A retired businesswoman wants to control everything around her, knowing that she only has a little time left before an imminent death due to a medical condition. She decides to craft her own obituary, so she hires a young obituary writer to work with her to ensure her life story is told her way. The businesswoman tries to expand the horizons of her life, and adopts a young kid for mentoring and lands herself a job as a disc jockey. She grows close with the young writer and influences her life.

In 1905, Percy Fawcett is a young British major who participates in a stag hunt on an Irish baronial estate for the visiting Archduke Franz Ferdinand ’s benefit. A skilled horseman and marksman, he brings down the stag swiftly, but is snubbed at the after-hunt party. A year later, Fawcett meets officials of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) in London, where he is informed that the governments of Bolivia and Brazil are nearly at war over the location of their mutual boundary. Directly affecting the region’s extremely lucrative rubber trade, they have asked the British government to survey it. Fawcett leads the survey party, meeting Corporal Henry Costin, who is familiar with the Amazon rainforest, aboard the ship to Brazil. At a large rubber plantation in the jungle owned by Portuguese nobleman Baron de Gondoris, they meet Lance Corporal Arthur Manley, who tells them the British government advises against further exploration. Nevertheless, Fawcett and Costin, along with several guides and Amazonian scout Tadjui, complete the mission. Tadjui tells him stories about a legendary jungle city covered in gold and full of people. Fawcett dismisses this as insane ravings, but he soon discovers highly advanced broken pottery and some small stone statues in the jungle, convincing him of the story’s veracity. Upon his return, Fawcett is praised, and his wife, Nina (Sienna Miller), has given birth to their second son. In the Trinity College Library of Dublin, she discovers a conquistador text telling of a city deep in the Amazonian jungle, which Fawcett names “the Lost City of Z ”. He also meets renowned biologist James Murray, who agrees to back his Amazon expedition to find that lost city. Attempting to convince RGS members for backing, he is initially ridiculed, but ultimately they concede to further exploration. Murray, unfamiliar with the rigors of the deep jungle, greatly slows them down. Fawcett’s party is attacked along the river, but he makes peace with the natives. Murray’s leg injury becomes severely infected, and he begins to succumb to madness. Fawcett sends him off with a native guide and their last pack animal to find aid. However, the rest of the team abandons the expedition after discovering that Murray had poured paraffin on their supplies. Fawcett arrives home and is introduced to his daughter. Murray survives and, in front of RGS trustees, accuses Fawcett of abandoning him in the jungle, demanding an apology. Fawcett opts to resign from the society rather than do so. When World War I breaks out in Europe, Fawcett fights in France. Manley dies in the trenches at the Battle of the Somme and Fawcett is temporarily blinded in a chlorine gas attack whilst leading an infantry attack. His estranged eldest, Jack, who had long accused Fawcett of abandoning them, reconciles with him as he recovers. In 1923, Fawcett is living in obscurity in Britain. American interest in exploring the Amazon has escalated, mostly due to Fawcett’s stories of the lost city. John D. Rockefeller Jr. and a consortium of U.S. newspapers finance a new Fawcett expedition. The RGS co-funds it at the last moment to maintain British pride. Fawcett shows Sir John Scott Keltie a compass, telling him that he will send it back to him once he finds the lost city. Fawcett and his son go alone this time, travelling as light as possible for up to three years to find “Z”. Costin declines an invitation to join them. The Fawcetts are attacked by natives and run off, only to be stopped by a second tribe, who say that the Englishmen's spirits aren’t wholly of their own world. They declare their spirits “must belong” somewhere, so they will help them find their rightful place. The Fawcetts are drugged during a ceremony and carried away. Years later, Nina Fawcett has a meeting with Keltie at the RGS, claiming she has heard that Fawcett and Jack are still alive and living with tribespeople. The RGS, having sent over a hundred people to search for Fawcett over the years, refuses to do another search; Keltie advises Nina to accept her husband’s death. She refuses, showing him the compass Fawcett had promised to send once he found the lost city. As Nina leaves, her reflection in a mirror shows her walking out into what looks like the Amazonian jungle.

