Professor John Oldman is packing his belongings into his truck, preparing to move to a new home. His colleagues show up to give him an impromptu farewell party: Harry, a biologist; Edith, an art history professor and devout Christian; Dan, an anthropologist; Sandy, a historian who is in (unrequited) love with John; Art, an archaeologist; and his younger student Linda. As John's colleagues press him to explain the reason for his departure, he builds on Dan's reference to Magdalenian cultures and, slowly and somewhat reluctantly, reveals that he was born in the Paleolithic period. He states that he has lived for more than 14 millennia and that he relocates every 10 years to prevent others from realizing he does not age. He begins his tale under the guise of a possible science fiction story, but eventually stops speaking in hypotheticals and answers questions from a first-person perspective. His colleagues refuse to believe his story but accept it as a working hypothesis to glean his true intentions. John relates that he was a Sumerian for 2000 years, later a Babylonian, and eventually went east to become a disciple of the Buddha. He claims to have had a chance to sail with Columbus (admitting that at the time he still believed the earth was flat) and to have befriended Van Gogh (one of whose original paintings he apparently owns, a gift from the artist himself). During the conversation, each guest questions John's story based on their own academic specialty. Harry struggles with how biology could allow a human being to live so long. Art, arguably the most skeptical of the group, questions prehistory. He exclaims that all of John's answers, although correct, could have come from any textbook; John rejoins that, like any human, his memory is imperfect and he only sees events from his own narrow, hence not omniscient, perspective. Dr. Will Gruber, a psychiatry professor who arrives at Art's request later that afternoon, questions whether John feels guilty about outliving everyone he has ever known and loved. He then threatens John with a gun (later revealed to have been unloaded) before temporarily leaving. John then learns from Harry that Will's wife had died the previous day after a long illness. John chases after Will, expresses his condolences, and rejoins the group. The discussion veers toward religion, and John mentions that he does not follow any religion. Even though he does not necessarily believe in an omnipotent God, he does not discount the possibility of such a being's existence. Pressed by the group, John reluctantly reveals that in trying to take the Buddha's teachings to the west, into the eastern Roman Empire, he became the inspiration for the Jesus story (another possibility is that he may have been the Teacher of Righteousness). After this revelation, emotions in the room run high. Edith, the representative Christian literalist of the group, begins crying. Will, who has returned after saying he drove around and did not know where else to go, demands that John end his tale and give the group closure by admitting it was all a hoax. He threatens to have John involuntarily committed for psychiatric evaluation should he refuse to do so. John appears to ruminate over his response before finally "confessing" to everyone that his story was a prank. John's friends leave the party with various reactions: Edith is relieved, Harry is open-minded, Art never wants to see John again, Will still believes John needs professional help, Sandy and Linda clearly believe John, and Dan is implied to believe John. After everyone else but Will and Sandy has left, Will overhears their conversation, which suggests the story could be true after all. John mentions some of the pseudonyms he has used over the years, and Will realizes one in particular was his father's name. He asks John specific questions that only a very close acquaintance could answer. When John answers them all correctly, Will has an emotional breakdown, suffers a heart attack, and dies in John's arms. After the body has been taken away, Sandy realizes that (if the story is true) this is the first time John has seen one of his grown children die. John wordlessly gets into his truck and drives to an unknown destination. Having reconsidered, he then stops and waits for Sandy, who slowly walks over to the truck.

