When a body is found hanging on top of the sign demarcating the Ontario – Quebec border, police officers from both Canadian provinces must join forces to solve the murder. David Bouchard is a rule-bending, francophone detective for the Sûreté du Québec, while Martin Ward is a by-the-book anglophone Ontario Provincial Police detective. The bilingual detectives must resolve their professional and cultural differences as well as their bigotry and prejudices. The body is identified as Benoit Brisset, a hockey executive. The clues lead the pair to Luc Therrien at a roadside bar. After a fight in the bar, they imprison him in the trunk of Bouchard's car. Bouchard has promised to watch his daughter Gabrielle's ballet recital, so he drives to the recital and parks the car in front with Therrien still locked in the trunk. When they emerge, they find the car being towed from the no-parking zone, and as they try to chase down the truck driver, the car explodes. With their prime witness dead, they decide to search Therrien's house where they find a large marijuana grow-op in the basement. They also discover another body, a former hockey team owner Grossbut. A laser tripwire is activated by Bouchard, a bomb explodes which sets the house on fire, destroying the house and causing the two cops to get high on the fumes of the burning marijuana. When they are disciplined by Bouchard's police chief Roger Leboeuf shortly afterwards, he angrily removes them from the case after they start laughing hysterically because they're still high. The next victim is discovered in Toronto, the League's first woman agent Martina Flabcheeks. They realize that the killer has a pattern of tattooing his victims, with each tattoo providing a clue to the next murder victim. Each murder is in some way connected to major league hockey. (The film uses thinly disguised parodies of National Hockey League teams, owners and players, however, rather than the real league.) The pair anticipate the next victim Pickleton, but he goes missing before they reach him. Ward and Bouchard appear on a hockey broadcast to warn people in the hockey community to be vigilant. The "Tattoo Killer" calls in to the show and threatens the two police officers, causing a brawl between them and the neurotic anchor Tom Berry when they attempt to hang up. Ward is attacked in his home by a masked assailant whom he discovers is Therrien. Meanwhile, Bouchard has sex with Ward's sister Iris. The "Tattoo Killer" kidnaps Gabrielle in exchange of the League commissioner Harry Buttman, leading to the final confrontation with the two policemen by indeed kidnapped Buttman. It is ultimately revealed that the murders are being committed by a bilingual portly hockey fan, as previously mentioned, under the direction and unequal partnership of a sadistic, psychopathic, sociopathic, fan of the notion of the game of hockey as a Canadian nationalistic symbol that he feels is being permanently corrupted by attempts to move ownership of Canadian teams to venture capitalist groups in the United States. He is therefore having Therrien commit the murders along with him (with the tattoos as a signature), as revenge against the hockey league for desecrating the game by moving Canadian teams such as the "Quebec Fleur de Lys" (a reference to the now-defunct Quebec Nordiques) to the United States. They try to reason with him that hockey is just a game and exchange Therrien who the detectives intercepted tailing them at a conference, for Gabrielle, but this only angers him. The Tattoo Killer executes Therrien and as the two policemen give him Buttman, Ward distracts the man while Bouchard unties Gabrielle. After a fight, the killer is blown up by one of his own explosives that Ward put in his pocket. During the credits, a news report is shown, revealing that Buttman shall make a rule that no hockey teams will be moved.

