Dr. Abigail "Abbey" Tyler
Dr. Abigail "Abbey" Tyler
You can sit there and speculate, but I have to keep hope alive.
Portrayed by: Milla Jovovich
"Real" Abigail Tyler portrayed by: Charlotte Milchard
A psychiatrist that specializes in hypno-therapy. Dr. Abigail seeks to figure out her late husband's work after he died, believing his death to have been murder. Struggling to cope with the loss, she moves out into the small town of Nome, Alaska, to investigate a string of strange occurrences and disappearances. Using her hypno-therapy she learns from her patients that they've all been suffering similar nightmares from which they can't remember much. As she digs further into the matter Abbey starts to learn she might be digging a bit too deep...
- Badass Bookworm: Dr. Abigail Tyler is a therapist, and she's literally going up against aliens messing with her patients.
- Badass in Distress: When Abigail throws one final attempt in contacting the aliens by hypnotizing herself, she doesn't fly into a horrified panic like her patients did when she (supposedly) sees them, and instead begs them to just give her daughter back. Sadly this does nothing as the aliens tell her she will never see her daughter again, before immediately snapping her spine like a twig.
- Berserk Button:
- She considers implying that her line of work causes people to go crazy as ridiculous and offensive, as she quietly and calmly tells Sheriff August.
- By the end of the film, suggesting what she believes isn't true sends her into a shaking fury, causing her to tearfully rant that she HAS to keep believing in what she knows in order to keep going.
- Badass Bookworm: Dr. Abigail Tyler is a therapist, and she's literally going up against aliens messing with her patients.
- Career-Ending Injury: Abbey's hypno-therapy days are done when the aliens decide to break her neck and confine her to a wheelchair for the rest of her life.
- Determinator: One way or another, she's going to find out just what the hell's happening in Nome and if it has anything to do with her husband's murder. Not even getting her daughter kidnapped and her spine broken will stop this poor woman from continuing to seek answers.
- Heroic B So D: She seems to have entered this state by the end of the film, after the aliens started hurting her patients, abducted her daughter (which resulted in Ronnie getting taken away by the cops) and then finally turning her into a paraplegic in order to get her to stop with her investigation. She truly does seem broken in both body and soul. However, it turns out in the end she's still not going to stop. She's more determined than ever to keep believing and keeping hope alive, if only for the sake of finding her daughter.
- Holding Your Shoulder Means Injury: When Abbey starts remembering her own abduction during her final hypnosis session, she remembers seeing an alien device drive some sort of rod into her right shoulder, and then it cuts to her in present day, cringing in pain from the experience and clutching her right shoulder with her left hand as she describes what's happening to her.
- It's All My Fault: It's obvious from her interactions with her kids and whenever Will gets mentioned that Abbey feels like she's responsible for her husband's death, her daughter going blind and her son hating her.
- This goes to a very upsetting degree when Ashley gets abducted and Abigail gets her spine broken as retaliation for her investigation.
- Missing Child: It's bad enough to have your own child taken away from you. It's an even worse matter entirely when your child literally gets abducted by aliens.
- My Greatest Failure: Abbey's investigation starts a whole domino effect of dire consequences. To wit, Ashley gets abducted by the aliens, Ronnie willingly gets taken away to foster care, and in her last attempt to communicate with the aliens, they violently snap her spine rendering her confined to a wheelchair and broken in both body and spirit.
- Tranquil Fury: When Sheriff August starts accusing her hypno-therapy being the reason why Tommy kills his family and them himself, Abbey very calmly tells him that his accusations are both offensive and ridiculous, though considering she's played by Milla Jojovich, you can CLEARLY tell she's thinking about slamming his big dumb head through the table.
- The Unfavorite: Is on the receiving end of this trope with Ronnie if Ronnie's backhanded comment about Will never forgetting the time of his game is of any indication.
-
Wheelchair Woobie: Let's face it. When you get to the end of the movie, it's actually rather upsetting to watch the once-brilliant Dr. Abigail Tyler finally break down into quiet sobs in her wheelchair after telling her whole story in the interview.
Dr. Abel Campos
Dr. Abel Campos
I know what this looks like, but I was there.