Nicholas Angel, a recently promoted Metropolitan Police Sergeant, is reassigned to the rural town of Sandford, Gloucestershire for being too exceptional, despite his desire to continue in London. On his first night in town, Angel arrests Danny Butterman for drunk driving, but discovers the next morning that he is the son of Inspector Frank Butterman, and a police officer himself. Angel is frustrated by the village's mundanity, his and Frank's incompetent colleagues, and the Neighbourhood Watch Alliance (NWA)'s focus on low crime statistics over law enforcement. Angel and Danny stop Martin Blower and Eve Draper, the two lead actors of a local amateur production of Romeo and Juliet, for speeding. A cloaked figure later decapitates them with an axe, staging their deaths as a car crash; only Angel suspects foul play, but Danny begins to follow Angel's lead and take crime more seriously. After confiscating an illegal weapons stash, including an old sea mine, from farmer Arthur Webley, Angel and Danny slowly bond while they binge-watch action-film DVDs at Danny's house. That night, a cloaked figure attacks wealthy land developer George Merchant in his home, and murders him via gas explosion. Angel suspects that the deaths are linked to a recent property deal. Tim Messenger, a local journalist for the Sandford Citizen newspaper, approaches Angel at the village fête, claiming to have information, but is murdered when a cloaked figure dislodges a piece of masonry from the church's tower. Angel learns from Leslie Tiller, the village florist, about her plans to sell her land to Merchant's business partners. While Angel is retrieving his notebook from his police car, a cloaked figure murders Leslie with her garden shears and escapes. Angel suspects Simon Skinner, manager of the Somerfield supermarket, as the property deal would have built a rival, but Skinner provides an alibi. Surmising that there are multiple killers, Angel learns about a secret NWA meeting at Sandford Castle after a cloaked and hooded figure attacks him in his room at the Swan Hotel, whom he unmasks as Michael "Lurch" Armstrong, an employee of Skinner's, and incapacitates. The NWA members reveal they staged the murders they committed as accidents because each victim threatened Sandford's chances of winning "Village of the Year". Frank emerges as the leader, explaining that his deceased wife Irene, Danny's mother, put everything into helping Sandford win the inaugural competition, but travellers moved in and ruined their chances the night before the adjudicators arrived, driving her to suicide; Frank subsequently vowed to help Sandford win "Village of the Year" annually, however possible. Angel flees, but stumbles into the castle's catacombs, discovering the corpses of the NWA's victims, some of whom he had arrested earlier. Danny suddenly appears and feigns murdering Angel. Pretending to dispose of him, Danny implores Angel to return to London. However, an encounter with a display of action-movie DVDs while at a motorway service station inspires Angel to reverse course to Sandford. Purloining the confiscated guns from the police station, Angel confronts the NWA in a shootout, accompanied by Danny. When Frank orders the other officers to arrest them, the pair successfully convinces them of Frank's complicity. Frank flees, and the police besiege the supermarket, with Skinner escaping via police car with Frank. Following a high-speed chase and shootout, Angel corners Skinner at Sandford's model village. After a fight, Skinner lands atop a miniature church steeple that impales his Adam's apple, but survives. Frank attempts escape in Angel's car, but a swan that the pair had recaptured earlier ambushes him, causing him to crash. Angel's former superiors ask him to return to London as the crime rate has increased in his absence, but Angel declines, content with Sandford. While the officers are reviewing paperwork for the many arrests, Professor Tom Weaver, the last remaining NWA member, enters the squad room wielding a blunderbuss. He fires at Angel, but Danny intercepts the hit, causing Angel to kick a wastebasket at Weaver. While stumbling backwards, Weaver accidentally activates the sea mine, killing himself and destroying the station. One year later, Angel has been promoted to Inspector and Danny, having survived, has been promoted to Sergeant. After visiting Irene's grave, the two drive to their next crime scene.

Harry Caul, a surveillance expert in San Francisco, specializes in audio recordings. He and his team are hired by a client known as "the Director" to eavesdrop on a couple, whom they record walking in circles in Union Square. Despite the background noise, Harry filters and merges the tapes to create a clear recording with ambiguous meaning. Harry is intensely private, obsessively guarding his personal life; though he insists that he is not responsible for how his clients use the surveillance he creates, he is haunted by guilt from a past job that resulted in three deaths. He meets with Martin Stett (Ford) who meets with Harry instead of the Director, who told Harry to give the tapes only to him. Harry wrests them away and Stett warns him about the contents of the tapes. When he discovers a potentially dangerous phrase in the recording, "He'd kill us if he got the chance," Harry becomes increasingly anxious. His attempt to deliver the recording is thwarted, and he is both followed and threatened. After a party at his workshop, Harry spends the night with a woman he has just met and the tapes are stolen. He receives a call from Martin Stett, the Director's assistant, informing him that the Director could not wait any longer and they have the tapes. Harry is tasked with delivering the pictures taken and collecting his money in a meeting with the Director that afternoon. There he learns that the woman in the recording is the Director's wife, involved in an affair. Harry, suspecting murder, books a hotel room next to the one the couple had mentioned for a planned rendezvous in the recording, and sees a bloody altercation from the balcony. Convinced there was a murder, Harry breaks into the room; he initially finds the room spotless, but when he flushes the toilet it is clogged and overflowing with blood. Attempting to confront the Director, Harry discovers the wife is alive and unharmed, as is her lover. A newspaper headline reports that an executive has supposedly died in a car accident. Harry realizes that the couple actually murdered the Director, having missed the emphasis on the word "us" in the recording, which not only expressed the couple's fear of being killed by the Director if he discovered the affair, but was also an attempt to justify killing him first as a defensive move. Stett calls Harry at his apartment, and warns him not to investigate. He plays a freshly made recording of Harry playing his saxophone to prove they are listening. Harry frantically searches for bugs in his apartment, destroying nearly everything in it. Having failed to locate the bug, Harry sits alone amid the wreckage, playing his saxophone.