Walter Burns, a hard-boiled newspaper editor, learns that his ex-wife and former star reporter, Hildy Johnson, is about to marry insurance man Bruce Baldwin and settle down as a housewife in Albany. Walter, determined to sabotage these plans, asks a reluctant Hildy to cover one last story: the pending execution of Earl Williams, who has been convicted of murdering a black policeman. Walter maintains that Williams is innocent and that the city fathers are only going through with the execution so as to curry favor with black voters. Hildy accepts the assignment on the condition that Walter buy a life insurance policy from Bruce. While Hildy works on the story, Walter does everything he can to keep Bruce from taking her to Albany, including framing him for theft (forcing Hildy to bail him out of jail). Exasperated, Hildy quits, but when Williams escapes, her journalistic instincts get the better of her. Walter frames Bruce again, and he is immediately sent back to jail. Williams suddenly appears at the window of the press room where Hildy is working. She hides him in a rolltop desk. Meanwhile, a messenger from the governor arrives at the mayor's office with a reprieve for Williams. The mayor, who is determined to see Williams hanged, bribes the messenger to keep the reprieve under his hat until it is too late. Mrs. Baldwin, Hildy's future mother-in-law, enters the press room, having eluded a kidnapper sent by Walter. She reveals to the assembled crowd (which includes the mayor) that Hildy is keeping Williams in the desk. Williams is taken back to his cell and Walter and Hildy are arrested for abetting his escape. At this point, the messenger returns with the reprieve, telling the mayor that he has decided not to take the bribe after all. Walter uses this information to blackmail the mayor into letting them go. Walter tells Hildy that she is free to go to Albany with Bruce. Hildy is put out by this, realizing that she still loves Walter and is not ready to give up her career as a journalist. Bruce then calls to say he has been arrested again, this time for carrying counterfeit money (that Walter gave him). Hildy is relieved to learn that Walter never had any intention of letting her go quietly. Walter proposes to Hildy for the second time and promises to take her on the honeymoon they never had in Niagara Falls. He then learns that there is a strike in Albany, which is on the way to Niagara Falls. Hildy agrees to honeymoon in Albany, accepting that Walter will never change.

In Passaic, New Jersey, Elroy Fletcher owns the declining "Be Kind Rewind" VHS rental store. The building is condemned as a slum and the officials led by Mr. Baker give him 60 days to upgrade it to the required standards, or they will demolish it to make way for high-end development. Fletcher leaves on a trip with friends to memorialize jazz musician Fats Waller and visit rental store chains to research efficient and modernized ways of running one, leaving his only employee Mike to work alone. Before leaving, Fletcher cautions Mike to keep his conspiracy theorist friend Jerry away from the store. However, Mike misinterprets his warnings on the train window and is left confused. After attempting to sabotage an electrical substation, believing its energy to be melting his brain, Jerry receives a shock which leaves him magnetized. When entering the store the next day, he inadvertently erases all its VHS tapes. Mike discovers the disaster and is further pressed when Fletcher's acquaintance Miss Falewicz wants to rent Ghostbusters. To prevent her from reporting a problem to Fletcher, Mike comes up with an idea: as Miss Falewicz has never seen the movie, he proposes to recreate the film with cheap special effects, using himself and Jerry as the actors and hoping to fool her. They complete the movie just in time when a customer named Jack arrives asking for Rush Hour 2. Mike and Jerry repeat their filming, enlisting the help of a local girl named Alma for some of the parts. She later makes Jerry a remedy that demagnetizes him at the cost of his vomiting and emitting magnetic urine. Word of mouth spreads through Miss Falewicz's nephew Craig and his gang of the inadvertently hilarious results of Mike and Jerry's filming of Ghostbusters, and soon the store is seeing more requests for such movies. Mike, Jerry, and Alma pretend the films came from Sweden to justify long wait times and higher costs for the rental ($20 instead of $1). To meet demand, they enlist the locals to help out in making the movies, using them as actors in their films. When Fletcher returns intent on converting the store to a DVD rental outlet, he recognizes that they are making more money from the "sweded" films than from normal rentals after learning about what happened and joins in with the process. However, the success is put to a halt when government attorney Ms. Lawson arrives with two federal agents. Ms. Lawson insists the "sweded" films are copyright violations. They seize the store's tapes which they destroy with help from a steamroller operator much to the dismay of the locals and seize the assets to pay off the respective studios. As a result, Fletcher gives up hope and reveals to Mike that he made up the connection of Fats Waller to the building. Fletcher is given a week to evacuate it before its demolition. With the help of the locals, Jerry and Alma convince Fletcher and Mike to give one last hurrah and put together a documentary dedicated to the alternate history of Fats Waller. They create Fats Waller Was Born Here. On the day the building is scheduled for demolition, Fletcher invites all the locals to watch the final film and quietly reveals to Miss Falewicz that he gave Mr. Baker permission to go ahead with the demolition plans after the film ends. When Jerry accidentally breaks the store's TV screen trying to raise it for all to see, a nearby DVD store owner loans them his video projector, allowing them to show the movie on a cloth placed in the store's window. Fletcher, Mike, and Jerry depart the store to find a bigger crowd, including the wrecking crew, who have gathered in the street to watch the film through the window and are cheered on.

