Stay (2025) by Jas Summers opens as a supernatural horror, but gradually unfolds into something far more intimate—a psychological and spiritual exploration of grief, guilt, and the painful path toward reconciliation. Beneath its ghost story trappings lies a deeply human tale of two people tethered to their sorrow, forced to confront the darkness they’ve carried for far too long. At its core, Stay isn’t about ghosts at all; it’s about the struggle to remain present when the past refuses to release its grip.
Spoilers Ahead
Stay (2025) Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:
In our initial introduction to Kiara and Miles, they remain estranged, yet not entirely disconnected. They used to be a couple whose love was joyful and bright. Now they feel like ghosts, both still haunted by a life they shared. Kiara is in the process of moving, packing boxes filled with the shambles of a marriage she cannot seem to shake loose. This is much more than heartbreak; this is grief that clings, suffocating and wears her down.
In the opening act, Kiara attempts to drown herself in the tub, only to be pulled out by something we cannot see. She awakens lost and confused, watching oddities unfold: the phonograph plays Miles’ song, boxes are displaced, doors mysteriously slam shut. For a woman who comes from a family of Vodou priestesses, there is nothing odd about the unexplainable; it makes sense to her. Miles arrives to collect his things, and immediately the tension is palpable. He treats her belief system, her Vodou practice, as fragile superstition and mocks her Vodou emblems that decorate her workstation.
He even derides the success of her book, dedicated to her discoveries: The Last Priestess of Vodun. The air is thick with hostility, but underneath it all, love is evident. Even in the separation between them, love isn’t gone; it is buried. But something else lives in the house with them. When the front door slams shut and refuses to open, when even the movers can’t see them through the glass, it becomes apparent that this is no ordinary fight. They’re trapped. And the entity inside the house isn’t letting either of them leave.
What Happens to Miles and Kiara Inside the House?
What starts as a claustrophobic ghost story soon becomes purgatory, a contained space wherein the couple is forced to deal with their pain. The arguments between Miles and Kiara are vicious, stripping away layers of denial and long-held anger. Kadji blames Kiara for everything wrong: for drinking, detachment, and obsession with the dead, while Kiara accuses Kadji of cowardice, of walking away when she needed him most. There are whispers of a mysterious “him” who came between them, though Kadji implies an affair. The truth, we eventually learn, is more haunting.
As they are confined to one another, the house starts responding to their feelings. Kadji’s anger incites violent shaking; Kiara’s sadness summons flickering lights and his whispering voices. When she catches the image of herself choking her in the mirror, a reflection of her own self-hate, the mirror reflection becomes a clear image that the house is a reflection of their grief. Resolved to confront the presence, Kiara goes to the only thing she trusts, her faith. She draws a circle around herself with salt, opens her mother’s Vodun spellbook, and calls out to the goddess of death and rebirth, Oya. The words before her eyes disappear.
Miles refuses to believe. His rationality shields him from the pain of acknowledging something beyond his control. But that disbelief becomes dangerous when the spirit violently drags him across the floor, proving that denial won’t save him here. Both are forced to confront their personal demons. Kiara faces the darkness of her suicidal despair, reliving the moment when the demon’s hands push her head beneath water. This time, she fights back, reclaiming her will to live. For Miles, the confrontation takes the form of his own rage.
The boxer within him, the man who used to fight for everything, has turned that strength inward, destroying the people he loves. In a harrowing vision, he’s forced to relive the night he walked out on Kiara. For the first time, he sees the aftermath: her collapse, her screams, her isolation. And in that moment, his anger gives way to regret.
What is the Spirit Trying to Teach Them?
Kiara’s second séance becomes the emotional core of “Stay.” Guided by ancestral visions and her late mother’s notes, she enters a trance where her lineage of priestesses appears. They tell her that the connection between her and her ancestors, the spiritual link, has been broken. To restore it, she must rely on her ‘guiding star.’ In the real world, that guiding star is right beside her, i.e., Miles. The man she’s loved and hated in equal measure. Their shared haunting has been a brutal therapy session orchestrated by forces beyond comprehension.
As Kiara and Miles finally begin to open up, they start piecing together the memory that destroyed them both, the death of their son, Jeremiah. Through the ritual’s visions, the truth unfolds. Jeremiah was their miracle, a child of light who embodied both their passions. On his birthday, Kiara was distracted, caught up in a phone call celebrating her book’s success, while Jeremiah played outside.
By the time she returned, he had fallen into the pool. When Miles arrived home, it was already too late. The dream sequence earlier in the film, with books burning in an oven and phones drowning in sinks, suddenly makes sense. It was Kiara’s subconscious rewriting the moment of trauma over and over. The fire, the water, the noise, all symbols of her guilt.
Why Did Jeremiah’s Spirit Lock His Parents Inside the House?
Once his memory appears, the haunting shifts to an intimate, tragic place. It shows its true form, not as a malicious ghost but instead as the spirit of Jeremiah. Jeremiah’s restless spirit has confined his parents to their house to help them confront the realization they have avoided for so long. Jeremiah does not want them to suffer; he wants them to heal. He has, in his own way, been nudging his parents towards some kind of resolution in order to discuss, remember, and forgive not just each other but themselves.
When the drawer opens to reveal the suicide note from Kiara, it is not the house sending Miles into a downward spiral; it is Jeremiah showing his father the reality of Kiara’s despair. Each paranormal incident that creates discomfort has a different meaning: the record player playing their wedding song, the door that cannot be opened, the salt circle that disappears.
All of it communicates, in ways that words could never express. In their final séance, and as the character Kiara begins to perform a ceremonial dance of her ancestors, Miles engages and replicates, literally and emotionally, the rhythm of their very first dance. This is the first time either of them has moved together again. Down below, their rhythm is the key that unlocks the spiritual door. When Oya’s symbol glows once more, the house fills with light. The entity manifests as Jeremiah’s spirit, smiling, gentle, radiant. The parents break down in tears, realizing their son never left them. He stayed.
Stay (2025) Movie Ending Explained:
What Does Jeremiah’s Spirit Represent?
The conclusion of “Stay” offers an expanded recontextualization of the entire haunting as love. Jeremiah’s ghost did not remain to scare, but to repair. He represents the linkage of life and death as well as the continuity of ancestors and descendants. Through him, Kiara reclaims her spirit connection to her generations, and Miles comes to peace with what he cannot fight with his fists – grief. The morning after the haunting has passed, the house is washed in sunlight.
The door opens at last. Kiara and Miles walk outside again, hand in hand. Kiara rests a hand on her belly – a subtle confirmation that she is pregnant again. The wheel of death and life, embodied by Oya, spins back again. Jeremiah’s message is distinctly clear: to heal is to stay put with each other, our pains, and the truth.
In the end, “Stay” is less a horror story and much more a supernatural love letter about grief, forgiveness, and the endurance of spiritual bonds. The house, the haunting, and, ultimately, death are not the prison, but rather an honest depiction of everything we have fastidiously placed into isolation. And when Miles and Kiara stopped running, Jeremiah let them go – not from him, but toward life again.
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