During the winter on the Wind River Indian Reservation, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Agent Cory Lambert discovers the frozen body of 18-year-old Natalie Hanson of the Northern Arapaho tribe. FBI special agent Jane Banner arrives to investigate the possible homicide. Banner learns from Natalie's father, Martin, that his daughter was dating a new boyfriend whose name he does not know. Natalie's autopsy shows signs of blunt trauma and rape and confirms Lambert's deduction that Natalie died from pulmonary hemorrhage caused by inhaling subzero air. The medical examiner refuses to classify the death as a homicide, so Banner cannot get additional help from her supervisors. Lambert is informed by Natalie's brother Chip that Natalie's boyfriend is Matt Rayburn, a security guard at a nearby oil-drilling site. Lambert and Banner soon find Matt's naked, mutilated body in the snow. Lambert reveals to Banner that his 16-year-old daughter Emily, Natalie's best friend, died in a similar manner to Natalie three years earlier, and the case remains unsolved. Banner, tribal police Chief Ben Shoyo, and other law enforcement officers visit the drilling site, where Curtis, the security supervisor, and several security guards meet them. They claim Matt left a few days prior, following an argument with Natalie. One guard mentions they heard about Natalie's body being found, and Banner states that Natalie's name has not been released to the public. The guards claim they learned it by monitoring a police scanner. One of Banner's team notices the guards slowly surrounding them and draws his weapon. The confrontation quickly escalates into an armed standoff, which Banner defuses. In a flashback, Matt's drunken colleagues barge into his trailer while he is in bed with Natalie. Matt is provoked to violence, and the other guards continue the attack while one guard, Pete, rapes Natalie. Matt is beaten to death, but his attempt to fight back allows Natalie to try to escape by running cross-country to the mobile home where her brother lives. In the present, Lambert traces the tracks from where Matt's corpse was found back to the drilling camp. As Banner and the others approach Pete's trailer, Lambert radios a warning to Shoyo. Pete responds to a veiled warning from Curtis by firing a shotgun through the door, wounding Banner. A gunfight ensues, and Shoyo and the other officers are killed. As the remaining guards prepare to execute Banner, Lambert kills four with his rifle. A wounded Pete flees on foot, but Lambert apprehends him. At Gannett Peak, Lambert forces Pete to confess before offering him the same chance Natalie had: try to stay alive by running to a distant road barefoot and wearing lightweight clothing. Pete runs but quickly succumbs as his lungs give out from the frigid air. Lambert visits Banner in the hospital and praises her toughness. He visits with Martin and they share grief over the deaths of their daughters. A title card reads, " While missing person statistics are compiled for every other demographic, none exist for Native American women. "

Nicholas Van Orton is an investment banker in San Francisco. He is very successful and wealthy, but also cold and condescending, as well as lonely and reclusive. He remains haunted by the death of his father, who committed suicide on his 48th birthday by jumping off the roof of the family mansion. Therefore, Nicholas is feeling grim on his 48th birthday. On the day, he is surprisingly visited by his estranged younger brother, Conrad, who gifts him an unusual present—a voucher for a "game" offered by Consumer Recreation Services (CRS). Though skeptical, Nicholas cannot help but be interested and he goes to the CRS office to apply; the time-consuming psychological and physical examinations required irritate him. He is later informed that his application has been rejected. This angers him. Nicholas returns home one evening to find a wooden clown in his driveway, which he drags inside. While watching the Cable Financial Network (CFN), the anchor begins talking to Nicholas through his TV screen. The anchor tells Nicholas that he is being watched by a tiny camera in the clown's head and provides him with the telephone number for a CRS 24-hour emergency hotline. He warns Nicholas not to call the hotline asking about the object of the game, as "figuring that out is the object of the game." More bizarre events continue; Nicholas initially thinks CRS is simply staging elaborate pranks, but he comes to believe it is real when his business, reputation, and safety are endangered. He meets a waitress, Christine, who also becomes involved. A panic-stricken Conrad visits Nicholas and apologizes, claiming CRS has attacked him. An argument breaks out between the two brothers, resulting in Conrad running away—leaving Nicholas on his own. Nicholas gets into a taxi; after locking the doors, the driver jumps out before the car crashes into San Francisco Bay. Nicholas manages to escape the sinking car, using