Con artist Marcus Pendleton has just been released from prison for embezzlement. He has emerged into a world increasingly reliant on computers. He convinces computer programmer Caesar Smith to follow his lifelong dream of hunting moths in the Amazon rainforest. Assuming Caesar's identity (how he does this is not explained in the film), he gains employment at the London offices of an American conglomerate called Tacanco. While Marcus fools executive vice president Carlton Klemper, another Tacanco executive, vice president Willard Gnatpole, is suspicious. As Caesar Smith, Marcus uses the company's computer systems to send claim cheques to himself under various aliases and addresses all over Europe. For his Paris company, the cheques go to 'Claude Debussy' and his cheques to Italy go to 'Gioachino Rossini', both famous (but conveniently dead) composers. He meets and marries Patty, an inept secretary and frustrated flautist. As Caesar, he now has the problem of hiding his hot money. Beating discovery of his fraud by Gnatpole, he and Patty flee to Brazil when Klemper and Gnatpole fly to Rio after Patty invited them. In a twist, it seems that a now-heavily pregnant Patty found the loose change from his foreign visits money and invested it in companies Marcus mumbled about in his sleep, thus making a profit for Tacanco. Patty offers to sell the stock back at a reduced price, repaying the money stolen by her husband. Wanting to have the baby back in England, she has invited Klemper and Gnatpole to 'visit'. She persuades Klemper to rehire Marcus as Taranco's treasurer: the reformed embezzler could easily spot fraud, and would not steal from his own company. Though unhappy about his new legal status, Marcus agrees. The film ends with Marcus conducting an orchestra (one of his dreams) as Gnatpole and Klemper sit in the audience. Patty, still expecting, is the solo flautist. As she finishes her solo, she realizes the baby is on the way, to which a concerned Marcus whispers, "What, now?"

Faced with a demotion due to a drinking problem, Osborne Cox angrily quits his job as a CIA analyst and decides to write a memoir. When he tells his wife Katie, she secretly files for divorce and continues an on-going affair with Harry Pfarrer, a married U.S. Marshal with paranoid tendencies. At the instruction of her lawyer, Katie delivers a digital copy of her husband's financial records and other personal files, unwittingly including a rough draft of Osborne's memoir. The lawyer's assistant copies the files onto a CD-R, which she accidentally leaves on the floor of the locker room at Hardbodies, a local gym. The disc falls into the hands of personal trainer Chad Feldheimer and his co-worker Linda Litzke, who mistakenly believe it contains sensitive government information. Chad and Linda devise a plan to return the disc to Osborne for a reward, as Linda is eager to raise money for her cosmetic surgeries. However, their inept efforts to blackmail Osborne only enrage him. Upon their failure to secure money from Osborne, Chad and Linda try to sell the disc to the Russian embassy, meeting with a Russian government official. Information about the meeting later makes it back to the CIA via a mole inside the Russian embassy. Osborne's increasingly erratic behavior prompts Katie to change the locks on their house and to invite Harry to move in. Meanwhile, Harry is a serial philanderer who incidentally becomes romantically involved with Linda after meeting her on a dating site. Having falsely promised the Russians more files, Linda persuades Chad to sneak into the Cox house to steal files from Osborne's computer. Chad is discovered by Harry, who reflexively kills Chad with his firearm. Harry searches the body for clues, but finds