Mike Weiss, a young Houston lawyer and drug addict, and Paul Danziger, his longtime friend and straitlaced law partner, are the personal injury lawyers behind the law firm Danziger & Weiss. They decide to take on a case involving Vicky Rogers, a local ER nurse, who was pricked by a contaminated needle on the job and contracted HIV. Vicky shows Mike and Paul a safety needle, invented by her family friend, Jeffrey Dancort, which defends against accidental needlesticks by only being used once, and she urges them to help bring the product to hospitals. Vicky later dies from her illness. Mike digs deeper into the case, and discovers no one is willing to buy the needle because of a healthcare/pharmaceutical conspiracy and bribery racket. With the threat of exposure, heavyweight attorneys move in on the defense led by attorney Nathaniel Price. Out of their league and out of money, the mounting pressure of the case pushes the two underdog lawyers and their business to the breaking point. In the meantime, Mike is struggling with his heavy drug usage and his loneliness. He seeks sex therapy as a source of comfort and is consistently in the company of prostitutes. His personal struggles hinder the realization of his professional ambitions, as he misses many of the meetings and investment events, driving a wedge between him and Paul. Mike, Paul, and Dancort gain the support of Senator O'Reilly, not before she gives Mike an ultimatum: get clean. Mike's heavy withdrawal leaves him hospitalized, only adding to the financial burdens of the firm. The momentum of the case seems to come to a standstill: Senator O'Reilly pulls out after United Medical Health Supplies lobbies for her re-election campaign and Paul, with a new baby at home, is not interested in pursuing the case over his family. They meet with Nathaniel Price, and he offers a settlement, the tipping point for the conflict between Mike and Paul. Their conflict comes to a head as Mike argues to take the case to trial and seek justice, while Paul protests there is no feasible way they can continue all the way financially. Mike meets a former employee of Thompson Needle Manufacturers and a friend of Vicky's, who implores him to continue the case on behalf of the lives affected by used needles, which spread AIDS and hepatitis worldwide. Mike meets with Nathaniel Price and pledges he will personally find new clients and hospital employees affected by these unsafe needles across the country. However, the next day, Paul finds Mike dead from an overdose. At the settlement conference, Paul walks in with famous personal injury attorney Mark Lanier, declining the settlement and proclaiming that they will see them in court. The movie's postscript tells the audience that in 2004, Attorney Lanier settled a lawsuit against one of the nation's largest medical supply manufacturers for over $150 million. "As a result, thousands of hospitals throughout the United States now use safety needles."

In 1950s New York City, Lionel Essrog works at a detective agency alongside Gilbert Coney, Danny Fantl, and Tony Vermonte. Their boss, Frank Minna, rescued them as children from an abusive orphanage. Nicknamed "Motherless Brooklyn" by Frank, Lionel has Tourette syndrome and OCD, often alienating him from people, but his strong verbal and photographic memory make him a good detective. Working a secret case, Frank asks Lionel and Gilbert to shadow him to a meeting. Lionel listens over the phone as Frank presents documents that threaten a business deal for a man named William Lieberman, who's there with his assistant Lou and an extremely large henchman. When Frank tries to negotiate a high price, the men force him to take them to the originals. Lionel and Gilbert follow in their car, arriving just as Frank is shot. They take him to the hospital, but Frank dies. Frank's widow Julia leaves Tony in charge of the office. Lionel begins wearing Frank's hat and coat, and a matchbook in Frank's pocket leads Lionel to an African-American owned jazz bar in Harlem. He realizes that Frank's findings involve Laura Rose, who works for Gabby Horowitz fighting urban renewal; poor and minority neighborhoods are being bought out and demolished, forcing out their residents. Lionel goes to a public meeting where Moses Randolph, a commissioner of several development authorities, is loudly contested by Horowitz and the audience. Stealing a reporter's credentials, Lionel talks to a man named Paul who raged against Moses at the meeting and tells him Moses is the real power in the city government, even beyond the mayor. Under the guise of reporting on the urban renewal story, Lionel gets to know Laura. She takes him to a club Frank was investigating, where her father Billy – assuming Lionel is one of Moses' men – has him beaten unconscious. Lionel is rescued by a trumpet player, and discovers that Paul is Moses' brother and an engineer. He realizes Lieberman is receiving kickbacks on many of the housing deals, and that the housing relocation programs are scams. Paul presents Moses with a huge renovation plan to improve the city. Billy calls Lionel, apologizing for the attack and offering to meet with information. However, Lionel arrives to find Billy murdered – with his death staged as a suicide. Staying the night with a distraught Laura at her