a tool mysteriously left for him a day before. He reaches the surface and contacts police, but they find the CRS office abandoned. With no one else to turn to, Nicholas finds Christine's home and discovers she is a CRS employee. When she tells him they are being watched, Nicholas attacks a nearby camera, and armed CRS personnel swarm the house. When they fire at the two of them, they flee to a Van Orton home outside of the city. Christine has told Nicholas that CRS has drained his bank accounts by guessing his passwords using the psychological tests he completed, but a call to his lawyer suggests the money remains intact. Nicholas then begins to feel dizzy and realizes Christine has drugged him. As he loses consciousness, she admits she is part of the scam and says he made a fatal mistake in giving his card security code over the phone. Nicholas wakes entombed alive in a Mexican cemetery. He sells his watch (a gift from his mother) to return to San Francisco, only to find his mansion foreclosed and most of his possessions removed. He contacts the hotel where Conrad was staying, and is told his brother has been committed to a mental institution following a nervous breakdown. Nicholas retrieves a hidden gun and finds his ex-wife to ask for help. While apologizing to her for his emotional neglectfulness, he learns that Jim Feingold, the CRS employee who conducted his tests, is an actor working in television advertisements. He finds Jim and forces him to find the real CRS office, finds Christine there and takes her hostage, demanding to be taken to the head of CRS. Pursued by CRS guards, Nicholas takes Christine to the roof. Christine, realizing Nicholas's gun is not a prop, frantically tells him it is only a game; his finances are intact, and his family and friends are waiting on the other side of the door. He refuses to believe her, and Nicholas shoots the first person to emerge—Conrad, bearing a bottle of champagne. Devastated, Nicholas tries to commit suicide by leaping off the roof, but lands on a giant air cushion in a banquet hall. He is greeted by Conrad and the rest of the actors from the game, revealing that the gun was a prop. Everything had been staged by Conrad for Nicholas's birthday present. After a birthday party with friends, Christine (whose real name is Claire) declines Nicholas's offer of a date because she has another job lined up in Australia. She instead suggests they have coffee together at the airport, ending the final scene with Nicholas looking half-tempted, half-cautious.

College student Jeffrey Beaumont returns to his suburban hometown of Lumberton, North Carolina, after his father, Tom, has a near-fatal stroke. Walking home from the hospital, Jeffrey cuts through a vacant lot and discovers a severed human ear, which he takes to police detective John Williams. Williams's daughter Sandy tells Jeffrey that the ear somehow relates to a lounge singer named Dorothy Vallens. Intrigued, Jeffrey enters her apartment by posing as a pest exterminator. While there, he steals a spare key while she is distracted by a man in a distinctive yellow sport coat, whom Jeffrey nicknames the "Yellow Man". Jeffrey and Sandy attend Dorothy's nightclub act, in which she sings " Blue Velvet ", and leave early so Jeffrey can break into her apartment. Dorothy returns home and undresses; she finds Jeffrey hiding in a closet and forces him to strip at knifepoint, but he retreats to the closet when Frank Booth, a psychopathic gangster and drug lord, arrives and interrupts their encounter. Frank beats and rapes Dorothy while inhaling gas from a canister, alternating between fits of sobbing and violent rage. After Frank leaves, Jeffrey sneaks away and seeks comfort from Sandy. Surmising that Frank has abducted Dorothy's husband Don, and son Donnie, to force her into sexual slavery, Jeffrey suspects that Frank cut off Don's ear to intimidate her into submission. While continuing to see Sandy, Jeffrey enters into a sadomasochistic relationship with Dorothy, in which she encourages him to hit her. Jeffrey sees Frank attending Dorothy's show and later observes him selling drugs and meeting with the Yellow Man. Jeffrey then sees the Yellow Man meeting with a "well-dressed man". When Frank catches Jeffrey leaving Dorothy's apartment, he abducts them and takes them to the lair of Ben, a criminal associate holding Don and Donnie hostage. Frank permits Dorothy to see her family and forces Jeffrey to watch Ben perform an impromptu lip-sync of Roy Orbison 's " In Dreams ", which moves Frank to tears. Afterwards, he and his gang take Jeffrey and Dorothy on a high-speed joyride to a sawmill yard, where he again attempts to sexually abuse Dorothy. When Jeffrey intervenes and punches him in the face, an enraged Frank and his gang pull him out of the car. Replaying the tape of "In Dreams", Frank smears lipstick on his face and violently kisses Jeffrey. Frank then has Jeffrey restrained and beats him unconscious, while Dorothy pleads for Frank to