an empty wallet and missing suit tags, a precaution Chad took on Linda's advice. Harry surmises from his lack of identifying features that Chad is a government agent. At CIA headquarters, Osborne's former supervisor Palmer DeBakey Smith and his superior learn that information from Osborne has been given to the Russian embassy. They are perplexed because the information is of no particular importance and the perpetrators' motive is unknown. To avoid involvement from the FBI because of interservice rivalry, the superior orders that Chad's death be covered up. Harry realizes that he is being tailed, and catches and confronts the tail, who admits to being an employee of a divorce lawyer hired by his wife. Depressed, Harry meets with Linda, who is distressed over Chad's disappearance. Harry agrees to help find him, unaware that Chad is the man he killed. Linda returns to the embassy, believing that the Russians have abducted Chad, but they deny this. After they inform her the contents of the CD she has given them are worthless, she convinces the manager of Hardbodies, Ted (who has unrequited feelings for Linda), to help her by sneaking into the Cox household to gather more files. Harry and Linda meet in a park, where Linda reveals the address where Chad went before he disappeared. Harry realizes that Chad is the man he shot and flees, convinced Linda is a spy. When Osborne breaks into Katie's house with a hatchet to retrieve his personal belongings and her valuables, he finds Ted in the basement; Osborne shoots him, chases him into the street, and kills him with the hatchet. At CIA headquarters, Smith relates the events to his superior. A surveilling CIA officer who saw Osborne's highly conspicuous attack intervened and shot him, leaving him comatose with a low chance of survival. Harry has been detained while boarding a flight to Venezuela, a country with no extradition treaty with the U.S.; the superior orders that Harry be released and allowed to continue to Venezuela, rather than deal with the consequences of bringing him into custody. Linda has been captured, but agrees to keep quiet if they will pay for her surgeries. The superior, bewildered by the litany of events, approves the payment and closes the file.

A recently promoted police inspector, nicknamed "Il Dottore" ("the Doctor", an Italian honorific) kills his mistress, and then covers up his involvement in the crime. He insinuates himself into the investigation, planting clues to steer his subordinate officers toward a series of other suspects, including the woman's gay husband and a student leftist radical. He then exonerates the other suspects and leads the investigators toward himself to prove that he is "above suspicion" and can get away with anything, even while being investigated. His personal neurosis caused by his extreme position of power, and his firm beliefs in the role of authority, eventually drive him to try to accuse himself with every possible evidence. The only witness of his presence at the victim's apartment, the anarchist Antonio Pace, refuses to accuse him to be able to prove the inherent criminal nature of power ("A criminal leading the repression, it is perfect!"). The Doctor eventually desperately confesses to the crime in front of his superiors, in an effort to not subvert the essence of authority, but they all refuse to believe him, forcing him to recant his confession, with the approval of the police commissioner. The interrogation at his home is revealed to be a dream sequence, and when he wakes up the commissioner and other colleagues actually arrive at his place; however, the outcome of their confrontation is not revealed, and the film ends with a quote by Franz Kafka about the paradoxical nature of power.

