Caveat

Caveat is a 2020 Irish horror film written, directed and edited by Damian Mc Carthy in his feature directorial debut. It stars Jonathan French as Isaac, a drifter suffering from partial memory loss who accepts a job to look after a psychologically disturbed woman in a house on a secluded island. The film premiered at the IndieCork Film Festival in Ireland on 4 October 2020. Plot Amnesiac drifter Isaac is hired by his acquaintance and landlord Moe Barrett to look after his niece Olga, who will occasionally go catatonic with little to no warning, putting her at risk as she lives on a remote island. The job requires that Isaac be chained in a harness that restricts him to certain portions of the house. He learns from Moe that Olga's mother went missing after locking her husband in the basement. Olga's father went insane due to extreme claustrophobia and killed himself. At the house, Isaac finds that, when lucid, Olga roams around with a crossbow and an eerie toy rabbit with human-like glass eyes. After experiencing supernatural phenomena, Isaac discovers Olga's mother's corpse hidden behind a wall in the basement using the rabbit doll as a dowsing rod, since it drums whenever anything hidden in the house is close by. Olga warns Isaac that Moe will not let him leave, revealing what Moe told her: Moe and her father were the ones who killed her mother, who enjoyed toying with her husband's claustrophobia. Moe also planned to kill his brother, but could not go through with it. He then hired Isaac, who lured Olga's father into the basement and locked him there. Isaac has Olga call Moe, who confirms the story. Isaac frees himself from the harness by taking the key from Olga's mother's corpse. Olga shuts off the power then tries to kill Isaac, but goes catatonic. Taking advantage of her catatonic state in an opportunity to escape, he locks Olga in the harness but she manages to shoot his leg with the crossbow. Isaac regains his memory, which reveals that he was not responsible for her father's death, as he had second thoughts and had tried to warn him via a note that Moe discovered. Moe pushed Isaac off a balcony, but he survived with amnesia.