stop. Jeffrey awakens the next morning, bruised and bloodied. While visiting the police station, Jeffrey discovers that the Yellow Man is Detective Williams's partner Tom Gordon, who has been murdering Frank's rival drug dealers and stealing confiscated narcotics from the evidence room for Frank to sell. After Jeffrey and Sandy declare their love for each other at a party, they are pursued by a car which they assume belongs to Frank; as they arrive at Jeffrey's home, Sandy realizes the driver is her ex-boyfriend, Mike. After Mike threatens to beat Jeffrey for stealing his girlfriend, Dorothy appears on Jeffrey's porch naked, beaten, and confused. Mike backs down as Jeffrey and Sandy whisk Dorothy to Sandy's house to summon medical attention. When Dorothy calls Jeffrey "my secret lover", a distraught Sandy slaps him for cheating on her. Jeffrey asks Sandy to tell her father everything, and Detective Williams then leads a police raid on Frank's headquarters, killing Frank's men. Jeffrey returns alone to Dorothy's apartment, where he discovers Don dead and with his ear missing, and Gordon in a lobotomised state from being shot in the head. As Jeffrey leaves the apartment, the "Well-Dressed Man" arrives, sees Jeffrey in the stairs, and chases him back inside. Jeffrey uses Gordon's walkie-talkie to say he is in the bedroom before hiding in the closet. The "Well-Dressed Man" arrives at the apartment and Jeffrey observes he is actually Frank in disguise. Frank begins searching the apartment, and kills Gordon in the process. Jeffrey sneaks out of the closet and grabs Gordon's gun, which he uses to kill Frank when he opens the door. Moments later, Sandy and Detective Williams arrive. Some time later, Jeffrey and Sandy have continued their relationship, Tom Beaumont has recovered, and Dorothy has been reunited with her son.

In Dorchester, Boston, private investigator Patrick Kenzie and his partner and girlfriend Angie Gennaro witness a televised plea by Helene McCready for the return of her abducted four-year-old daughter Amanda, who was last seen with her favorite doll, Mirabelle. Amid the media frenzy, Amanda's aunt Bea and uncle Lionel hire the pair to find her. Patrick and Angie meet with Boston Police Department detectives Remy Bressant and Nick Poole, who tell them about Corwin Earle, a known child molester whom they consider a suspect. Patrick asks a criminal associate, Bubba, to look for Earle and also discovers that Helene and her boyfriend Ray are addicts and drug mules for local Haitian drug lord Cheese, and had recently stolen $130,000 from him. After finding Ray has been murdered by Cheese's men, Patrick and Angie join Remy and Nick to find Amanda, whom they now believe has been taken by Cheese. Helene reveals she buried the money in Ray’s backyard and tearfully makes Patrick promise he will bring Amanda home alive. Patrick meets with Cheese and tries to negotiate returning the stolen money in exchange for Amanda, but he denies any involvement in the girl's disappearance. The following day, Captain Jack Doyle reads Patrick a telephone transcript of Cheese calling the station to set up an exchange for the girl. The exchange at a nearby quarry is botched after a gunfight breaks out, and Cheese is killed. It is believed that Amanda fell into the quarry's pond and drowned; Angie retrieves Mirabelle and returns it to Helene. Doyle, whose own daughter was killed years before, takes responsibility for the botched exchange and goes into early retirement. Two months later, a seven-year-old boy is abducted in Everett, a city near Boston, and Patrick receives information from Bubba that Corwin Earle is living with two married cocaine addicts. The two visit the house and Patrick observes evidence of the abducted boy, so he returns with Remy and Nick late at night to rescue him. Before they can enter the house, the woman starts shooting and fatally wounds Nick before chasing Patrick into Corwin's room. He discovers the dead child and executes Corwin as Remy arrives and kills the woman. The following evening, an intoxicated Remy tries to alleviate Patrick's guilt, confiding that he once planted evidence to help a family escape from an abusive husband. When Remy discloses that Ray was the one who told him about the abusive husband, Patrick becomes suspicious, as Remy had previously said that he did not know Ray. Following Nick's funeral, Patrick speaks to police officer Devin, telling him that Remy lied to him about knowing Ray. Devin tells him Remy knew about Cheese's stolen money before Cheese did. Patrick goads Lionel into meeting him in a bar and pieces together that he and Remy had staged a fake kidnapping to keep the drug money for themselves and to teach Helene a lesson, which Lionel finally admits. Remy enters the bar wearing a mask and stages a robbery. Patrick realizes it is just a ruse to kill them, so he yells about Remy's involvement in Amanda's kidnapping. The bartender shoots Remy, but he flees, pursued by Patrick, and succumbs