James is a video archivist working for a local television station, and still grieving the mysterious disappearance of his wife named Hannah three years earlier, James buries himself in work, spending his nights digitizing old broadcast tapes. One evening, while reviewing footage, he discovers a strange and disturbing broadcast signal intrusion, a pirate video interrupting regular programming. The clip shows a person wearing a distorted white rubber mask and speaking in a garbled, unintelligible voice. The strange visuals creep James out, stirring something deep and uncomfortable inside him. Curious and increasingly obsessed, James begins researching the origin of the intrusion. He discovers that similar broadcast signal intrusions occurred in late 1987 and the early 1990s, all unsolved. Even more disturbing, these incidents seem to coincide with the disappearances of several women, one of whom bears a strong resemblance to Hannah. This connection deepens James's fixation, and what begins as a curiosity quickly turns into a personal mission. His investigation leads him to a range of eccentric and secretive figures, and he contacts a former FCC investigator named Dr. Stuart Lithgow. As James pieces together clues, he starts to believe that the videos were created by someone attempting to send a message or expose a sinister truth possibly about a group known as the "Nite Pirates" who were rumored to be behind some of the original intrusions. Stuart dismisses James's investigation, saying the case had already been abandoned and was too difficult to solve. In the night, he meets Alice, a mysterious young woman with her own troubled past, who becomes a temporary companion in his search for answers. Together, they follow a trail of clues hidden within the footage, including Morse code, odd audio signals, and phone numbers embedded in the video. As James digs deeper, his grip on reality begins to fray. He becomes paranoid, convinced he's being followed, and begins seeing hallucinations of masked figures from the tapes. Alice eventually disappears without a trace, leaving James further isolated. His quest becomes more dangerous as he tracks down the location believed to be the source of the third tape, a previously unknown intrusion video of an abandoned farmhouse. Inside the farmhouse, James finds a man named Michael Gardiner, who appears to be mentally unstable and possibly connected to the broadcast intrusions. James is now fully consumed by his obsession and had planned to rebuild the hijack setting that Michael used during his crime. Restraining him, Michael forces him to reenact the original broadcast hijacked setting, dressing him in the same mask that he used on the victims and demanding a confession. Whether Michael is truly guilty remains ambiguous, but James kills him, convinced that he has found the person responsible for both the videos and perhaps even his wife's disappearance. On the drive back to the city, James begins to hallucinate more intensely. He sees and hears broadcast interference in his car's radio, but suddenly, he hits something on the road - a young woman standing in the dark - and he investigates, her face appearing artificial, almost robotic, with black liquid oozing from her mouth.

In 1935, American archeologist Indiana Jones survives a murder attempt in China from Shanghai Triad crime boss Lao Che, who hired him to retrieve the remains of Nurhaci. Jones flees from the city accompanied by his young orphan sidekick Short Round and nightclub singer Willie Scott, unaware that the plane they are traveling on is owned by Lao Che. The plane's pilots dump the fuel and parachute away, but Jones, Willie and Short Round escape using an inflatable raft before the plane crashes. The trio ride down the slopes of the Himalayas and fall into a river before arriving at the Indian village of Mayapore. There, the villagers plead for Jones' aid in retrieving a sacred lingam stone stolen along with the village's children by evil forces from the nearby Pankot Palace. Jones agrees to do so, hypothesizing that the stone is one of the five Sankara stones given by the Hindu gods to help humanity fight evil. Traveling to the palace, the trio are warmly welcomed and allowed to stay for the night as guests, attending a banquet hosted by the palace's young maharaja Zalim Singh. During the night, Jones is attacked by an assassin, but manages to kill him. He discovers a series of tunnels underneath the palace and explores them with Willie and Short Round. Finding a temple and a complex of mine tunnels, they observe Thuggee cultists conducting a human sacrifice. The cult, which possesses three Sankara stones, is revealed to have brainwashed Singh and abducted the children of Mayapore, using them as slave labor to find the remaining stones. During Jones' attempt to retrieve the stones, the trio is captured. Thuggee high priest Mola Ram forces Jones to drink a potion that places him into a trance-like state, under which he prepares Willie for sacrifice. Short Round is briefly enslaved in the tunnels, but he escapes and interrupts Willie's sacrifice by freeing Jones from his trance, who in turn rescues Willie. The trio defeat multiple cultists, collect the Sankara stones and free Singh and the children, escaping an attempt by Mola Ram to drown them. When he and his men ambush the trio on a rope bridge, Jones severs it with a sword, causing several cultists to fall into the crocodile-infested river far below. As Jones, Willie, Short Round, and Mola Ram struggle to climb up the broken bridge, Jones invokes the name of Shiva, triggering the stones to burn through his satchel. Two stones fall into the river; Mola Ram catches the third, but it burns his hand and he falls and is devoured by the crocodiles. Indy catches the stone with no ill effects and climbs up as a regiment of British Indian Army soldiers arrives, alerted by Singh, to defeat the remaining cultists. Jones, Willie, and Short Round return to Mayapore to hand over the stone, and Jones and Willie embrace as the villagers celebrate its and their children's return.

