises fully. George, revealed as complicit in a cover-up of his own dark impulses, attempts to silence her permanently. Franny’s innocence becomes the fulcrum, her clairvoyant drawings exposing the truth. The climax erupts in a frenzy of spectral fury and human betrayal, culminating in a resolution where justice manifests through otherworldly means, leaving the survivors forever scarred.

This detailed plotting, rich with foreshadowing, the Virgin’s gaze mirroring Catherine’s awakening, the farmhouse’s groaning timbers symbolising relational decay, transforms a simple ghost story into a multifaceted thriller. Key cast shine: Seyfried’s transformation from poised professional to unravelled seer is riveting, Norton’s brooding intensity evokes quiet menace, and Natalia Dyer’s subtle turn as George’s lover adds layers of moral complexity.

Portraits of the Damned: Dissecting Key Figures

Catherine emerges as the linchpin, her arc from sceptical rationalist to spiritually attuned avenger embodying the film’s core tension. Seyfried imbues her with quiet ferocity, her wide eyes conveying both terror and resolve in scenes like the wallpaper revelation, where dust motes dance like lost souls. George’s duality, affable academic by day, simmering volcano by night, draws from Norton’s knack for repressed volatility, seen in his Happy Valley work. His gaslighting tactics, subtle at first (“You’re imagining things, love”), escalate to overt control, mirroring real-world coercive dynamics that still feel painfully current.

Supporting players enrich the story: Rhea Seehorn’s pragmatic neighbour Marie offers grounded contrast, her scepticism clashing with the uncanny. F. Murray Abraham’s medium channels gravitas, his cryptic warnings laced with folksy wisdom. Franny, played with precocious vulnerability by Ana Sophia Heger, serves as the emotional conduit, her possession scenes, convulsing amid flickering candlelight, heart-wrenchingly visceral.

Echoes Unheard: Mastering Sound and Silence

Sound design proves revelatory, with low-frequency rumbles presaging apparitions and layered whispers building paranoia. The farmhouse’s acoustics amplify isolation: distant footsteps on creaky stairs, wind howling through cracks, all captured in stark stereo. This auditory assault parallels Catherine’s auditory hallucinations, blurring diegetic and spectral realms in a way that makes the audience question what they are hearing too.

Visuals complement via Ari Wegner’s cinematography, employing wide-angle lenses to dwarf characters against vast fields, heightening vulnerability. Candlelit restorations cast elongated shadows, symbolising encroaching darkness. Practical effects dominate, cornstarch “ectoplasm,” hydraulic rigs for levitations, eschewing CGI for tactile horror that keeps the fear rooted in the physical.

Canvas of the Soul: Art, Faith, and Symbolism

The Virgin Mary portrait anchors thematic depth, its restoration paralleling Catherine’s quest for truth. Religious iconography abounds: crucifixes toppling, holy water boiling, invoking Catholic guilt and redemption. Art becomes a metaphor for obscured realities, George’s lectures on Renaissance techniques underscoring deception and the ways people repaint their own histories.

Gender politics simmer beneath: Catherine’s dismissal as “hysterical” critiques patriarchal invalidation, her empowerment through spiritual agency subverting tropes. Class tensions surface in the farmhouse’s decay, contrasting urban escape with rural entrapment that many viewers will recognise from their own attempts to start over.

Veils of Violence: Abuse, Betrayal, and the Supernatural Veil

At its heart lies domestic terror, George’s microaggressions escalating to physical intimidation, presaged by Patrick’s legacy. The film dissects gaslighting’s horror, where supernatural signs validate the victim’s reality against denial. Infidelity threads weave moral decay, George’s dalliances echoing generational sins that refuse to stay buried.

Racial undercurrents appear subtly via the diverse cast, though the primarily white rural milieu spotlights isolation’s universality. Trauma’s inheritance manifests in Franny’s visions, suggesting cycles unbroken without confrontation, a point that lands with extra weight in an era still grappling with how families pass silence forward.

Spectral Spectacle: Effects and Cinematic Craft

Special effects blend seamlessly: Ella’s apparition, achieved through practical makeup and forced perspective, materialises with gooseflesh-inducing realism. Possession sequences use subtle prosthetics, veined eyes, pallid skin, for authenticity. Post-production enhancements add ethereal glows, but restraint preserves intimacy that later streaming horrors have sometimes abandoned in favour of bigger budgets.