to his injuries. While being questioned, Patrick realizes Doyle's involvement when he is told the police do not use phone transcripts. Arriving at Doyle's house, Patrick and Angie find Amanda alive and well. He admits his part in the kidnapping and setting up the fake exchange to frame Cheese. When Patrick threatens to call the police, Doyle tries to convince him that Amanda would have a better life with him and his wife than with her neglectful mother. Patrick discusses the choice with Angie, who says she will hate him if he returns Amanda to her mother, making the case that the girl would grow up much safer and happier if they leave her to be raised by Doyle and his wife. However, he makes the call regardless. Doyle, his wife, and Lionel are arrested, and Patrick and Angie break up. Patrick later visits Helene as she is preparing for a date. On discovering she has not arranged for a babysitter, he volunteers. After she leaves, Patrick sits down with Amanda and asks about Mirabelle, but is told her name is Anabelle. Realizing Helene does not even know the name of her daughter's favorite doll, Patrick is left to wonder whether returning Amanda to her mother was a mistake.

At a San Francisco pet store, socialite Melanie Daniels meets lawyer Mitch Brenner, who wants to buy lovebirds for his sister Cathy's 11th birthday. Mitch recognizes Melanie from her court appearance regarding a practical joke gone awry and pretends to mistake her for a shop employee. He tests Melanie's knowledge of birds, which she fails, then discloses his knowledge of her and leaves. Intrigued, Melanie buys the lovebirds and drives to Bodega Bay after learning that Mitch has gone to his family's farm there. She learns Cathy's name from Annie Hayworth, a teacher at Bodega. Annie is Mitch's ex-lover, but their relationship ended due to his overbearing mother, Lydia, who feels insecure about any woman in Mitch's life. Melanie rents a boat and crosses the bay to discreetly leave the lovebirds at the Brenner farm. Spotting her departing, Mitch drives to meet her at the dock. At the wharf, Melanie is attacked by a gull. Mitch tends to her wound and invites her to dinner. At the farm, Lydia's hens are refusing to eat. Lydia dislikes Melanie due to her exaggerated reputation, as reported in gossip columns. The passing of Mitch's father four years ago is also brought up. Mitch invites Melanie, who is staying with Annie, to Cathy's birthday party being held the next day. Later, a dead gull is found at Annie's door. During Cathy's party, Melanie tells Mitch about her troubled past and her mother running off with another man when she was Cathy's age. During a game, the children are attacked and wounded by gulls. Later that evening, as Melanie dines with the Brenners, sparrows swarm the house through the chimney. Mitch insists that she delay driving back to San Francisco and stay the night. The next morning, Lydia visits her neighbor to discuss the problem with their chickens. She discovers broken windows in his bedroom and his eyeless corpse, pecked by birds, and flees in horror. While recovering at home, Lydia fears for Cathy's safety, and Melanie offers to pick her up at school. As Melanie waits outside the schoolhouse, a flock of crows engulf the jungle gym behind her. Anticipating an attack, she warns Annie. Rather than leaving the students in the building with its large windows, they evacuate them, and the crows attack later. Mitch finds Melanie at the diner. A heated debate ensues among those present whether the bird attacks are real, including an ornithologist who refuses to take these events seriously. When gulls attack a gas station attendant, Mitch and other men assist him outside. The spilled gasoline is ignited by an unaware bystander's match, causing an explosion. During the escalating fire, Melanie and others rush out, but more gulls attack. Melanie takes refuge in a telephone booth. Mitch saves her, and they return to the diner, where Melanie is blamed by a patron taking cover inside for the events unfolding in Bodega Bay. Mitch and Melanie go to Annie's house to fetch Cathy and find Annie's body outside; she was killed by the crows while protecting Cathy. They take a traumatized Cathy home. That night, Melanie and the Brenners barricade themselves in the family home, which is attacked by birds. After discovering that the birds have pecked their way in through the roof, Melanie is trapped and severely wounded, but Mitch pulls her out. Mitch insists they all drive to San Francisco to take Melanie, now injured, traumatized and catatonic, to a hospital. As Mitch readies Melanie's car for their escape, a sea of birds has gathered around the Brenner house. The car radio reports bird attacks on nearby communities and that the military may intervene. Cathy retrieves her lovebirds (the only birds who do not attack) from the house and joins Mitch and Lydia as they escort Melanie past a mass of birds and into the car. The car slowly drives away as the birds watch.

