The film is based on the true story of famed social psychologist Stanley Milgram, who in 1961 conducted a series of radical behavior experiments at Yale University that tested the willingness of ordinary humans to obey an authority figure while administering electric shocks to strangers. In the first half of the film, it is shown how the experiments are conducted, with nearly every test subject succumbing to the pressure of the circumstances and administering shocks to a stranger, despite the stranger begging him to stop. Between the experiments, it is shown how Milgram meets Alexandra (or Sasha), who will become his wife and mother of two children. The second half of the film shows how Milgram struggles with the public outcry about the ethics of the experiments and how his career advances as he becomes a professor in New York City and continues to study social interactions and social pressure in more benign experimental settings, including the small-world experiment, the lost-letter experiment, the street-corner (or gawking) experiment, the familiar stranger experiment, and various experiments that he makes his students carry out. Archive footage occurs frequently, either as recordings that Milgram watches or as a backdrop for entire scenes. Milgram's work continues until he dies from a heart attack at the age of 51. In the final scene, the street-corner experiment is repeated in the present day, with a cameo of the real-life Sasha Milgram. In a mid-credits scene, more archival footage is shown.

Howl explores the life and works of 20th-century American poet, Allen Ginsberg. Constructed in a nonlinear fashion, the film juxtaposes historical events with a variety of cinematic techniques. It reconstructs the early life of Ginsberg during the 1940s and 1950s. It also re-enacts Ginsberg's debut performance of " Howl " at the Six Gallery Reading on October 7, 1955 in black-and-white. The reading was the first important public manifestation of the Beat Generation and helped to herald the West Coast literary revolution that became known as the San Francisco Renaissance. In addition, parts of the poem are interpreted through animated sequences. Finally, these events are juxtaposed with color images of the 1957 obscenity trial of San Francisco poet and City Lights Bookstore co-founder, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who was the first person to publish "Howl" in Howl and Other Poems.

In the distant future, civilization has reached its ultimate Net-based form. An infection in the past caused the automated systems to spiral out of control, resulting in a multi-leveled city structure that grows indefinitely in all directions. Now humanity has lost access to the city's controls and is hunted down to be purged as "illegal" by the defense system known as the Safeguard. In a village, a tribe known as the Electro-Fishers is facing eventual extinction, trapped between the threat of the Safeguard and dwindling food supplies. A girl named Zuru goes on a journey to find food with a group of friends, only to inadvertently trigger a Watchtower which spawns robotic exterminators. Most of her companions are killed, but Zuru and her close friend Tae are saved by a mysterious wanderer, Killy. Killy is brought to the village, where he meets Pop, their leader, who is interested in Killy after learning that he comes from 6000 levels below. Killy reveals that he is on a quest to find someone with the Net Terminal Gene, which would allow accessing the Netsphere and regaining control of the city. Killy solves the village's food problem by passing them a large number of rations. He leaves for an area below the village named the Rotting Shrine, and followed by Zuru and Tae, he finds the spoilt machine-corpse of Cibo, a former scientist from before the disaster. Cibo reveals that she built a shield generator that protects the village from the Safeguard and reveals that it is possible to produce more food rations at a nearby automated factory. Heeding her words, a group of Electro-Fishers including Tae and Zuru travel to the automated factory in search of more rations. Arriving there, Cibo logs into the system and produces a large number of rations, which the Electro-Fishers quickly begin gathering. However, right after she produces a machine for Killy, the system rejects her log-in and starts to mass-produce Exterminators to eliminate the Electro-Fishers. Cibo builds a new body for herself and they all escape through a railway car. During the ride, Killy is knocked unconscious fending off exterminators. Upon arrival, the Electro-Fishers celebrate the new supplies while also mourning the losses during the trip. Cibo secretly wakes Killy up with only Zuru as a witness and leads him down towards the shield generator with the machine. While heading down, Tae takes her gun to the observatory platform and shoots the shield generator, whereupon it is revealed that the real Tae was killed and impersonated by a Safeguard agent back at the factory. Calling herself Sanakan, she proceeds to kill most of the villagers, deeming them illegal residents while destroying the village in the process. Killy notices and runs back up to the village. Cibo travels further down, sets the machine and connects herself to it. The village elders frantically lead the rest to the top of the village, resisting Sanakan using their remaining weapons. Killy enters combat with Sanakan, who after knocking him down notes that he is a body stolen from the Safeguard. Zuru throws the gun to Killy and he manages to shoot Sanakan, but not before she destroys Cibo's body. In the Netsphere, Cibo pleads with the Authority controlling the Safeguard to let the villagers go. She is forbidden to do so, but is instead allowed access to the City's map, revealing an abandoned level safe from Safeguard control where the villagers can migrate to. Cibo, now functioning through her only remaining arm, leads the remaining villagers to an elevator, but a Watchtower spots them and begins spawning exterminators. Killy throws the device which has been keeping him safe from the Safeguard to Zuru, upon which he says that he still wants to find the Net Terminal Gene, which enables human control of the city and all machines, including the Safeguard. Killy seemingly sacrifices himself so that the villagers can escape. Later it is revealed that the Electro-Fishers successfully reached the abandoned level and established a new village there. Zuru's granddaughter reminisces of the times when she used to tell her about Killy, hopeful that Killy is still on his quest, which the final shot of the film confirms.

