Harold Whipple must enlist his daughter's help to defeat the creature that lives in the basement of the “Harris House” which has claimed the lives of their family members for generations.

Inspired by H.P. Lovecraft's Short Story "The Shunned House"

SYNOPSIS:

(1977) Harold Whipple brings his daughter, Malory, to watch the Harris House on Benefit Street every year on October 25th. This is the year, at age seventeen, that she finally asks why. Why does her recovering alcoholic father, whom her mother left, come back here every year.

Harold tells her about when he was a teenager in 1924 and witnessed the death of his friend Stevie by a horrible entity which lives in the basement of the “Harris House.” A place that he had drug his friend, even though his uncle told him never to go inside.

He wakes up in a hospital bed with no memory of what actually happened. His uncle sends him away to live with his aunt because the town believes that Harold has collaborated with his friend Stevie to run away and won’t confess

(1977) Returning to the present, Malory begins to understand, but is still not convinced. They start to see a new family moving into Harris House before Harold continues his story in a flashback in 1931.

(1931) He is a college student who has just lost his girlfriend to his drinking. He is racked by nightmares of Stevie in the basement and tries to drink them away. He is summoned to the Dean’s office, where he is told he will fail unless he straightens up. He is also given a telegram from his uncle Elihu, and it says that Harold must return to Providence at once to discover the secrets of the “Harris House.” It also says that he has fallen gravely ill and needs his help to defeat whatever evil lies within.

Harold returns home to find that Dr. Elihu has become obsessed over the years, trying to uncover the secrets of the “Harris House.” He has been staying there dozens of times over the last year because he has heard the strange events are stronger at night. It is only recently that he has discovered that these visits may have led to his declining health. He tells Harold the sordid history of deaths, stillborn children, and madness that have happened there since it was built.

Harold asks how his parents truly died in the house, as his uncle had never told him. Elihu tells him that the three of them were found in the basement of the house. Fungi had taken over the room as well as its fireplace. Harold was found nearly starved to death in his crib, with his parents’ emaciated bodies found nearby. It appeared as if his father had shot his mother and then turned the gun upon himself.

After hearing how his parents truly died, Harold’s trauma comes rushing back to him, and he recounts the events that happened to him in the basement of the “Harris House” to his uncle when he was a teen. A hideous monster had seemingly seeped up through the floorboards under the fireplace and latched onto Stephen. It devoured him slowly in front of Harold and almost got him to,o as he ran out of the basement.

Harold is hungry for answers as to how his parents’ and Stephen’s are connected and why the others, including his uncle, have taken ill. Elihu tells Harold that he has been in correspondence with a man named Howard, who encountered something like what Elihu has been experiencing, and he has found out how to kill it.

They arrive at the “Harris House” in the morning and set up the equipment, as well as two cots, so they can be there the moment anything happens. Dusk comes, and the fungi begin to glow almost as much as they did when Harold was a teenager. They look in the direction of the fireplace, but nothing happens. They decide to stay the entire night to fight whatever comes. Elihu convinces Harold to rest first. It takes a bit for Harold to sleep, but he finally does. Not long after Harold falls asleep, Elihu… exhausted… does so as well.

Harold dreams of being in the basement with Stephen again, and his friend tells him that his death is all his fault…. He left him to die. Stephen reaches out for Harold, and his hand sears through the shirt he is wearing and into his flesh. Harold awakens and hears his screams mixed with his uncle’s. The Thing in the Basement has returned and kills Elihu.

He escapes the basement, slamming the storm doors shut behind him, as he did many years before, and cuts off the pod as it tries to cling to his leg.

Harold awakens in the daylight and returns to the basement, where he places the canisters of sulfuric acid around the basement. He digs down and discovers a glistening, amorphous mass at the bottom of the hole. He can see the last remnants of his uncle dissolving inside of it. He destroys the monster with the acid and escapes again.

(1977) Harold finishes the story, and Malory begins to understand her father’s bouts of depression and his battle with alcohol. He tells Malory there hasn’t been a new family living in the “Harris House” for decades. Until now, after its most recent refurbishment.

Harold tells Malory that he wants to go into the basement one more time to make sure that the new family will be safe. He wants her to go with him, and she agrees.

They wait patiently as the family leaves the house with the moving truck for another load, then walk to their car. Harold opens the trunk and pulls out a harness with two silver cylinders attached to it and a hose. He tells Malory that it is filled with sulfuric acid. Just like the canisters were decades before. He hands her a shotgun and tells her to shoot the cannisters if it gets to him before he can use it on the creature.

They cross the street and make sure they are not seen as Harold opens the storm doors to the basement. Before they go inside, Harold gives her his Uncle Elihu’s notebook which details the history of the house. He tells her to keep it just in case.

He goes downstairs first, then calls her down. When she arrives, he tells her not to step on the cement-covered floor. Harold reveals a shrine behind the covered fireplace and tells her things he has been keeping from her. His parents were cultists who baptized him into the awful thing in the shrine. He is the catalyst for the thing under the floor and carries a bit with him when they are near one another. Harold is responsible for his parents' death, his friend Stevie’s, and his Uncle’,s and was unaware until he read Elihu’s notes when Malory was a child.

Harold has been waiting for Malory to be old enough to put him down when he summons the creature and to shoot the acid cannisters when it begins to appear. He begs her to shoot the cannisters so that he and the creature can die together. Ending this cycle, this co-dependent symbiotic “relationship” once and for all.

Harold turns to expose the canisters. Malory raises the shotgun, and the amoebic creature lashes out at her just as she backs up quickly and shoots. The acid explodes over the monster and Harold. She runs from the basement with her father’s screams ringing in her ears. Malory’s legs go out from her, and she sits down hard on the lawn. Tears roll down her face as dusk turns into night. The sound of emergency vehicles fills the air. A look of understanding begins to wash over her that she helped her father do what he couldn’t do alone.

THE KILLING JAR