Severance

In Belgium, on the outskirts of Brussels in a psychological centre. Teresa Janssens, an eighteen-year-old girl, calls her father, Louis Janssens, in the middle of the night. She looks anxious when he picks up the phone. Teresa manipulates him throughout the
conversation and ends up asking him to come and get her on the spot. When she arrives, Teresa finds herself alone in her old house after her father has dropped her off in his car. She decides to watch TV without volume in the living room while waiting for the family to return from work.
A few hours later, her thirteen-year-old brother Helios Janssens comes home first. He doesn't know that his sister has returned. Suddenly he sees her asleep on the sofa and can't breathe. His hyperventilation wakes Teresa, who gets up when she sees him. She hugs her younger brother, who is paralysed and speechless. Teresa puts her inhaler in his mouth and he lets her do it.
Romane Janssens, their mother, hurries home. She doesn't want to leave her son alone with Teresa.
When she arrives, her instinct tells her to go up to Helios' room to check that he is safe. Teresa interrupts them in their reunion to help her mother take off her coat. Her mother
pushes her away violently. Enraged, Teresa locks herself in her room. She grabs a compass hidden behind her bed and struggles to scrape three sticks from the tapestry.
After the family has finally gathered around a somewhat strange and disturbing dinner, Helios goes to sleep again not far from his sister, of whom he is so terrified. He takes out the key with which he used to lock himself up to hope to sleep. Romane reassures her son and locks the door of her room behind her with her key. Teresa, on the other hand, is not sleeping. She tries to enter her brother's room. Without success. She waits on the landing in front of her door. Lit by a motion detector that detects her presence, Teresa decides to go down to the garden. Outside she is watched by her brother from the window.
The next morning, Teresa dashes into the kitchen, takes a hammer under the sink and blows her wrist on the worktop, holding back a cry of pain. A few seconds later, she deliberately screams to get her father's attention. Her father, having heard it from upstairs, ran to her to find out what caused the scream. Without remorse or regret, the girl accuses her younger brother of pushing her. Helios witnesses this injustice without being heard by her father, who prefers to take care of his daughter.
Romane, suspicious, joins her daughter and disdainfully inspects her bruised wrist. She is not fooled and lets her know it. Teresa seizes the opportunity of being alone in front of her mother to challenge her with as much calm as coldness. Following this duel, Teresa goes into the garden without anyone having seen her and watches her family with an unhealthy look, eaten away by suffering.
In the middle of the night, Helios wakes up with a start. His breathing becomes more and more jerky. He then sets off in search of his inhaler, which takes him downstairs. As he
passes in front of the cellar, he realizes that the door is now wide open. In spite of his growing fear and increasingly painful breathing, he goes down into the cellar with a feeling
of curiosity and discovers, in horror, the almost unrecognisable bodies of tortured animals.
Squeaky noises bring him out of his stupor. He swivels and sees his sister contemplating him from the top of the stairs. Helios is petrified with fear.
The inert body of Helios is dragged by Teresa to the bottom of the garden, where she buries him. Teresa waits wisely for her parents to come. When she wakes up, Romane cannot find her son, so she calls out to her husband. Once downstairs, they discover Teresa sitting on the sofa. Romane, distraught, asks her if she has seen her brother. She answers that the last time she saw him was in the garden. The parents discover with
horror a freshly turned mound of earth. The truth comes to them. Teresa killed her brother.