The next morning, he wakes up late to find that Ann is missing and the chain on the door is fastened. Michael searches the apartment and then calls everyone he can think of, but Ann has mysteriously disappeared. Michael is worried, but the police tell him he has to wait until the next day to report her missing.

Meanwhile, Zee heads off to school thinking only that her mom is attending an unexpected yoga class. However, at school, she starts to hear gossip that a male teacher who had the yoga class with her mother has also gone missing, and rumors are starting to spread that they may have run off together.

Since the police aren't much help, Michael begins to investigate. He tracks down the missing teacher's mother, who blames Ann for taking her son away. However, she does give him a note with some archaic writing on it.

As Michael digs deeper, he begins to believe that Ann was involved with witchcraft and had joined a coven. He also finds evidence that the coven's motives are not be innocent and that its members include some of the most prominent people in the city.

As people start to die, Michael and Zee are drawn into a dark and dangerous world they never knew existed. They start to wonder whether the woman they thought they knew so well is at the center of it all.

A supernatural split personality

Lifetime's miniseries The Gathering takes on the subject of modern-day witchcraft, but it's almost like two different films. Part 1 takes too long to get going and is dull and hard to get into. And Part 2 is rather exciting and well done. It's hard to talk about the mini as one piece, since the two parts feel so very different.

There are a couple of key issues with Part 1 that cause problems. First, the story takes forever to introduce its characters and its subject matter. It's a modern-day audience, and Michael's skepticism and disbelief do nothing but slow the story down. Also, Zee doesn't seem to miss a day of school despite going through a series of life-altering events.

However, the bigger problem is Peter Gallagher's one-note performance as Michael. His wife is missing and he is far too unemotional for the situation. While there might be something to be said for staying calm in front of the child, he's calm all the time. His wife is a witch, bad things are happening, and he never really knew her at all. You'd think at some point in the first two hours there'd be a moment of realization.

In fact, The Gathering and Gallagher don't come alive until Part 2. The actor reminds us of some of the better work he's done, and the story begins to take surprising twists and turns. Jenna Boyd as Zee is a good young actress, and she manages to hold her own with the fine cast. Susanna Thompson and Peter Fonda make fun villains as all the action and drama rise several notches above Part 1.

And that would be the end of it, except for the final moments of the story, when something inexplicable happens that just doesn't make sense. There's no explanation, and it's an annoying end to an otherwise very good Part 2. The final moments exist, no doubt, to set up The Gathering as a possible series. And while it might make an interesting series, how can you trust that it would come together in any kind of a satisfying way when the miniseries doesn't?