The Film Synopsis

The Emrys family, embattled and disconnected, has lost any communication in their daily shuffle, always on the fast track with no time for being a real family. A naturopathic practitioner who longs for more connection in her unfulfilled life, Hope struggles with unsettling, enigmatic dreams. Her husband Marcus, a driven yet fun-loving architect, is at his wits end with her. Both children appear neglected by their parents, as daughter Sophie deals with a crushing past incident, and her younger brother Troy covers up his insecurities with intellectual diatribes.

On a family vacation fate deals them a different hand when they are stranded near mysterious, mystical Mt. Shasta, in which circumstances require they stay for a while. After they rent a house on acreage near the base of the mountain, it doesn’t take long for the ‘mysterious magic’ of the mountain to begin its course. As the family now has all the modern distractions of their world removed, they are forced into more inner reflection, which opens them up to a new world of possibilities.

The main narrative is set in motion when Ambrose, a sagely homeless man, gradually unravels Hope’s life. Is he really attempting to be a conduit and facilitator for her self-discovery, or a mysterious force hiding a dark secret? She doesn’t realize her buried traumatic past could be tied to him and the mountain, both factoring into her enigmatic dreams.

As it all unfolds, Hope discovers that her missing research scientist parents died under very mysterious circumstances when she was a young child, which prevented them from uncovering a centuries-old religious conspiracy. With no memory of them she struggles to understand what happened to them when researching arcane mystical practices in dead cultures around the world. They felt they had not just found the answer to immortality, but actually discovered the key to how it works, as hinted in such mythic legends as the Holy Grail, the Philosopher’s Stone, the Fountain of Youth and the Tree of Life.

Trying to prevent Hope from comprehending her true situation and past, certain shadowy forces also work in the background against her.  Even though she resists, Hope must gather the courage to face her deepest fears, as she is afraid of the heights of her very own being.  She must explore the mountain not only to discover her parents’ fate, but to heal her past, find out who she really is and discover what her future could hold.

In this story Mt. Shasta represents a parable for the inner quest and the backdrop to play   out the struggle. Shasta, where transformative adventures reveal, purify and free the human spirit for a higher reality and purpose. This magic mountain, with its secret lore from Native American and mystical legends, serves the plot by being the background tapestry for which everything plays out, reinforcing the tenuous, shifting balance between the physical and spiritual worlds.

Essentially, this is a spiritual mystery about learning why we could be here on earth. The underlying lesson being that magic is one of the fundamental, underlying properties of reality. We just have to learn where and how to look for it, so we can wake up and be more aware to our true inner nature.