A young Dutch couple, Rex and Saskia, are on holiday in France. As they drive, Saskia shares a recurring dream in which she is drifting through space in a golden egg. In the most recent dream, another egg containing another person appeared; she feels the collision of the two eggs would signify the end of something. Their car runs out of petrol and they stop at a rest area. Rex promises to never abandon Saskia and they bury two coins at the base of a tree as a symbol of their romance. Saskia enters the petrol station to buy drinks and does not return. Rex frantically searches for her. Some time earlier, Raymond, a wealthy family man, secretly plots to abduct a woman. He buys an isolated house, experiments with chloroform, and rehearses methods of enticing women into his car. When his initial attempts at abduction fail, he poses as an injured motorist in need of assistance and goes to the rest area out of town, where he will not be recognised. Three years after Saskia's disappearance, Rex is still searching for her. He has received several postcards inviting him to meet the kidnapper at a cafe in Nîmes, but the kidnapper never comes. Unknown to Rex, the cafe is directly opposite Raymond's apartment, where he watches Rex wait. Rex's new girlfriend, Lieneke, reluctantly helps him search for Saskia. One day, Rex has a dream similar to Saskia's in which he is trapped in a golden egg. Unable to endure his obsession, Lieneke leaves him. Rex makes a public appeal on television, saying he only wants to know the truth about what happened to Saskia. Raymond confronts Rex and admits to the kidnapping; he says he will reveal what happened to her if Rex comes with him. As they drive, Raymond admits to his own psychopathy, saying he has known from a young age that he has no conscience, and is therefore capable of anything. After saving a young girl from drowning, he resolved to commit the worst crime he could imagine in order to test if he was worthy of his daughter's admiration; in his view, one can only be a truly good person if one is capable of doing something evil, but chooses not to do it. Raymond describes how he kidnapped Saskia at the rest stop by posing as a traveling salesman and enticing her into his car. Late that night, Raymond and Rex arrive at the desolate rest area. Raymond dismisses Rex's threats of police action, saying there is no evidence connecting him to the crime. Pouring a cup of drugged coffee, Raymond tells Rex the only way to learn what happened to Saskia is to experience it himself. As Raymond waits in the car, Rex rages, unsure of what to do. After digging up the coins he and Saskia buried years earlier, he drinks the coffee. Rex awakens some time later, buried alive in a box underground. Raymond relaxes at his country home, surrounded by his wife and children. A newspaper sitting in his car features a headline about the double disappearance of Saskia and Rex, with their portraits in two egg-shaped ovals.

In 1945, Grace Stewart resides in a remote country house in Jersey, a Channel Island formerly occupied by the Germans. As her young children, Anne and Nicholas, suffer from a severe sensitivity to light, Grace keeps the home darkened with heavy curtains. One day, Mrs. Bertha Mills, Edmund Tuttle and the mute Lydia arrive seeking employment. Grace hires them as the housekeeper, gardener, and maid, and learns they worked in the house years earlier. Anne claims to be visited by a young boy named Victor, his parents, and an elderly blind woman. Grace believes this is a fantasy, but after she hears footsteps and voices, she orders the house to be searched for intruders. In a storage room, she finds a nineteenth-century album containing photographs of corpses. Mrs. Mills recounts that many left the house in 1891 due to an outbreak of tuberculosis. Grace begins to fear there are supernatural entities in the house, but struggles to reconcile this with her Catholic faith. Grace witnesses a piano playing itself and becomes convinced that the house is haunted. She runs outside in search of the local priest to bless the house and instructs Tuttle to check the gardens to see if a family has been buried there. Mrs. Mills instructs Tuttle to conceal gravestones with leaves. In the woods, Grace runs into her husband, Charles, whom she thought was killed in World War II, and brings him back to the house. One day, Grace checks on Anne playing. To her horror, she finds an old woman wearing Anne's veiled communion dress who speaks in Anne's voice. Grace attacks the woman but finds she has actually attacked Anne. Charles tells Grace he must return to the front, rejecting her insistence that the war is over. He leaves the next morning. Grace is horrified to find all of the curtains in the house have been removed, exposing Anne and Nicholas to sunlight. She accuses the servants and expels them. That night, the children discover that the headstones in the cemetery belong to the servants, and flee when the servants approach them. Grace finds a postmortem photograph of Mrs. Mills, Tuttle and Lydia, who all perished during the 1891 tuberculosis outbreak. Mrs. Mills tells Grace to talk to the "intruders". Grace discovers that the elderly blind woman is a medium holding a séance with Victor's parents. They have discovered via automatic writing that Grace, despondent after Charles died in the war, smothered her children with a pillow and shot herself. Aghast, Grace realizes that the intruders are the living family, and that she, her children and the servants are haunting the house. Embracing her children, Grace admits to her act of murder–suicide: she awoke after her suicide and believed that God had brought everyone back to life for a second chance. Victor and his family move out. Anne and Nicholas realize that sunlight no longer hurts them and enjoy it for the first time. The house goes up for sale and Mrs. Mills informs the Stewarts that they will have to learn to cohabit with future inhabitants. Grace and the children affirm that the house is theirs and that they will not leave.