In 2049 Los Angeles, bioengineered humans known as replicants are still used for slave labor. K (short for serial number, KD6-3.7), a Nexus-9 replicant, works for the Los Angeles Police Department as a "blade runner," an officer who hunts and "retires" (kills) rogue replicant models. After "retiring" replicant Sapper Morton, K finds a box buried under a tree at Morton's farm. It contained the remains of a female replicant who died during a caesarean section. This demonstrates that replicants could reproduce biologically, previously thought impossible. K's superior, Lt. Joshi, fears this knowledge will lead to war between humans and replicants, so she orders K to retire the replicant child and destroy all related evidence. K visits the Wallace Corporation, successor to the defunct Tyrell Corporation in the manufacture of replicants. DNA archives identify the deceased female as an experimental Nexus-7 replicant. K learns of her romantic ties with former blade runner Rick Deckard. CEO Niander Wallace wants the secret to replicant reproduction to expand interstellar colonization. He sends his replicant enforcer, Luv, to monitor K. An unidentified figure engages several prostitutes in the city, including one named Mariette, to keep eyes on K. At Morton's farm, K finds the date 6.10.21 carved into the tree trunk and recognizes it from a childhood memory of a wooden toy horse. Because replicant memories are artificial, K's holographic AI girlfriend Joi suggests that this is evidence that K was born, not created. K discovers in LAPD records that two children born on that date have identical DNA, but are inexplicably registered as being opposite genders, and that the girl died from a genetic disorder. K's search for the boy leads him to an orphanage, but the records from the year in question are missing. K recognizes the orphanage from his memories and finds the toy horse in the furnace where he remembers hiding it. He then visits replicant-memory-maker Dr. Ana Stelline, who confirms that his memory of the orphanage is a real memory that someone lived, leading K to conclude he is the deceased replicant woman's son. K then fails a baseline test, marking him as rogue. When he implies to Joshi that he killed the replicant child, she gives him 48 hours to pass the test, or he will be retired himself. Joi hires prostitute replicant Mariette to sync with to be able to have sex with K. The following morning, Mariette places a tracker in K's jacket prior to leaving. K then takes the wooden toy horse to be analyzed for its origin, which leads him to the ruins of a now radioactive Las Vegas. There he finds Deckard, who informs him that the deceased replicant woman was named Rachael, and that he is the father of Rachael's child. Deckard had helped the Replicant Freedom Movement scramble the birth records to protect the child's identity. Deckard then left the child with the Movement to ensure the hunted child would not be found through him. Luv, who has killed Joshi, tracks K to Las Vegas. She kidnaps Deckard, destroys Joi, and leaves an injured K behind. Using Mariette's tracker, the Movement rescues K. Their leader, Freysa, reveals that Rachael's child was actually a girl. Fearing that Deckard may give up the freedom movement to Wallace and endanger the child, Freysa urges K to kill him. K deduces that the memory of the toy horse actually belongs to Dr. Stelline, who is Rachael's daughter. Luv takes Deckard to meet Wallace, who offers Deckard a duplicate Rachael in exchange for information about the child's whereabouts. Deckard refuses the offer, so Wallace has Luv kill the duplicate. As Luv transports Deckard to be tortured off-world, K intercedes. He fights and drowns Luv but is mortally wounded in the process. K tells Deckard that he will be presumed dead, and is now free to go to his daughter, and then takes him to Dr. Stelline's facility. Standing outside the facility, he hands Deckard the toy horse. Deckard enters the building and meets Dr. Stelline, while K dies on the front steps.

