Fact1: Guy Maddin returns to Black Notch, Fact2: Guy 's has brought to fore of memory, Fact3: Neddie but Guy 's mother heart of interrupts through use of aerophone Guy 's friend, Fact4: Neddie was orphan because she Maddin 's grandmother, Fact5: Father is using sharp signet ring to drill into skulls and draw nectar from brains of orphans and own children
Output: Guy Maddin played by Erik Steffen Maahs as an adult, and Sullivan Brown as a child, returns to Black Notch, a deserted island on which stands a lighthouse that was his family home, an orphanage run by his parents, to slap a fresh coat of paint on the lighthouse. The film is divided into twelve chapters, each of which is a flashback that Guys ancestral housepainting has brought to the fore of his memory. Guy, twelve years old in his memory, attends a secret meeting of orphans run by Savage Tom, a believer in pagan rituals. Tom says he will cut out the heart of Guys friend Neddie but Guys mother interrupts through the use of her aerophone, a radioloudspeaker that Guys domineering mother uses to communicate across the entirety of the island and so keep control of her children, whom she also spies on with the help of a telescope mounted with the lighthouses revolving light. In the orphanagelighthouse, mother delights in repressing the orphans desires as fully as possible, especially the sexual yearnings of Sis. Mother relates that she herself was an orphan because Maddins grandmother was bald and scalped her sister for her hair, while her sister was so jealous of the pregnancy that Maddins mother was literally cut out of her own mothers stomach. Maddins father, littleseen, spends his time in a basement laboratory while Mother oversees all else. In the woods one day Guy meets a young girl, Wendy Hale, a famous teen detective investigating why orphans adopted from the island all have holes bored in the backs of their heads. Guy falls for Wendy and the two join Sis and Neddie for a game of spin the bottle. Wendy falls in love with Sis and impersonates her twin brother Chance in order to pursue her. Guy develops a Boy crush on the disguised WendyChance, who moves into the orphanage to further herhis investigation. Guy helps WendyChance investigate and they discover that Father is using a sharp signet ring to drill into the skulls and draw nectar from their brains of the orphans and his own children. The nectar is harvested and shipped to the mainland, and also used to extend Mothers youth. She becomes twenty years younger, and hopes to eventually return to infancy, but the effects are daily reversed by the ageifying efforts of keeping Sis and the other children in line and properly repressed. Sis being the biggest problem, Mother sends her for additional nectarharvesting, but the overharvesting causes Sis to murder Father in selfdefense. Father is buried near the water and the orphans have to jump on the coffin so that it will sink into the flooded grave. Mother attempts suicide by dramatically taking poison and calling the orphans to her bedside to witness the lengths to which theyve driven her. Sis has discovered that Chance is Wendy but nevertheless plans to marry the girl. Mother is enraged by the marriage and threatens to tell Father. To accomplish this, she exhumes the corpse and boosts it back to life using jumper cables connected to her own racing, nectarinfused heart. The zombie Father resumes his normal activities. Mother curses Sis further and becomes frenzied with hunger for more nectar. Guy stumbles upon Mother in the woods, eating through Neddies skull. The crime compels Sis to force Mother, Father, and Savage Tom from the island in a rowboat. Guy, left on the island, and his Mother exchange calls of love over the water. Guy is soon sent off the island himself and into foster care. Presentday Guy finishes painting the lighthouse, and encounters the ghost of Wendy, who tells him that Sis took over his Mothers place, to become just as tyrannical. She continued to harvest nectar from the orphans, and finally WendyChance abandoned her and fled the island. This drove Sis to madness and to combusting in the lighthouses lamp. Mother returns to the island, now blind, with the undead Father in tow. She attempts to restore her past regime, with Guy her lone remaining child her sole focus. Guy resists but life is less dramatic than before, until Father is murdered by sailors who were formerly orphans he victimized they stuff him in a trash can and set him on fire. Mother soon readies to die, and Guy readies to catch her dying breath in a glass bottle. However, the ghost of WendyChance distracts him and Mother dies furious with him for his inattention. Guy is left alone on the island, torn between the past and the future, contemplating suicide.