In 2054, a "Precrime" pilot program is running in Washington, D.C. in the United States. Three clairvoyant people known as "precognitives" or "precogs" receive psychic visions about imminent homicides. Police detectives use information from the visions to apprehend would-be perpetrators before they can commit a crime. Those arrested are put into a coma and imprisoned indefinitely. Although Precrime has eliminated nearly all premeditated murders during its six-year existence, impulsive killings still occur, giving the police only a short time to act. Precrime chief John Anderton joined the program after his six-year-old son Sean was abducted and never found. He is addicted to a drug called neuroin, and his wife Lara has left him. Department of Justice agent Danny Witwer audits Precrime to uncover flaws. One of the precogs, Agatha, has a flashback of a woman drowning as Anderton watches. He learns from the prison warden that the intended victim, Anne Lively, went missing shortly after her murder was prevented; he also discovers that Agatha's vision of the crime is not on file. Soon afterward, the precogs predict that Anderton will kill a man named Leo Crow, whom he has never met. Anderton flees, prompting Witwer to begin a manhunt. Anderton visits Dr. Iris Hineman, a geneticist whose research led to the creation of Precrime. She explains that one precog occasionally sees a different future vision from the others, which is known as a "minority report". The minority reports are purged from the record to maintain the precogs' reputation of infallibility, so if Anderton has a minority report, he will have to find Agatha, the precog with the strongest precognitive abilities. After undergoing eye transplant surgery to evade retinal scanners, Anderton returns to Precrime. He kidnaps Agatha, which shuts down the group-mind generated by the three precogs. With the assistance of a hacker, Anderton searches Agatha's memories but fails to find a minority report for Crow's murder. However, he finds and downloads her memories of Lively's death. Pursued by Precrime officers, Anderton and Agatha track Crow to a hotel room and find photos of many children, including Sean. Anderton accuses Crow of killing Sean and nearly shoots him, but relents at the last moment to place him under arrest. Crow then claims he was hired to plant the photos, which were fake, and begs Anderton to kill him, saying that his family will be paid if he dies. When Anderton refuses, Crow kills himself in a manner similar to the precogs' vision of Anderton killing him. Witwer investigates Lively's case and finds clues suggesting that she was murdered. When he reports his findings to Lamar Burgess, the director of Precrime, Burgess kills him, knowing that the offline precogs cannot see his crime. Precrime officers locate Anderton at Lara's house and imprison him for murdering Crow and Witwer. While discussing Anderton's concerns about Lively with Burgess, Lara becomes suspicious of him. She breaks Anderton out of prison, which allows him to confront Burgess at a banquet celebrating the national launch of Precrime. Anderton reveals that Lively was Agatha's mother. She had given up custody of Agatha, but later tried to reclaim her. Desperate to preserve Precrime, Burgess hired a man to kill Lively, knowing that Precrime would intervene. After the murder was prevented, Burgess killed Lively himself in the predicted manner. The Precrime technicians, trained to disregard the second murder vision as an echo of the first one, deleted the record. Once Anderton began to investigate, Burgess arranged for Crow to pose as Sean's abductor to provoke Anderton to murder. The precogs predict that Burgess will kill Anderton at the banquet, but Burgess kills himself instead. Afterwards, Precrime is shut down and all the prisoners are pardoned and released. The precogs are moved to an undisclosed location to live in peace.