The title of writer-director Hadi Hajaig's Byzantine occultly thriller Puritan refers to Simon Puritan (Nick Moran), a phony London clairvoyant and the inhabitant of an oddball 17th-century estate once occupied by Satanist Aleister Crowley -- allegedly a site of visitation for numerous apparitions over the centuries. As a heavy drinker, Puritan spends his days staging faux psychic readings. When he imbibes a bit too much alcohol and grows intoxicated, Puritan nearly slips and falls beneath a train, but a deformed stranger, Jonathan Grey, calls out to save him at the last moment. Through Jonathan, Puritan becomes acquainted with Ann, a gorgeous young woman unhappily married to a wealthy American, Eric Bridges (Starsky & Hutch's David Soul); Simon and Ann lapse into a torrid affair, but Ann's resolve to leave her husband for Simon leads to Eric's accidental death -- and the suggestion that Ann may be double-crossing Simon. To complicate matters, Simon is then badly disfigured, and mysteriously hurtled back in time to encounter a number of the strange occultly events that have plagued his house.
by Nathan Southern
synopsis