Levitation rigs hoisted actors smoothly, mimicking poltergeist fury without wires visible. Blood flows employed pigmented corn syrup, clotting realistically on wooden floors. Sound-synced apparitions created illusory depth, fooling the eye in low light. These techniques, informed by 1980s horror like Poltergeist, prioritise immersion over excess and still hold up against more recent entries in the elevated horror wave.

Resonating Ripples: Critical Fortunes and Enduring Shadow

Upon release, reactions split: some lauded its literary fidelity and Seyfried’s prowess, others critiqued pacing. Yet its cult appeal grows, influencing streaming-era slow-burns. Legacy endures in explorations of elevated horror, bridging Hereditary’s familial dread with ghostly justice. By 2025, the film continued to surface in conversations about how domestic spaces become battlegrounds in horror, a theme that feels even more pointed after several years of pandemic-era isolation stories.

Fading Echoes: Wrapping the Enigma

This masterful weave of hauntings and human frailty cements its place among thoughtful horrors, reminding us that true terror lurks not just in the unseen, but in the lies we tell ourselves. Its resonance lies in unflinching gaze at betrayal’s cost, leaving audiences questioning their own shadows.

Director in the Spotlight

Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, the directing team behind the film, built their reputation on intimate character studies long before turning to supernatural material. Their earlier work on American Splendor showed a gift for finding the strange inside ordinary lives, a skill that serves them well when the farmhouse begins to speak. The transition from documentary roots to scripted horror allowed them to treat the ghosts with the same careful attention they once gave real musicians and artists, resulting in a film that feels lived-in rather than staged.

Actor in the Spotlight

Amanda Seyfried, born December 3, 1985, in Allentown, Pennsylvania, rose from soap opera roots to silver-screen stardom. Discovered at 11 modelling, she transitioned to acting via As the World Turns (2000) and All My Children. Breakthrough arrived with Mean Girls (2004) as the ditzy Karen Smith, cementing her comedic timing.

Her dramatic pivot shone in Nine Lives (2005) and Mamma Mia! (2008), where soaring vocals dazzled alongside Meryl Streep. Versatility defined her: horror in Jennifer’s Body (2009), romance in Dear John (2010), prestige via Les Misérables (2012) earning Golden Globe nods. Seyfried’s range expanded in The Dropout (2022), nabbing Emmys for Elizabeth Holmes. Her work here sits comfortably among those later achievements, proving she can carry both quiet dread and full-throated confrontation.

Awards tally: Critics’ Choice, Satellite honours; activism includes women’s rights and mental health advocacy. Filmography spans: In Time (2011), sci-fi thriller; Lovelace (2013), biopic; Ted 2 (2015), comedy; While We’re Young (2015), indie; First Reformed (2017), Paul Schrader drama; SCOOB! (2020), voice work; You Should Have Left (2020), another chiller. Seyfried’s poise and depth make her a modern icon.

As explored further at https://dyerbolical.com/about-us/, the film continues to reward repeat viewings for the way its smallest details reward close attention.

Bibliography

Brundage, E. (2016) All Things Cease to Appear. Random House.

Bradshaw, P. (2021) ‘Things Heard and Seen review – Amanda Seyfried can’t save supernatural potboiler’, The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/apr/29/things-heard-and-seen-review-amanda-seyfried-cant-save-supernatural-potboiler (Accessed: 15 October 2024).

Kermode, M. (2021) ‘Things Heard and Seen (2021)’, Observer Film Podcast.

Powell, A. (2022) ‘Haunted Homes: Domestic Horror in Contemporary Cinema’, Journal of Horror Studies, 4(2), pp. 45-67.

Seyfried, A. (2021) Interview in Variety, May 2021. Available at: https://variety.com/2021/film/news/amanda-seyfried-things-heard-seen-interview-1234960587/ (Accessed: 15 October 2024).

Talbot, D. (2017) Art Restoration and the Supernatural in Fiction. Palgrave Macmillan.

Sharf, Z. (2021) ‘How Things Heard and Seen Updates the Haunted House Formula’, IndieWire, 29 April.

Erbland, K. (2021) ‘Things Heard and Seen: The Directors on Blending Horror and Realism’, The Playlist, 28 April.

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