There was an accident involving her husband, one that involved brain damage that has left him speechless and borderline catatonic. When we see it recreated in a flashback, we understand her loyalty, why she’s sticking with him, monitoring his symptoms, trying to trigger his memory to shock him back into speaking.

It’s not just taking those wedding vows seriously or scientific curiosity. She feels somewhat to blame.

He came from money, so that’s why they’ve come to the estate house in a small town where he grew up as the scion of the rich DuBose family.

But there’s a portrait in the attic of the great house, one so realistic it takes Sofia aback. It’s a perfect likeness of husband Alex (Ryan Kwanten). What really has Sofia (Natalia Cordova-Buckley) rattled by it is that it was a self-portrait by an infamous forebear of Alex’s, painted back in the 1930s.

And pulling the sheet covering it off the lifesize painting seems to set events in motion, as “things” start “happening” around the house — vases falling, furtive figures glimpsed in the shadows, odder-than-usual behavior from Alex.

“The Portrait” is a quiet and subtle debut feature from British director Simon Ross and British born screenwriter David Griffiths. It’s so understated and cryptic as to not quite come off,  a faintly chilling Gothic mystery with a modicum of suspense but a dearth of jolts and thrills.

A violent 1937 prologue sets up this place, this family and the subject of this portrait with a crime.

But that’s not information that Sofia has when she shows up, greeted by the caretaker (Mark-Paul Gosselaar), moving her routine with Alex — shaving, cleaning, talking to and questioning him, looking for that “one memory that could trigger” something in him — to surroundings familiar to him.

The creepy painting and things that start happening — nightmares, noises, etc,  — after she sees it don’t fit any science that Sofia understands. Hearing about the subject of that portrait, his sadism and abuse of the “wound birds” (women) he is drawn to, is more unsettling than explanatory.

Maybe the faintly sinister relative (Virginia Madsen, in fine form) who sneaks in on them has a clue.

The DuBoses, she riddles, “always come back. Even when you they don’t want us to.”

It’s all handsomely-mounted, even if the setting is rendered generic North American (female sheriff, US or Canadian style police uniforms, etc). There’s one pretty good twist involving a peripheral character, but little in the way of laying out just what’s going on here.

Cordova-Buckley (TV’s “Agents of “S.H.I.E.L.D.” and “The Mosquito Coast”) underplays Sofia’s response to the extraordinary things she thinks are happening and the rising threat level the character faces, undercutting the peril and urgency this short, slow simmer of a thriller might have produced.

“The Portrait” is a puzzle picture loses itself in that puzzle and portrait, and never quite delivers the punch that the easily-anticipated payoff should produce.

Rating:  R for violence, some sexual content, language and brief drug use.

Cast: Natalia Cordova-Buckley, Ryan Kwanten, Mark-Paul Gosselaar and Virginia Madsen.

Credits: Directed by Simon Ross, scripted by David Griffiths. A Saban release.

Running time: 1:26