The Sideways Light (2022) – When Memory Fades, What Darkness Remains?

The past doesn’t rest. It lingers in silence, waiting to be remembered.

The Sideways Light (2022) is a slow-burning psychological thriller that blends grief, memory, and the supernatural into a haunting cinematic experience. Directed with atmospheric precision, the film explores the fragile boundary between reality and delusion, following a woman caught in the shadows of her mother’s deteriorating mind—and perhaps something more sinister.

The story centers on Lily (Lindsay Burdge), a woman who returns to her childhood home to care for her ailing mother, Ruth (Annalee Jefferies), whose memory is slipping rapidly due to early-onset dementia. But as days stretch into weeks, Lily begins to suspect that something beyond memory loss is affecting her mother. Ruth speaks of people who aren't there, of voices in the walls, and of a presence that “wants to come in.”

The decaying house itself becomes a character—creaking, shifting, and hiding secrets from the past. Lily starts to experience strange visions and fragmented dreams, as if time is folding in on itself. Is the house haunted? Is her mother’s madness contagious? Or is there a deeper trauma buried in their family history, only now surfacing in this liminal space between past and present?

With haunting cinematography, sparse but meaningful dialogue, and an eerie score that amplifies every shadow and silence, The Sideways Light is not a typical ghost story. It’s a meditation on memory, loss, and the ways in which time itself can become a prison. It challenges the viewer to ask: what if forgetting is the only way to survive?