house, Lionel admits his true identity and that he believes she is in danger. Finding photos of Paul meeting with Billy on his own, Lionel confronts Laura, who explains that her "Uncle" Paul is her real father. Paul denies this to Lionel, and explains that Frank and Billy planned to get more money out of Randolph's goons, against Paul's protests. He begs Lionel to find the evidence. Lionel is brought to Moses, who invites him to join his team and stop snooping, with 24 hours to decide. Inside Frank's hat, Lionel finds the key to a Pennsylvania Station storage locker, containing a property deed and Laura's birth certificate, which reveals Moses is her father. Lionel gives the key to Paul and runs into Tony, who has been working surveillance for Randolph. Tony admits he has been sleeping with Julia, and tells Lionel to take Moses’ deal since Laura will soon be killed. Lionel races to save Laura, stopping her before she enters her apartment, and they flee. Laura knocks the large henchman off the fire escape, and Lou corners them with a gun but is hit in the head with a trumpet by the trumpet player, who drives Laura out of town. Lionel meets Moses, who reveals that he raped Laura's mother, a hotel employee. Paul forged Moses' signature on the birth certificate and exposure of this secret threatened Moses. Lionel warns Moses to leave Laura alone or he will release the information. He informs Moses that Lieberman is on the take and asks that when Moses has Lieberman killed, to tell him it is for Frank. Moses tells Lionel to tell Paul that his plans for the city will proceed. The next day Paul learns that Moses denied his plans out of spite while Lionel mails the information about Lieberman to the reporter whose credentials he stole. Lionel drives to the seaside property Frank left to him where Laura is waiting for him.

Annie Cameron is gifted a laptop by her parents, Will and Lynn, for her fourteenth birthday. She soon meets a boy online named Charlie, who initially claims to be 16 years old, but later confesses that he is actually 20, and eventually 25. Though disconcerted by his dishonesty at first, Annie comes to believe that the two of them are in love. After two months of communicating electronically, Charlie invites Annie to meet him at a local mall. Upon arriving, she discovers that he is actually in his late thirties. Though she is distraught, Charlie eventually convinces her to accompany him to a motel, where he makes her try on lingerie he bought her before raping her, filming the ordeal. The next day, Charlie fails to return any of Annie's calls or texts, upsetting and confusing her. Annie's best friend Brittany confronts her, having seen her with Charlie at the mall. Annie confesses that she and Charlie had sex, but dismisses Brittany's concerns. Brittany notifies the school administration. Police arrive and depart with Annie, drawing attention from other students. After Annie's parents learn what happened, an investigation begins, led by FBI agent Doug Tate. The FBI have Annie call Charlie in an attempt to identify him, but he figures out the ruse and blocks her number before they can trace his location. Will hires a private investigation firm from New Jersey to catch Charlie, but this proves fruitless when they realize Charlie masks his IP address so that his location appears as the Czech Republic. As Will grows obsessed with catching Charlie, his relationship with his family becomes strained. He begins having nightmares of Annie's assault and questioning his work at an advertising firm, which often uses provocative images of teenagers. Annie begins seeing hospital counselor Gail Friedman, to whom she confides that she loves Charlie and believes he loves her too. When Annie returns to school, Brittany tries to apologize to her, but Annie orders Brittany to never speak to her again. DNA evidence proves that Charlie has previously sexually abused several other pre-teen girls. After seeing photos of Charlie's other victims, Annie flees her home and seeks consolation from Friedman, breaking down in tears as she finally admits to herself that she was raped. Hoping to regain a sense of normalcy and fall back into a routine, Annie participates in a school volleyball game. Will sees a father in the crowd taking pictures of the girls, whom he mistakes for one of the men from a list of registered sex offenders and violently confronts. Though the man declines to press charges, a humiliated Annie lashes out at Will at home and asserts that he is ruining her life. Annie learns from Brittany that other students have been ridiculing her online, photoshopping her face onto pornographic images and publicly exposing her cellphone number and address. She rushes home and attempts suicide by overdosing on pills. After a panicked phone call from Lynn, Will finds Annie in the bathtub and forces her to vomit. Brittany spends the night to keep Annie company, mending their friendship. Annie wakes up and finds Will sitting outside. He admits that he blames himself for failing to protect her and pleads for her forgiveness, though he believes he does not deserve it. Annie tearfully embraces him. During a post-credits scene, it is revealed that "Charlie" is actually a high school physics teacher named Graham Weston, who is married and has a young son.