High school senior Venus "Vee" Delmonico longs to leave Staten Island for college, but is reluctant to tell her single mother because they continue to mourn the recent death of Vee's older brother and the price of college. Her friend Sydney is popular on Nerve, an online reality game in which users either enlist as "players" or pay to watch as "watchers". Players accept dares given by the watchers in order to receive money and a spot in the final. After Sydney chastises Vee's unadventurous nature, Vee decides to sign up as a player on Nerve. Her first dare is to kiss a random stranger. At a diner, she kisses Ian, who dances and sings to Vee, revealing he is another player on a dare. The watchers dare Ian to take Vee to Manhattan, and together, they travel to Manhattan. After their first dare of trying on expensive clothes, the fear of her mom catching her in the city gets to her and she decides it's time to go back to Staten Island. However, with the encouragement of Ian to step out of her comfort zone, and the next dare's cash prize, Vee continues to play the game. Thus, together they complete several dares: Vee gets a tattoo, and Ian drives his motorcycle at 60 mph blindfolded. This, as well as Vee and Ian's chemistry, allows them to become two of the top players. Jealous of Vee's popularity on Nerve, Sydney accepts a dare at a party to cross a ladder between two buildings, but she bails during the dare and is eliminated from Nerve. Vee arrives at the party and catches Sydney making out with J.P, a boy Vee has a crush on. As they argue, Vee discovers from her hacker friend Tommy that Ian was dared into bringing Vee to the party and incite an argument between her and Sydney. Vee receives a dare to complete Sydney's dare of crossing the ladder between the two buildings, which she completes. Realizing how dangerous Nerve is, Vee attempts to report the game to the police but is disbelieved. As a result, all of the money in her and her mother's joint bank account is removed. Nerve player Ty knocks Vee out in order to keep her in the game. Vee wakes up in a shipping container, where she finds Ian, who confesses that he and Ty were players whose friend was killed in a dare in Seattle. When they tried to alert the authorities, their families' jobs, bank accounts, and identities were compromised. Vee has joined them in the secret third category of the game: "prisoners". If a prisoner can reach and win the day's final round, they regain everything. Tommy and Sydney work with Tommy's hacker friends to try and disable Nerve by altering the game's online code. They hope to prevent Vee from playing the game, but since all of the watchers' phones and profiles act as a distributed server, they cannot completely disable Nerve. Vee wins a spot in the final of Nerve, and Ian completes a dare to also gain a spot in the final, which takes place at Battery Weed. At the final, Vee and Ian are dared to shoot each other with guns, which they both refuse to do. Ty then takes Ian's place in the final and proposes a vote on whether or not he should shoot Vee. The watchers vote yes by a majority, to which Ty shoots Vee, who seemingly dies in Ian's arms. Tommy and his hackers are able to modify Nerve ' s source code to decrypt the watchers' usernames into their real names and send them a message: "You are an accessory to murder." The panicked watchers log out of the game, closing all the servers and ending Nerve. Despondent over Vee's apparent death, Ian aims his gun at Ty, but Vee stops him, revealing that she and Ty staged her murder to scare the watchers into shutting down their profiles on Nerve and ending it permanently. Tommy and his hackers manage to restore the money to all of the players. As Vee and Ian watch the sunrise, he reveals his true name to be Sam. A few months later, Vee and Sydney have reconciled, while Vee and Sam are a couple. Vee is attending the California Institute of the Arts and asks Sam to come and see her in person.