A young boy named Solomon narrates the events of the tornado that devastated the city of Xenia, Ohio. A mute adolescent boy, known as Bunny Boy, wears only pink bunny ears, shorts, and tennis shoes on an overpass in the rain. A boy carries a cat by the scruff of its neck, and then drowns it in a barrel of water. The film then cuts to a different scene with Tummler — a friend of Solomon — in a wrecked car with a girl. They fondle each other, and Tummler realizes there is a lump in one of the girl's breasts. Tummler and Solomon then ride down a hill on bikes. In narration, Solomon describes Tummler as a boy with "a marvelous persona", whom some people call "downright evil". Later, Tummler aims an air rifle at a cat. Solomon stops him from killing the cat, protesting that it is a housecat. They leave and the camera follows the cat to its owners' house. The cat is owned by three sisters: teenagers, Dot and Helen, and pre- pubescent Darby. The film cuts back to Tummler and Solomon hunting feral cats, which they deliver to a local grocer who intends to butcher and sell them to a local Chinese restaurant. The grocer tells them that they have a rival in the cat-killing business. Tummler and Solomon buy glue from the grocer, which they use to get high via huffing. The film then cuts to a scene in which two foul-mouthed young boys dressed as cowboys destroy things in a junkyard. Bunny Boy arrives and the other boys pretend to shoot him dead with cap guns. Bunny Boy plays dead and the boys curse at his corpse, rifle through his pockets, then remove and throw one of his shoes. They grow bored with this and leave Bunny Boy sprawled on the ground. Tummler and Solomon track down a local boy who is poaching "their" cats. The poacher, named Jarrod Wiggley, is poisoning the cats, rather than shooting them. When Tummler and Solomon break into Jarrod's house with masks and weapons with intent to hurt him, they find photos of the young teen cross-dressing and his elderly grandmother, who is catatonic and attached to life support machinery. Jarrod is forced to care for her, which he had earlier opined was "disgusting". Seeing that Jarrod is not home, Tummler and Solomon decide to leave. Tummler then discovers the grandmother lying in her bed, states that it is "no way to live", and turns off the life support machine. A number of other scenes are interspersed throughout the film, including: an intoxicated man (played by Korine) flirting with a male dwarf; a man pimping his disabled sister to Solomon and Tummler; the sisters encountering an elderly child molester; a pair of twin boys selling candy door-to-door; a brief conversation with a tennis player who is treating his ADHD; a long scene of Solomon eating dinner while taking a bath in dirty water; a drunken party with arm- and chair-wrestling; and two skinhead brothers boxing each other in their kitchen. There are also a number of even smaller scenes depicting Satanic rituals, footage seemingly from home movies, and conversations containing racial bigotry. The penultimate scene in the movie is set to the song " Crying " by Roy Orbison, which had been previously mentioned by Tummler as the song his older sibling, who was transgender, would sing (the sibling eventually went to the "Big City" and abandoned him). It begins with Bunny Boy kissing the teenage sisters in a swimming pool, then cuts to Solomon and Tummler shooting the sisters' cat repeatedly with their air rifles in the rain. After showing some home video footage of tornadoes, it cuts to Bunny Boy running towards the camera through a field holding the body of the dead cat, which he shows to the audience, breaking the fourth wall. The final scene shows a girl, who shaved her eyebrows earlier in the movie, singing " Jesus Loves Me " in bed next to her mother (or sister). The film finally cuts to black as the girl singing is told to "dial it down" and go to bed.