Upon discovering that his wife Ellen is having an affair, aerospace engineer and depressed insomniac Ed Okin drives to LAX on his friend Herb's suggestion. There, he is surprised by a beautiful jewel smuggler, Diana, who jumps into his car and begs him to drive her away from four Iranian SAVAK agents who are chasing her. She persuades him to drive her to various locations and he becomes embroiled in her predicament. After becoming increasingly exasperated with her demands, he discovers that Diana has smuggled priceless emeralds from the Shah of Iran 's treasury into the country and is being pursued by a variety of international assailants. Upon learning that it is in truth a struggle for a real estate deal, the couple strike a deal with Shaheen Parvici to secure their own safety. Ed and Diana's caper gets increasingly out of hand, until Diana is eventually taken hostage by the thugs at the airport; here, Ed shares his ennui with the man holding a gun to Diana's head. The man shoots himself, instead. Ed and Diana are taken to a motel room by federal agents, one of whom gives them a briefcase with US$ 750,000 (equivalent to $ 2.2 million in 2025) in cash from Jack Caper, one of Diana's wealthy friends. Diana showers and Ed finally sleeps. He wakes up after a full night's rest to an empty hotel room with most of the money gone. However, when he leaves the room, Diana is waiting for him, with the money, a smile and a request for a ride to the airport.

The plot consists of four acts, which are presented in anachronic order. The chronological order is Acts 3 (Genesis), 2 (Exodus), 1 (Revelation), and 4 (Retribution). So, after the first act, Revelation, the following acts are what happened before and the fourth act is chronologically the last. 1. Revelation Elizabeth "Liz" Brundy lives in the Old West with her husband Eli and their two children: Matthew, Eli's son from a previous marriage, and daughter Samantha, called Sam. Liz works as a midwife who can hear but is mute, and so communicates through sign language. One day, a new Preacher, known as "The Reverend", hosts a session at the local church, and the moment that Liz hears his voice, she seems to recognize him and is terrified by his appearance. Later that day, Liz is forced to choose between delivering a baby safely or saving its mother; she chooses to euthanise the baby and save the mother, without telling her until after the procedure is finished. Afterwards, Nathan, the husband of the formerly-pregnant woman, blames Liz. That night, Nathan drunkenly shows up at Eli and Liz's house, violent and threatening; Nathan claims Liz is responsible for his son's death. In the middle of the fight, the Reverend shows up and tells him to leave. He then goes into Eli's house and has a mysterious talk with Liz, saying she is guilty of the murder of Nathan's son and must be "punished". As Eli overhears some of the conversation, the Reverend leaves the house. Eli's sheep are found dead the next morning, and he seeks out Nathan, who has since disappeared. Liz later sneaks off at night to murder the Reverend, but finds her daughter's doll in the Reverend's bed instead. Meanwhile, the Reverend disembowels Eli, and leaves him to die. As he succumbs to his wounds, Eli tells Matthew to take the family up into the mountains to his father, before the boy mercy kills him. Liz and the children flee the farm. 2. Exodus A young girl named Joanna, walking through the desert, is picked up and nursed by a traveling Chinese family. In the mining town of Bismuth, Joanna is sold to a brothel owned by Frank. She is protected by Sally, a prostitute, until Sally is hanged for shooting a violent customer; another prostitute, Elizabeth, then protects Joanna in the aftermath of Sally's hanging. However, when Elizabeth bites the tongue of an abusive customer, her tongue is cut off as punishment. Joanna teaches Elizabeth sign language from a book the doctor gave her. Elizabeth plans to sneak out of Bismuth to start a new life, and arranges through a marriage broker to marry Eli. The Reverend comes to the brothel, recognizes Joanna, and proceeds to violently attack her. Elizabeth tries to save Joanna but is murdered by the Reverend with Joanna slashing his throat in retaliation. She runs away, cutting off her own tongue and taking Elizabeth's place with Eli. 3. Genesis In the desert, two badly wounded men, Samuel and Wolf, are the last survivors in a dispute over gold that