The film begins with a young professional suddenly going blind in his car while at an intersection, with his field of vision turning white. A seemingly kind passerby offers to drive him home. However, he then steals the blind man's car. When the blind man's wife returns home, she takes him to an ophthalmologist who can identify nothing wrong and refers him for further evaluation. The next day, the doctor goes blind, and recognizes that the blindness must be caused by a communicable disease. Around the city, more citizens are struck blind, causing widespread panic, and the government organizes a quarantine for the blind in a derelict asylum. When a hazmat crew arrives to pick up the doctor, his wife lies that she has also gone blind in order to accompany him. In the asylum, the doctor and his wife are first to arrive and agree they will keep her sight a secret. They are joined by several others, including the driver, the thief, and other patients of the doctor. At this point, the "white sickness" has become international, with hundreds of cases reported every day. The government is resorting to increasingly ruthless measures to try to deal with the epidemic, including refusing aid to the blind. As more blinded people are crammed into what has become a concentration camp, overcrowding and lack of outside support cause hygiene and living conditions to quickly degrade. The doctor serves as the representative of his ward, and his sighted wife does what she can to assist her fellow inmates without revealing her ability. Anxiety over the availability of food undermines morale and introduces conflict between the prison's wards, as the soldiers who guard the camp become increasingly hostile. A man with a handgun appoints himself "king" of his ward, and takes control of the food deliveries, first demanding the other wards' valuables, and then for the women to have sex with their men. In an effort to obtain necessities, several women reluctantly submit to being raped. One of the women is killed by her assailant, and the doctor's wife retaliates, killing the "king" with a pair of scissors. Independently, other raped women sneak to the dead king's ward and set it on fire, which rapidly engulfs the building, with many inmates dying in the ensuing chaos. The survivors who escape the building discover that the guards have abandoned their posts, and they venture out into the city. Society has collapsed, with the city's population reduced to an aimless, zombie-like struggle to survive. The doctor's wife leads her husband and a few others from their ward in search of food and shelter. She discovers a well-stocked basement storeroom beneath a grocery store, barely escaping with aid from her husband when the throng around her smell the fresh food she is carrying. The doctor and his wife invite their new "family" to their apartment, where they establish a mutually supportive long-term home. Then, just as suddenly as his sight had been lost, the driver – the first person to lose his sight – recovers his sight, indicating that the body had fought off the disease, and that the blindness is ultimately temporary. They celebrate and their hope is restored.

The film integrates various types of artist manifestos from different time periods with contemporary scenarios. Manifestos are depicted by 12 different characters (13 including the prologue voiceover), among them a school teacher, factory worker, choreographer, punk, newsreader, scientist, puppeteer, widow, and homeless man. The film consists of a 4-minute prologue and 12 main segments, each 10:30 minutes long. In each, a character recites parts of manifestos of various political and artistic movements.

David Spritz, a successful weatherman at a Chicago news program, is well paid but garners little respect from people in the area who throw fast food at him, he suspects, because they're resentful of how easy his high-paying job is. Dave also feels overshadowed by his father, Pulitzer Prize -winning author Robert Spritzel, who is disappointed in Dave's apparent inability to grow up and deal with his two children. The situation worsens when Robert is diagnosed with lymphoma and given only a few months to live. As he becomes more and more depressed, Dave takes up archery, finding the activity a way to build his focus and calm his nerves. David later remembers a conversation between himself and his father, where his father explains to him that "the harder thing to do and the right thing to do are often the same thing" and that "nothing that has meaning is easy". David appreciates this advice but struggles to implement it. To prove himself to his father and possibly reconcile with Noreen, his estranged wife, Dave pursues a weatherman position with a national talk show called Hello America. The job would nearly quadruple his salary, but means relocating to New York City. When Hello America invites him to New York, he takes his daughter, Shelly, with him and bonds with her by helping her shop for a more suitable wardrobe. While away, Dave learns that his son Mike attacked his counselor, Don Bowden, claiming that the man wanted to perform oral sex on him. Despite this stress and an all-night drinking binge, Dave impresses the Hello America interviewers and is eventually offered the job. When he returns, Dave slaps Russ, Noreen's boyfriend, when he finds him dealing with his son's predicament. Dave later confronts the counselor at his home, beating him up and warning him that he is in store for worse. The family holds a living funeral for Robert organised by Dave's mother, Lauren, in which Dave asks Noreen to reconcile and move to New York, but she has decided to marry Russ. Dave and Robert have one final talk, in which Dave breaks down in tears, unsure of his life's choices. Robert consoles him, telling him that he has time to "chuck" the garbage of his life. Robert dies soon after. The film ends several months later, after Dave has accepted the job and moved to New York. People have ceased throwing things at him though, he muses, this may be a pleasant side-effect of his archery hobby, for which he carries a bow.