In December 2022, biology teacher and former Green Beret Dan Forester fails to land a job at the United States Army Research Laboratory. While he watches the televised 2022 FIFA World Cup final, soldiers from the year 2051 arrive on the playing field through a time portal to warn that future humanity is near extinction due to alien invaders: the White Spikes. In response, the world's military forces are sent to the future, but less than 20% survive, prompting a global draft. Dan, conscripted for a seven-day tour, is fitted with an electronic vambrace that tracks him and will automatically return him to his own time following his seven days. Dan's wife, Emmy, encourages Dan to seek out his estranged engineer father, James Forester, to remove the vambrace so the family can go on the run. Dan meets with James; angry over his father having abandoned the family, he instead leaves with the vambrace intact. During orientation, one recruit, Charlie, notices the draftees are mostly older adults: Dan deduces that they were all people known to have died before 2051. Dan and the other draftees are deployed to Miami Beach, Florida in the future but are dropped at the wrong coordinates, high above the city, and most fall to their deaths. Romeo Command orders the remaining recruits to rescue staff at a nearby laboratory. The lab staff are dead, but the team recovers their research data before the area is bombed. Dan and the survivors make it to a military camp in Puerto Plata in the Dominican Republic, where Dan discovers that Romeo Command is headed by his now-adult daughter, Colonel Muri Forester. After a strained reunion, the two embark on a successful mission to capture a female White Spike, which are rarer than the males. Muri later reveals that Dan became disillusioned after losing the research job, which caused her parents' divorce and estrangement from his daughter, just as James did when Dan was a child. Dan also learns he died in a car crash when Muri was 16. Dan and Muri, along with the captured female, are transported to the Jumplink site on a fortified ocean oil platform. They work on a toxin that targets the female, but the arrival of an enormous White Spike swarm quickly overwhelms the base. Muri is severely injured and tells Dan to take the toxin to the past and mass produce it, believing that humanity will not survive in this timeline. Before Muri dies, the two reconcile, and Dan is successfully returned to the past with the toxin. He attempts to deliver it to the military so it can be returned to the future, but the Jumplink has been destroyed by the aliens. After Dan tells Emmy about the future, they suspect that the White Spikes may have arrived much earlier than 2048. This is supported by finding volcanic ash traces from the Changbai Mountains and the 946 AD Millennium Eruption using a claw that Dan brought back. They conclude that the aliens were already on Earth, trapped under the polar ice cap. When global warming melted the ice in the future, it released them. The military are unable to support Dan without proof, so he asks James to use his para-military connections to transport an eight-man team to Severnaya Zemlya, in northern Russia, to search for evidence. There, they find an alien spaceship that crashed into an ice sheet centuries ago. Once inside, they realize that the White Spikes are actually bio-weapons created by another alien species. The alien crew was killed in the crash, but the White Spikes have survived in suspended animation. The team inject the toxin into the dormant creatures, instantly killing them, but the remaining ones awaken. Team members Dorian and Hart sacrifice themselves by manually detonating the alien ship and eliminating the remaining males. A female escapes, but Dan and James track it down and kill it, preventing the future war from occurring. Returning home, Dan introduces a young Muri to James.