Portrayed by: Elias Koteas
A close friend of Dr. Tyler's and a therapist just like her. While entirely supportive of Abbey, he's also extremely skeptical of the strange things happening in Nome, believing there to be a logical explanation. But as Abigail's research continues he finds himself starting to believe in the unbelievable.
Sheriff August Thompson
Sheriff August Thompson
I don't deal in hallucinations or visions in the ether.
Portrayed by: Will Patton
The stubborn and volatile Sheriff of Nome, Alaska. He doesn't believe for a minute in what's happening in Nome being anything more than random psychosis, and is initially hostile and unfriendly towards Abigail when they meet. As more unexplained events happen right under his nose he gets more angry with Dr. Tyler and eventually starts becoming a bit of a problem for her.
Dr. Awolowa Odusami
Dr. Awolowa Odusami
What I have found is, um, intriguing.
Portrayed by: Hakeem Kae-Kazim
An expert linguist that mainly specializes in ancient languages and the cultures centered around them. Halfway through the movie it's revealed that he secretly worked with Abigail's late husband Will before his death, and thus she calls him in to help with her investigation.
Ashley Tyler and Ronnie Tyler
Ashley Tyler and Ronnie Tyler
Ashley portrayed by: Mia Mckenna Bruce
Ronnie portrayed by: Raphael Coleman
Abigail's two children. Ronnie is the older child and Ashley is the youngest. Ronnie deeply resents his mother and actually blames her for his father/her husband's death, while Ashley is rendered blind from the tragedy. They end up getting entangled with the investigation as it becomes more and more dangerous.
Tommy Fisher
Tommy Fisher
Zimabu Eter. What does that mean?
Portrayed by: Corey Johnson
One of Abigail's patients during her time in Nome, Alaska. Wants to find out why he can't remember anything after falling asleep, but once Abigail helps him remember, what he discovers becomes his very undoing.
Scott Stracinsky
Scott Stracinsky
I don't want to talk about it, but I have to.
Portrayed by: Enzo Cilenti
Dr. Abigail's first patient in Nome, and the first to come to her about the nightmares keeping him up at night. Unlike Tommy who doesn't want to remember what he sees in his sleep, Scott wants to find out what's going on just as much as Abigail does, no matter how much it terrifies him.
The Aliens (Warning: SPOILERS!)
The Aliens
IT'S NOT AN OWL
The main threat of the film...Possibly. An extraterrestrial presence is plaguing the small Alaskan town of Nome with strange nightmares, all of them the same thing: the dreamer wakes up in the middle of the night and sees a barn owl at their window staring at them. However things are more than meets the eye, as Dr. Abigail Tyler soon discovers as she looks into her patients hidden memories through hypnotherapy. Unfortunately for her, these beings are not very keen on the idea of getting found out, and are more interested in keeping their existence as well as what they're doing to Nome's township a secret. Even if they have to break a few spines along the way.- A God Am I: It's completely up in the air if the entity Abbey was talking to in the climax was in fact God or not. Dr. Tyler theorizes that the aliens aren't actually gods and just like pretending they are.
- Alien Abduction: Part of what the Aliens are doing in Nome besides messing with people's memories is abducting them in the dead of night to do who knows what to them. They then go to abduct Abbey's daughter Ashley as retaliation to Abbey trying to uncover what they're doing.
- Aliens Are Bastards: You could forgive them for messing with people's memories, but their attempts to keep people from investigating them are clearly extreme. In retaliation to Abigail not stopping her investigation after warning her, they abduct her daughter and then snap her neck and paralyze her out of sheer spite.
- Ancient Astronauts: This is stated to be the reason why they speak Sumerian. It's even mentioned in the movie how extraterrestrial beings and their technology is seen in some ancient Sumerian texts and carvings.
- Animal Motifs: Owls, sort of. They mainly use an image of a Barn Owl as a sort of placebo affect on their victims in order to suppress their memories of what's really happening when they sleep.