In the early 1950s, Pete Verrill is invited by his friend, director John Wilson, to rewrite the script for Wilson's latest project: a film with the working title of The African Trader. The hard living, irreverent Wilson convinces producer Paul Landers to have the film completely shot on location in Africa, even though doing so would be extremely expensive. Wilson explains to Verrill that his motivation for this has nothing to do with the film - Wilson, a lifelong hunter, wants to fulfill his dream of going on an African safari; he even purchases a set of finely crafted hunting rifles and charges them to the studio. Upon landing in Entebbe, Wilson and Verrill spend several days at a luxury hotel while Verrill finishes the script and Wilson makes arrangements for the safari. Verrill finds himself growing fond of Wilson after the latter defends him against a fellow guest who makes antisemitic remarks in front of Verrill (who happens to be Jewish) and challenges the hotel manager to a fistfight after witnessing him insult and belittle a black waiter for spilling a drink, which Wilson loses. The two men constantly argue over Verrill's changes to the script, particularly his insistence that Wilson does not use his original planned ending, where all of the main characters are killed on-screen. Wilson hires a pilot to fly him and Verrill out to the hunting camp of safari guide Zibelinsky and his African tracker Kivu, whom Wilson is quick to bond with. The film's unit director, Ralph Lockhart, is also present and insists that Wilson start pre-production before the cast arrives, to which Wilson replies he'll do so after he shoots a "tusker". Verrill gradually becomes disenchanted with Wilson, who keeps going out to hunt despite his poor health and seems completely indifferent to the success of his movie. He even questions why Wilson would want to kill such a magnificent beast. Confronted, Wilson tells Verrill off and accuses him of "playing it safe" and not wanting to risk anything. He calls hunting a "sin that you can get a license for" and doesn't try to convince Verrill otherwise when he threatens to resign and go back to London. Landers arrives in Entebbe and insists that Verrill stay on, revealing that the studio is at risk of bankruptcy if the movie isn't finished. When Verrill does return, he is informed by Lockhart that Wilson, without consulting anyone, has decided to move the entire production to Kivu's home village despite Landers spending most of the budget on a prefabricated set. The cast, now unable to stay at the hotel, go to Zibelinsky's camp and find Wilson waiting for them with a lavish banquet. He humiliates Landers and takes advantage of several days of rain to resume his safari, now accompanied by professional elephant hunter Ogilvy. Verrill follows after Wilson again taunts him for cowardice. Wilson finally gets his chance to kill the "tusker", but when the time comes to shoot, he suddenly finds he can't pull the trigger. The elephant suddenly charges after seeing its child move too close to Wilson, and Kivu tries to scare it off only to be fatally gored by the elephant's tusks. Wilson, horrified by Kivu's death, returns to the set. He sees the villagers beating drums and asks Ogilvy what they mean. Ogilvy replies that they are communicating to everyone how Kivu died: "white hunter, black heart". Recognizing that he is ultimately to blame for what happened, Wilson tells Verrill that he was right: the film does need a happy ending after all. Sitting in his director's chair as the actors and crew take their places to film the opening scene of The African Trader, a now humbled Wilson quietly mutters "Action".