has left several other men dead. They depart on a single horse. Joanna lives with her mother, Anna, and father, revealed to be the Reverend himself. He is strictly religious and is often cruel and abusive towards his family. Samuel and Wolf collapse at the farm and Joanna secretly cares for them. Anna confronts the Reverend when she realizes he lusts after their daughter, so he beats and humiliates her by placing a scold's bridle on her head. In response, Anna commits suicide in full view of the church congregation. The next day the Reverend takes Joanna to church and starts to perform a wedding ceremony between himself and his daughter. Samuel tries to rescue her, but the Reverend murders him. Her father whips Joanna and rapes her. In the morning she runs off. 4. Retribution Matthew is shot by the Reverend as he follows Liz to her father-in-law's place in the mountains. He murders her father-in-law and tells Liz he will beat and rape her daughter, but Liz murders him instead. Sometime later, after Liz has turned Eli's place into a sawmill, Nathan arrives to arrest her. The Reverend had sent him to Bismuth where he became a deputy and then sheriff. Having found a wanted poster of Elizabeth Brundy (the woman without a tongue who killed Frank before she saved Liz/Joanna), Nathan has come to arrest her (Liz). As Nathan is escorting her onto a ferry, with a last look at her daughter playing on the shore, Liz throws herself in the lake and drowns. Her daughter Sam, now a grown woman with a child of her own, remembers her well.

In the 1930s, Larry Abbot and Vickie Pearle are performers on a hit radio show, Manhattan Mystery Theater, who are about to be married. Over the previous few weeks, Larry has been plagued by stammering and forgetting his lines, as well as a constant sense of fear, which has affected the show's ratings. In frustration, the show's sponsor and producers contact Larry's uncle, Dr. Paul Abbot, a noted psychologist. Paul believes that Larry's imminent wedding has disturbed something in his psyche that is frightening him, and decides to treat him by giving him a stronger fright, similarly to scaring away someone's hiccups. Larry and Vickie travel to the castle-like mansion in which Larry grew up, now owned by his great-aunt Kate, to stay the weekend with Larry's family, leading up to their wedding. The other guests are Larry's uncles, Paul and Francis Sr., who is also Kate's lawyer; Larry's cousins Charles, Nora, and Susan; Larry's old girlfriend Sylvia, who is now dating Charles; and Susan's magician husband, Montego the Magnificent. Also present are the butler, Pfister, and his wife Rachel, the maid. Larry's final cousin, Francis Jr., was expected for the weekend but has disappeared. That night, a hit man disguised as a werewolf is killed by the person who hired him to kill Larry. The hit man instead killed Francis Jr., having mistaken him for Kate. The killer attempts to stab Larry but is thwarted when Larry discovers Francis Jr.'s body in his bed. The killer quickly removes the body before Larry can return with Pfister, making Larry begin to doubt his sanity, especially when he then sees a deformed man walking down his wall and a ghostly apparition of Vickie. Larry and Pfister find Francis Jr.'s body in the cellar. The killer, now donning the werewolf disguise, attacks Larry, reminding Pfister of Kate's earlier claim that one of her family members is a werewolf. Larry escapes, and Pfister discovers the hit man's body beneath Francis Jr.'s. The two try to bury the bodies, fearing Larry will be framed for the murders. The murderer attacks them but is seen by Kate, who leads the family to find the dead bodies. They recover Pfister, but the murderer has already buried Larry alive in a glass coffin. While trapped, Larry has a flashback and realizes that his recent fears stem from a repressed memory of his mother being killed by a thunderstorm during her wedding. Meanwhile, Vickie realizes Charles is the murderer when he pretends to talk into a disconnected phone. Charles attacks her, but she flees and is joined by Larry, who has been freed by Kate and her dog. Charles and Larry struggle, but Kate arrives and shoots Charles to save Larry and Vickie. Larry and Vickie are seen at the altar to be married, the scene cuts to them in the radio station, where the events are revealed to have been one of their radio plays. They go off the air and jubilantly leave the station to be married.