The ocean liner SS Britannic is voyaging through the North Atlantic with 1200 passengers on board when the shipping line's owner Nicholas Porter in London receives a call from someone with an Irish accent styling himself as "Juggernaut", who claims to have placed high explosives aboard which are timed to explode and sink the ship at dawn on the following day. The drums are booby-trapped in various ways, and he warns that any attempt to move them will result in detonation, and offers that technical instructions in how to render the bombs safe will be given in exchange for a ransom of £500,000. As an indication of his seriousness, he sets off a demonstration attack with small bombs behind the ship's funnel, which injure one crewman. Unable to order an evacuation of passengers via lifeboats due to rough seas, the shipping line's management is inclined to yield to the ransom demand, however British government officials inform the company that if it does so they will withdraw the company's operating subsidy in line with the Government's policy of non-appeasement of terrorism. Instead, a Royal Navy officer, Lt. Cmdr. Anthony Fallon, leading a bomb-disposal unit, is dispatched, arriving on the scene by air transit and parachuting, to board the ship and defuse the barrel-bombs before the deadline. Meanwhile, back in London, Supt. McCleod, whose wife and two children happen to be holidaying on board the ship, leads Scotland Yard 's investigation to capture the criminal master-bomber. After an attempt to drill a hole into a barrel-bomb fails, setting it off and damaging the ship, Fallon decides to split up his team with each man working simultaneously on each of the remaining devices around the ship, Fallon going first with each stage of the defusing operation and coordinating his men by radio link, with the aim that if he fails and his bomb explodes, his men will know what went wrong and continue the process onwards, with his second in command taking up the lead. If two more bombs go off, the ship will sink. Fallon proceeds to disarm the bomb he is working on, apparently successfully, with his men following each step. However, it contains a hidden mechanism, which his second in command, close friend Charlie Braddock, accidentally triggers, resulting in his death when it explodes, causing further damage to the ship. A distraught Fallon abandons the operation and tells the ship's captain, Alex Brunel, to advise the shipping line to pay the ransom to avoid any more carnage. However, when negotiations with Juggernaut break down (in part because Juggernaut sees the trap police set for him when he goes to collect the ransom) Fallon is ordered by the captain to continue disarming the bombs. Meanwhile, a police search back in London captures the bomber posing as Juggernaut, who is revealed to be an embittered former British military bomb-disposal officer, Sidney Buckland. When told of the news, Fallon, still working on disabling the bombs, reveals that Buckland had trained him and once saved his life. He insists that Buckland be put in contact with him. Buckland is escorted to the police situation room. By this time Fallon has worked out the important details of his procedure but has no way of knowing which of two options (cutting a red or blue wire) will disable the bombs, and if he chooses the wrong one it will detonate them. Time is running out and dawn is fast approaching. Fallon and Juggernaut talk, and, because of their former comradeship, Juggernaut agrees to tell Fallon how to safely disarm the bombs. Juggernaut orders to ‘cut the blue wire’ over audio. Fallon, sensing he is being lied to, cuts the red wire instead and manages to disable the bomb. The rest of the bomb-disposal unit follow Fallon's example, and the ship and its passengers are saved.

In 2003 New York City, Kim Baker is a struggling television journalist covering low-profile stories. To help her career, she takes a short assignment as a war correspondent in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom, to the disappointment of her boyfriend Chris. Assigned to modest living quarters with other international journalists, Kim befriends noted BBC correspondent Tanya Vanderpoel and lecherous Scottish freelance photographer Iain MacKelpie. She adjusts to her new duties aided by her Afghan " fixer " Fahim Ahmadzai. She elicits frank remarks on camera from soldiers questioning the value of their assignment and puts herself in harm's way to capture combat incidents on video. Marine General Hollanek sees her as an inexperienced nuisance. Despite the danger, Kim stays in Afghanistan for years beyond her original assignment. She catches Chris with another woman during a middle-of-the-night video call, ending their relationship and her sexual flirtation with Iain develops into something more meaningful. Although Afghan Islamic society places restrictive roles on women, she uses her sex to her advantage and gains access to female villagers who have been sabotaging the US-built well because they welcome the daily walk to the river away from the men. She uses her own sexuality to develop Afghan Attorney General Ali Massoud Sadiq as a news source. Fahim, who treated opium addicts before the war, cautions her that danger can be as dangerous as a drug. Despite their mutual friendliness, Kim competes with other journalists for stories and resources from their employers. After three years in Afghanistan, Kim flies to New York to argue for more support from her network's new boss, and discovers Tanya is slated to take over her Afghan assignment. Iain is kidnapped for ransom while covering a developing story he had offered to share with Kim. She returns to Afghanistan and blackmails Ali for information about Iain's whereabouts, impressing on Hollanek the political value of rescuing Iain. The mission is a success, militarily and journalistically but Kim becomes disillusioned with her tentative relationship with Iain and her station. She returns to the United States for good, and looks up a Marine whose on-camera comments to her might have led to his transfer and subsequent loss of his legs to an IED. She tries to apologize to him but he refuses to let her take the blame. Kim takes an on-camera desk job and finds herself interviewing Iain, who will be in New York as part of a new book tour. He invites her to meet him for coffee.