Jon Martello is a young Italian-American bartender and a modern-day Don Juan living in New Jersey. He enjoys his independent lifestyle, which consists of working out, maintaining his apartment, driving his 1972 Chevrolet Chevelle SS, going to church with his family, engaging in casual sex, and excessively masturbating to hardcore pornography. Though he claims to enjoy sex, he finds it inferior to porn and even finds his daily life interrupted by flashbacks of watching porn. While at a nightclub with his friends, Jon meets Barbara Sugarman, a beautiful woman from an affluent background. Despite flirting, she declines his offer for a one-night stand. Jon becomes interested in her, hoping that sex with her will be more satisfying than his usual hookups, and asks her out after finding her on Facebook. Barbara insists on a more serious relationship, which proceeds for over a month and without sex. She pushes Jon to take an evening community college class to obtain a career outside the service industry, and he indulges her love of romance films, which he dismisses as fantasy. They meet each other's friends and families, and Jon's parents are immediately smitten by her and hope the two will marry. Jon and Barbara finally have sex, but he is still dissatisfied. She catches him watching porn and is disgusted, but he convinces her it was a joke email sent by a friend. As she spends more time at his home, he resorts to watching porn on his cell phone. He takes great satisfaction in cleaning his apartment, but Barbara considers it beneath him and insists he have her family's maid do it. At his class, Jon catches his middle-aged classmate Esther crying alone; when she sits next to him to explain herself, she sees porn on his phone. She later shocks him by showing him an erotic video which she believes depicts sex in a healthier way. Barbara discovers the porn in Jon's laptop browser history, causing a fight; he insists that all men watch porn, but she breaks up with him. Jon watches an increased amount of porn and becomes emotionally withdrawn and erratic, which leads to an incident of road rage. His friend persuades him to finish his college class, where he sees Esther again. After class, he has sex with Esther in her car and discusses his breakup with her. She asks him why he loves porn, and he reveals that he gets "lost" in porn in a way he does not with a partner, and has been consuming porn since he was a child. He insists he is not addicted to porn, and Esther suggests masturbating without it for a week, which he discovers he cannot do. Esther says porn has given him a skewed idea of what real sex is, and he does not intimately connect with his partners because he focuses merely on his own satisfaction. After suggesting they take a bath together at her home, Esther starts crying and does not join him, revealing that her husband and son died in a car crash 14 months prior. Their emotional connection deepens their intimacy, and Jon experiences truly satisfying sex for the first time. Jon later tells his priest that he has stopped watching porn, and though he had premarital sex with Esther, it felt special and unlike his previous connections; he is disillusioned when the priest does not acknowledge his substantial improvement. He finally tells his family about his breakup with Barbara. While his parents are upset, his sister Monica bluntly tells them that Barbara clearly only wanted to date someone she could control. Jon meets with Barbara and apologizes for lying to her, but asserts that her expectations were demanding of him and unattainable. She insists that a man should make any sacrifice for a woman he loves and tells Jon not to call her again. With neither of them interested in conventional love or marriage, Jon and Esther begin dating and "lose" themselves while being intimate.

A brief summary of conditions in East Germany and the border zone shows stock footage such as Conrad Schumann 's jump over barbed wire in Berlin as the Berlin Wall is constructed. In April 1978, in the small town of Pößneck, Thuringia, teenager Lukas Keller attempts to escape East Germany by riding a bulldozer through the Inner German border zone, but is shot by automatic machine guns and left for dead by the guards. His family is informed while on a picnic with their friends the Strelzyks and the Wetzels, and the entire Keller family are taken by the police. Aggravated with life under the GDR regime, Peter Strelzyk proposes a daring plan to his friend Günter Wetzel: they will build a balloon to carry themselves and their families (a total of eight people) over the border to West Germany. They purchase 1,255 sq yd (1,049 m 2) of taffeta, claiming that it is for a camping club, and Günter sews the fabric together with a sewing machine in his attic while Peter experiments for months with devising a burner for the hot-air balloon. They face setbacks such as fires while trying to inflate the balloon, a lack of power for the burner, extremely suspicious neighbors and doubts about the plan's feasibility by Günter's wife Petra. Peter and Günter then stop seeing each other in order to avoid suspicion that may arise when the Strelzyks escape. Peter and his eldest son Frank complete the burner and, after extensive testing, manage to inflate the balloon. On July 3, 1979, the four members of the Strelzyk family attempt to fly the balloon. They successfully lift off but they are spotted by a border guard. However, a cloud dampens the balloon and the burner, and they crash within the border zone only a few hundred feet from the fences, and the balloon floats away. Miraculously, they