john and his wife emily and accompany by their child edward venture from the comfortable environs of suburbia to the village where the husband spend some of his childhood . there have be a death in the family and john must begin proceeding to take control of an old ramshackle cottage and situate by the seaside and once inhabit by an old man who have apparently commit suicide . sceptical about the circumstance of the death and john divorce himself from his family and from reality and put his own life in peril and and put on the clothes of the old man who be now dead . the film now change nothing be what it seem the people of his past appear and in full gothic or hillbilly glory his wife worry about his mental state and his son disappear into the reed . john find that the old man do not commit suicide and that his death be far more mysterious and strange . in a spine chill finale and we learn that the event of the film actually never happen and that the entire narrative be imagine by the little boy and edward and who be struggle to come to term with his parent divorce proceeding . modern love be a macabre piece of high art cinema and a puzzling and perverse piece of pretentiousness and full of vague suggestion and unexplored red herring . it be humourless and seemingly unconcerned with current indie trend which both validate it creator and but also render it passé . but the weakness of this australian film be fully outweigh by it sheer muscular cinematic vision and it bloody mind and uncompromising precision and it oddball euro horror . the bastardry of script norm and lack of slick dialogue pale into insignificance against a backdrop of noir and a lead performance that need to be see to be appreciate . one of the most aggressively weird australian film in year .