Trilby (Kristina Nehm) is a young Aboriginal woman living with her people on the outskirts of everyday Australian society. Trilby encourages her mother (Justine Saunders) to apply for a Housing Commission home being built in an area inhabited mostly by wealthier white families. Her mother, sister Noonah, and Trilby save enough for them all (father and younger brother as well) to move there from the "fringe". They buy some new furniture for the house and improve their station in life. But there is a culture clash. Trilby learns that her family is actually happier surrounded by their community and extended family, and that her own goals are not necessarily the goals of others in her life. With xenophobic neighbours casting a constant judgemental eye, Trilby and her boyfriend, Phil (Ernie Dingo), attempt to find happiness in their new environment. Trilby becomes pregnant, gives birth, but drowns her baby, making it look like an accident. Her family leave their suburban house after Trilby's father loses all their rent money in a card game: the family return to their house in the camp. Trilby, however, leaves on a bus bound for the city.

In Salamanca, Spain, an assassination attempt on U.S. President Henry Ashton unfolds from several different vantage points. GNN producer Rex Brooks directs news coverage from a mobile television studio as the president arrives to a ceremony at the city's Plaza Mayor, for the start of an international summit against terrorism. The mayor of Salamanca introduces the President, who is shot twice as he reaches the podium, soon followed by an explosion outside the plaza. Moments later, a secondary explosion at the podium kills and injures numerous people. Before the President takes the stage, Secret Service agent Thomas Barnes notices a curtain fluttering in a supposedly vacated building, and observes American tourist Howard Lewis filming the audience. After the President is shot, Barnes tackles a man named Enrique rushing to the podium. Following the second explosion, Barnes barges into the GNN studio to view their footage. He receives a call from another Secret Service agent, who reports he is pursuing the suspected assassin; Barnes is then startled by an image from GNN's live feed. Enrique, a Spanish police officer guarding the Mayor, overhears his girlfriend Veronica being embraced by a stranger and plan to meet later under an overpass. Enrique confronts Veronica, who assures him of her love as he hands her a bag. When the President is shot, Enrique rushes to protect the Mayor but is tackled by Barnes. Enrique witnesses Veronica toss the bag under the podium, causing the second explosion. Escaping the Secret Service, Enrique confronts an unseen individual at the overpass. In the crowd, Howard Lewis chats with a man called Sam, while a little girl named Anna bumps into him. Howard notices Barnes looking at the nearby window, and films him with his camcorder. Following the explosion at the podium, Howard chases Enrique and the pursuing Secret Service agents. At the overpass, Howard views the agents from afar shooting at Enrique as he greets an individual in a police uniform under the overpass. Wounded, Enrique falls to the ground. As a speeding ambulance is about to hit Anna, Howard runs into the road after her. Previously, Ashton, having been informed of a credible threat, returns to his hotel room while his body double proceeds to the plaza. Ashton and his personnel discuss the reason and origin for the terrorists' plot, and the return of Barnes to active duty; they watch on TV the double being shot and the first explosion. One adviser is intent on Ashton giving immediate order for retaliation against the village of origin of the terrorists they are aware of, when the second explosion shatters the room's windows. The staffer insists in earnest on retaliation, but Ashton refuses, so the negotiations can continue. A masked assailant bursts into the room, shoots the advisers, and abducts Ashton. At the plaza, terrorist Suarez, previously seen as Sam, shoots Ashton's body double using a remote-controlled automatic rifle placed adjacent to the window that drew Barnes' attention. The rifle is retrieved by Secret Service agent Kent Taylor, who Barnes sees on the GNN live feed leaving the scene wearing a Spanish police uniform. Barnes realizes that Taylor, who happens to be his partner, is part of the terror plot. The man Enrique saw embracing Veronica is revealed to be sharpshooter Javier, whose brother is being held hostage by the terrorists to ensure Javier's cooperation. The explosion at the hotel is detonated by a suicide bomber disguised as a bellhop, who gave Javier a room key. At the hotel, Javier kills the guards and aides and kidnaps the president, placing him in an ambulance with Suarez and Veronica disguised as medics. Javier joins Taylor in a police car to rendezvous at the overpass. Barnes commandeers a car in pursuit, but gets into a collision. At the overpass, Enrique, who did not die in the blast at the podium as intended, confronts Javier and Taylor. Javier shoots Enrique, mistakenly believing he had knowledge of his brother's whereabouts. Javier is shot dead by Taylor after demanding to be brought to his brother, killed earlier by Suarez. Enrique dies of his wounds as Barnes reaches the scene and fires at Taylor, who attempts to flee. After crashing his car, a critically injured Taylor is dragged out by Barnes, furious at his partner's betrayal, he dies right before revealing the President's whereabouts. Ashton regains consciousness in the ambulance and attacks Veronica, distracting her and Suarez as Anna runs into their path. Suarez swerves, causing the ambulance to flip over as Howard pulls Anna out of its way. Barnes runs to the ambulance where he sees Veronica lying dead. He shoots and kills Suarez before rescuing the President. In the closing scene, a GNN news anchor states that the President is recovering and that the "lone assassin" responsible for the shooting and bombing was killed.