escape the zone, return to their car and drive home. Meanwhile, the border guard finds the balloon and the Stasi, led by Major Koerner, begins an investigation to identify the balloon's creators in order to prevent them from carrying out a second escape attempt. Initially distraught over his failure, Peter is convinced by his sons to try again, knowing that the Stasi may soon uncover the plot. Peter convinces Günter to help him and both families begin work on a larger balloon to carry them all out of East Germany. Petra agrees to the plan, especially because her mother in West Berlin is very sick and the East German government has repeatedly denied her request to visit her. Having identified the initial launch area, the Stasi begins closing in on Pößneck. The Strelzyks and Wetzels purchase smaller quantities of taffeta from various stores to avoid suspicion, but they are running out of time. Peter tries to buy taffeta, claiming it is for his group of Young Pioneers, but the store manager secretly notifies the Stasi. The men eventually finish the balloon, but have no time to test it. On 15 September 1979, the families prepare to act on the plan while the Stasi finds blood-pressure medicine belonging to Peter's wife Doris where the first balloon had landed. The Stasi contacts the pharmacy and is able to identify the owner of the pills as Doris. The families' neighbor, a member of the Stasi, reports that they had been acting suspiciously. The families leave only minutes before the Stasi arrives at their homes. They reach their launch point while the border is placed on emergency alert. The balloon is inflated and the burner is lit. Both families climb into the balloon's basket and cut their ropes. A fire is started in the cloth, but it is quickly extinguished by Günter. They later notice a hole in the balloon and hope that it will hold. While in flight, the balloon is spotted and Koerner pursues them in a helicopter. Eventually, the burner's propane supply is expended and the balloon descends, and the border guard is mobilized to find them. The balloon lands in a clearing with all eight people unharmed. Peter and Günter attempt to determine where they are as they are discovered by a police car. Peter asks the police if they are in the West, and the police officer confirms. Overjoyed, Peter and Günter light their signal flare. The families happily embrace.

Peter Highman, a successful architect, is due to fly home from Atlanta to Los Angeles to be with his wife Sarah, who is about to give birth. On the way to the airport, he has a chance encounter with Ethan Tremblay and his dog Sonny, who is going to Los Angeles to be an actor and is planning to scatter his recently deceased father's ashes at the Grand Canyon. When Ethan misuses the words " terrorist " and "bomb" while talking to Peter, they are both escorted off the plane. Peter, now on the No Fly List and missing his wallet, agrees to drive with Ethan to Los Angeles. Ethan stops to buy marijuana, and Peter discovers that they are nearly out of money. Since Peter has no I.D., he gets his wife to wire money to Ethan through Western Union, but discovers he had the money wired to his stage name instead of his legal name. When employee Lonnie refuses to accept Ethan's "stage name I.D.", it leads to a violent altercation. After a night at a rest stop, Peter impulsively drives off to abandon Ethan, but realizes that he has forgotten to unload the ashes of Ethan's father when he left. This causes him to wrestle with his conscience, before deciding to return, and covering for his absence by saying he had gone to buy breakfast. Ethan takes over driver duty so Peter can get some rest after a sleepless night, but he falls asleep at the wheel and crashes the car. Peter calls his friend, Darryl, for assistance and decides to part with Ethan, but Darryl persuades Peter otherwise. They arrive at Darryl's house for rest. During their conversation, Ethan discovers hints that Sarah may have been unfaithful, triggering Peter to question Sarah's timely pregnancy. Darryl throws both of them out after mistakenly drinking some of Ethan's father's ashes, which were stored in a coffee tin. Darryl lets them use his Range Rover to make the rest of the trip. Ethan and Peter get high and begin to bond, but Ethan then mistakenly drives to the Mexico–United States border. Despite assuring Peter that he will handle the situation, Ethan flees, and Peter is arrested for possession of marijuana. The Mexican Federal Police lock Peter up, but Ethan steals a truck and breaks him out, causing several car crashes in the process. Peter decides to stop at the Grand Canyon for Ethan, who finally scatters his father's ashes. Peter then confesses that he tried to leave Ethan at the rest area. Ethan makes a confession of his own: he has had Peter's wallet and I.D the entire time. Peter seemingly forgives him but then attacks Ethan in a rage, but is interrupted by a call from Sarah, who has just gone into labor. Peter and Ethan leave for California. Ethan finds a gun in the truck and accidentally shoots Peter. Arriving at the hospital where Sarah is in labor, Peter passes out from loss of blood. Sarah delivers the baby safely, and Peter expresses his discomfort at his new daughter being named Rosie Highman. Ethan leaves to meet with a Hollywood agent while telling Peter to call him. At the end, Ethan guest stars on an episode of his favorite television program, Two and a Half Men, with Peter and Sarah watching it in bed with their daughter. Ethan texts Peter during the episode, indicating that the two have become friends.