- The Bad Guy Wins: Sort of, it depends on how you look at it. By the end of the film, the Aliens seem to have successfully broken Abigail, both mentally and physically in this case. They completely sabotaged her and her husband's credibility, completely destroyed Abbey's family, and then broke her spine to make her seem like she's a crazy woman suffering from her own declining health. Nobody believes her words about the Aliens and anybody who does have already been either mind-wiped or had their spines broken to keep them from supporting her. However, this could be seen as a Pyrrhic Victory for the Aliens as even though they managed to do all this to Abigail, she still intending on believing despite the rapidly growing odds against her.
- Berserk Button: Clearly they don't like people nosing in on their business, as Abigail Tyler soon finds out throughout the movie.
- Big Bad: The primary cause behind Nome's bizarre disappearances and nightmares.
- Black Speech: The aliens can speak Sumerian, though with how non-human their vocals are it comes off more as distorted chaotic screaming.
- Break Them by Talking: When Abigail tries one more time to contact them, they do this to her by telling her they're gods and that she'll never see her daughter again...And then they break her neck.
- Brown Note: While they're never physically seen in the movie, judging by some of the patients' reactions when they remember seeing them, seeing these aliens will drive you to abject hysterical terror. Subverted with Abigail if her final hypnosis is of any indication, she was more concerned about wanting Ashley back than to be terrified of these greater beings.
- Cruel Mercy: The Aliens could have killed Abigail like they did with (possibly) her husband Will, but instead they snap her neck and confine her to a chair, most likely because they're sure nobody will believe a crippled woman with a declining health. They don't even completely paralyze her like they did to Scott.
- Disabled Means Helpless: The Aliens seem to think this is the best solution to any problem that could potentially have them revealed to the public, just break someone's neck to shut them up. And if that don't work, stab them repeatedly and then fabricate the murder as suicide to make them seem like a crazy person!
- Disproportionate Retribution: Good GOD, the lengths these aliens will go to to keep their existence and what they're doing to a small Alaskan town a secret:
- They brutally murder Abigail's husband Will because he was researching them, and to cover up their tracks they (possibly) somehow twist and fabricate the event to make it officially look like it was a suicide.
- They telepathically possess Scott (very painfully it looks like) in order to personally tell Abbey to back off and stop her pursuit of them. And then afterwards they promptly paralyze him from the neck down, presumably to keep him from saying anything.
- When it seems like Abbey's not gonna quit her study, what do the aliens do next? They come and abduct her blind daughter Ashley. And when she contacts them through hypnosis to try to get her back, they snap her neck, utterly breaking her in body and mind out of spite.
- Eldritch Abomination: Despite them being seemingly stereotypical sci-fi aliens, the movie depicts them as this. They're more of an ominously domineering yet unseen presence throughout the film and when people remember being abducted they're so utterly horrified by what they see they get driven mad.
- Flying Saucer: In the few seconds of seeing the Tyler residence in the cop camera, you can actually spot what appears to be a stereotypical disc-shaped UFO coming into view right above the house.
- Go Mad from the Revelation: In typical Lovecraftian horror fashion, learning the truth about these aliens will drive people over the edge.
- Kick the Dog: As if abducting her blind daughter Ashley wasn't enough, they also snap Abigail's neck and confine her to a wheelchair for the rest of her life as retaliation for her continuing her research.
- Lack of Empathy: When Abigail futilely begs them to give her daughter back the aliens clearly have no sympathy for Abigail nor seem to really care that they're ripping a disabled girl away from her grieving mother (whose husband they also killed no less), and just snap her neck to get her to stop with her investigation.
- The Men in Black: Subverted, ironically it's the ALIENS THEMSELVES that's wiping people's memories in order to keep their own existence a secret.
- Mind Screw: Part of what they're doing in Nome. They can mess with the memories of the people they abduct and can even completely mind rape them.
- Nightmare Face: Specifically the "Owl" the Aliens use in place of the memories of those they abduct.
- Nothing Is Scarier: You never see what the aliens themselves look like. The closest connections we have to them are vague shadowy silhouettes of them in the flashbacks and of course the Barn Owl they use on their victims.
- Sufficiently Advanced Aliens: They're at the very least advanced enough to have a spaceship and to manipulate memories.