In the dystopian future, sexual intercourse and reproduction are prohibited, and mind-altering drugs are mandatory to enforce compliance among the citizens and to ensure their ability to conduct dangerous and demanding tasks. Workers wear identical white uniforms and have shaven heads to emphasize uniformity, likewise with police androids who wear black and monks who are robed. Instead of names, people have designations with three arbitrary letters (referred to as the "prefix") and four digits, shown on an identity badge worn at all times. At their jobs in central video control centers, SEN 5241 (a man) and LUH 3417 (a woman) keep surveillance on the city. LUH has a male roommate named THX 1138, who works in a factory producing android police officers. At the beginning of the story, THX finishes his shift, while the loudspeakers urge the workers to "increase safety"—and congratulate them for only losing 195 workers in the last period—to the competing factory's 242. On the way home, he stops at a confession booth. A Christ -like portrait of "OMM 0000" intones reassuringly as he worries that his sedatives are not working and LUH has been acting strangely. At home, THX takes his drugs and watches holobroadcasts while engaging with a masturbatory device. LUH secretly substitutes pills in her possession for THX's medications, causing him to develop nausea, anxiety, and sexual desires. LUH and THX become involved romantically and have sex. THX is later confronted by SEN, who attempts to arrange that THX become his new roommate, but THX files a complaint against SEN for the illegal shift pattern change. Without drugs in his system, THX falters during a critical and hazardous phase of his job, and a control center engages a "mind lock" on THX, which raises the level of danger. After the release of the mind lock, THX makes the necessary correction to that work phase. THX and LUH are arrested and THX undergoes drug therapy and medical analysis. He enjoys a brief reunion with LUH, but it is disrupted shortly after she reveals her pregnancy. At THX's trial, it is stated that THX was clinically born. It is decided that it would be inefficient to terminate THX, so THX is sentenced to prison, alongside SEN. THX and SEN walk to search for an exit. Eventually they are joined by hologram actor SRT 5752, who starred in the holobroadcasts. SRT shows them the exit and suggests to them that they may have been going in circles. During the escape, THX and SRT are separated from SEN. Chased by the police androids, THX and SRT are trapped in a control center, from which THX learns that LUH has been "consumed", and her name has been reassigned to her fetus, numbered 66691, in a growth chamber. SEN eventually escapes to an area reserved for the monks of OMM, where a monk notices that SEN has no identification badge. SEN attacks him and later wanders into a child-rearing area, strikes up a conversation with children, and sits aimlessly until police androids apprehend him. THX and SRT steal two cars. SRT struggles to figure out how to drive the car. When SRT finally gets the car to move, he immediately crashes his car into a concrete pillar. After the crash, SRT is not found in the vehicle. Pursued by two police androids on motorcycles, THX flees to the limits of the city. Android officers continue to pursue him as he briefly struggles with simian-like creatures identified as "shell dwellers" and arrives at a vertical shaft with an escape ladder. The android officers are ordered by Central Command to cease pursuit, on the grounds that the expense of his capture exceeds their allocated budget for THX. In a last-ditch attempt to convince THX to surrender, the officers claim that the area outside the "city shell" is uninhabitable, but he is undeterred and continues up the ladder. The city is then revealed to be entirely underground, while THX has escaped onto the surface, where he witnesses the sun setting.