On November 5, 1975, in Snowflake, Arizona, logger Travis Walton, and his five co-workers—Mike Rogers, Allan Dallis, David Whitlock, Greg Hayes and Bobby Cogdill—head to work in the White Mountains. Driving back towards town that night, the loggers see unearthly red light in the distance through the treeline. Investigating, they encounter an unidentified flying object. Curious, Walton gets out of the truck to examine more closely, but is struck by a bright beam of light and is thrown several feet backwards. Fearing Walton has been killed, the terrified loggers flee. Rogers decides to go back to retrieve Walton, but he is nowhere to be found. In reporting the incident in town, the loggers are met with skepticism by investigators Sheriff Blake Davis and Lieutenant Frank Watters. Watters, learning that there was a great deal of tension between Dallis and Walton and that Dallis has a criminal record, suspects foul play. That suspicion spreads in town and the loggers become social outcasts. After a large search party turns up no sign of Walton, the police offer the loggers the chance to take a lie detector test. They take the test in the hopes of proving their innocence. Watters says that the tests were inconclusive and that they will have to return the next day to retake it. Rogers is outraged and angrily declines, the other loggers follow suit. The test's administrator reveals to Watters and Davis that, with the exception of Dallis (whose test results were inconclusive), the loggers seem to be telling the truth. Five days later, Rogers receives a call from someone claiming to be Walton. He is found at a Heber gas station, alive but naked, dehydrated and severely traumatized. A ufologist questions Walton but is sent away and Walton is taken to a hospital. Rogers visits Walton while he's in the emergency room. He says that the team left but Rogers returned to try to retrieve Walton. Apparently enraged, Walton turns away from Rogers. He in turn chastises Walton for getting out of the truck in the first place. During a welcome home party, Walton suffers a mental breakdown and flashback to the abduction by the extraterrestrials. In his flashback, he awakens inside a slimy cocoon. Breaking out of its membrane, a bewildered Walton finds himself adrift in a zero-gravity alien environment inside a cylindrical enclosure, whose walls contain other similar cocoons. Struggling in the low gravity, he accidentally breaches a nearby cocoon, horrified to discover that it contains decomposing human remains. Exploring further, he drifts towards a neighbouring area, seeing several humanoid figures below him. Drifting uncontrollably towards them, he investigates, surmising that the immobile figures are spacesuits, one of which is still occupied by an extraterrestrial creature. Walton attempts to escape, but is apprehended by two aliens who drag him down corridors full of terrestrial detritus such as shoes and keys before arriving in an examination chamber. The aliens hold the struggling Walton to a platform in the centre of the chamber, stripping him of his clothes and covering him with an elastic material that completely restrains him. Despite Walton's terrified screams, the aliens clinically subject him to a torturous experiment in which a gelatinous substance is forced into his mouth, a tube is inserted down his throat, his jaw is locked open and a device is stabbed into his neck. Overhead equipment then begins lowering towards him. As a needle-like ocular probe extends towards his exposed eye, Walton suddenly reawakens from his flashback in a doctor's office. While interviewing Walton, Lieutenant Watters expresses his doubts about the abduction, dismissing it as a hoax. He notes that Walton's new celebrity status resulted from the tabloids' attempts to profit from his tale. He believes that Walton faked the abduction. Given that the investigation is officially closed, Watters is forced to abandon his pursuit and leaves town. Two and a half years later, Walton visits Rogers, now a hermit, and the two men reconcile. The closing titles inform that in 1993, Walton, Rogers, and Dallis were resubmitted to additional polygraph examinations, which they passed, apparently corroborating their innocence.