Old images of the personable Nicky O’Neill make it clear why he touched so many lives.

The oddly titled 41, a documentary feature about Nicholas O’Neill, the youngest victim of the Station nightclub fire in 2003, is really two movies of two very different calibers.

Much of the first half of the nearly two-hour film is taken up with introducing us to Nicky and seems to be a heartfelt memorial to him that would appeal mostly to family and friends.

There are lots of home video shots of Nicky, from babyhood to shortly before the night he died in the fire that erupted at the Station in West Warwick during a concert by the Great White. He was there because his band, Shryne, had been booked to open for Great White the next night. It was going to be Nicky’s big professional break.

The early home video footage includes shots of Nicky playing at home, being very precocious, exhibiting his love for musical theater. There are several clips from juvenile stage productions he took part in, as well as recently recorded interviews with his mother, his girlfriend, his brothers and his friends. Every one of them seems to have been bowled over by Nicky’s charm and talent. There’s no denying that in these old images, he comes across as very personable and with a lot of charisma. A natural performer, it is clear why he touched so many lives, although there are hints of a troubling dark cloud that hovered over him as a young teen.

It’s all sort of insular, and for a long time, 41, which was Nicky’s favorite number and which figures prominently in the film’s second half, seems very much a family affair. Indeed, Christian O’Neill, Nicky’s older half brother, co-directed the film with Christian de Rezendes, who hadn’t known the family previously. So at first, 41 seems about as interesting as looking at some stranger’s home movies, albeit with a tragic footnote that we know is waiting in the wings. To make it even more personal, near the start of his film, de Rezendes even recounts the details of what led him to make 41.

Nevertheless, halfway through, just after the fire that took 100 lives on the night of Feb. 20, 2003, 41 becomes something much more than a fond reminiscence made with cute home movies. It takes on an eerie quality as it explores odd coincidences that have been noticed following his death, ponders Nicky’s writings that seem to contain a premonition of his death, and draws in mediums in hopes of bridging the line between life and death.

There are strange occurrences, too: a wind-up carousel horse knickknack that begins playing on its own; a phone call from Nicky’s cell phone that comes shortly before his body is found in the rubble of the Station; a mysterious voice that turns up on a recording while a medium is interviewing his parents. Creepily, we also glimpse Nicky himself very briefly, standing very close to the stage at the Station, just as the deadly pyrotechnics begin flaring.

And there’s the reoccurrence of the number 41 that keeps appearing to Nicky’s friends and relatives, sometimes in the strangest places. The number is even glimpsed in one of the earliest video recordings of Nicky himself. Weird coincidences, or is there something more? As it reaches out to the Other Side and tries to make a connection between the living and the dead, 41 mesmerizes with its Touched By an Angel qualities. This is more than just a film for the family and friends of Nicky O’Neill.

Its world premiere screening will be Sunday afternoon at the Stadium Theater in Woonsocket, just a few days before Halloween. And that seems just perfect.