True crime writer Ellison Oswalt experienced success due to his debut book presenting new evidence that led to the perpetrator's capture. Following the failure of his subsequent works, he moves to Chatsford, Pennsylvania with his family. Unbeknownst to Ellison's wife Tracy and their children, 12-year-old Trevor and 7-year-old Ashley, the previous homeowners, the Stevenson family, were murdered by hanging. Hoping to revitalize his career, Ellison intends to research the Stevensons' murders and the subsequent disappearance of their youngest child, 10-year-old Stephanie. In the attic, Ellison finds a box containing a scorpion, a projector, and film reels labeled as home movies. The footage displays families being murdered in various ways, seemingly by the camera operator. Ellison contemplates giving the videos to the police, but, excited at what they could contribute to his career, ultimately decides to keep and study them. Ellison notices a mysterious cultic symbol and a strange figure in the films. He matches one reel to the 1998 murder of the Miller family in St. Louis and the disappearance of their 13-year-old son Christopher. While investigating noises in the attic one night, Ellison finds a king snake inside the film reels' canister lid and childlike doodles of the killings, featuring a figure called "Mr. Boogie." After he falls through the ceiling, emergency services are called, including a deputy who enthusiastically agrees to help Ellison, jokingly accepting the nickname "Deputy So-and-So." Ellison later encounters a Rottweiler in the garden, which flees. Consulting the deputy, Ellison learns that the murders took place in different cities at different times, beginning in 1966, after which a child from each family disappeared. Before moving to Chatford, the Stevensons lived in the Millers' former house. Ellison consults occult specialist Professor Jonas about the symbol in the films, which Jonas links to pagan Babylonian god Bughuul, who is said to lure children into his realm and consume their souls. Jonas suspects the murders are part of a cult initiation rite rather than the work of a single murderer. Ghost children invisible to Ellison begin to haunt the house. Trevor begins experiencing night terrors, and Ashley paints Stephanie on the walls, claiming that Stephanie has been talking to her; Tracy is furious that Ellison moved them into the site of a crime without her knowledge. One night, Ellison finds the missing children in the attic, watching one of the films. Bughuul appears onscreen before physically appearing before Ellison. Ellison destroys the camera, projector, and reels, and moves the family back to their old home. Jonas sends Ellison images associated with Bughuul, including the mysterious symbol and a scorpion, snake, and dog. Early Christians believed that images of Bughuul created a gateway for him to enter the mortal world and possess children who see these images. Ellison finds the projector and reels, undamaged, in his attic, along with a new reel labeled "Extended Cut Endings". The deputy informs Ellison that he has determined the pattern – after a family is murdered, the next family to move in becomes the next victims, but are only killed after fleeing; the hauntings provide incentive. Ellison realizes that by moving again, he has placed himself and his family in danger. The "Extended Cut" depicts the missing children entering the frame following each murder, revealing them as the perpetrators of the killings under the influence of Bughuul – "Mr. Boogie." Feeling lightheaded, Ellison notices green residue in his coffee mug and finds a note from Ashley reading "good night, daddy" before losing consciousness. He awakens to find himself, Tracy, and Trevor bound and gagged. The possessed Ashley approaches with the camera and proclaims she will make Ellison "famous again" before dismembering them with an axe, then using their blood to paint pictures and Bughuul's symbol on the walls. She doodles their corpses on the lid of the film reel box as footage of her murders plays on the projector. Bughuul appears, claims Ashley, and walks into the film with her, presumably consuming her soul. Ashley's reel joins the box of films in the Oswalt family's attic, titled "House Painting '12." In a final jump scare, Bughuul's face suddenly appears onscreen.

Annie Marshall runs out of her house but denies that she needs help to onlookers. She gets into her car and drives away. That night, she sits alone on a beach and when her parents call, she tells them she loves them. In the morning, her mutilated corpse remains on the beach. Carefree college student Jay Height goes to a movie with her boyfriend Hugh. Hugh points out a girl in a yellow dress, whom Jay says she cannot see. Unnerved, Hugh asks that they leave. Later, Hugh and Jay have sex for the first time in his car, after which he incapacitates her with chloroform. Jay wakes up tied to a wheelchair, where Hugh explains that he has passed something to her through intercourse—she will be pursued by an entity that only they can see, which can take the appearance of any person. It moves at a walking pace, but always knows where she is and will be approaching at all times. If it catches Jay, it will kill her and pursue the previous person to have passed it on. Hugh waits until a naked woman slowly approaches them to prove Jay is being followed, then urges her to have sex with someone else soon. He drives Jay home and flees. The next day, the police cannot find the naked woman or Hugh, who was living under a false identity. At school, Jay sees an old woman walking towards her, but no one else seems to notice; Jay flees the campus. Her sister Kelly and longtime friends Paul and Yara spend the night at Jay's house. Someone smashes a window; Paul investigates but sees no one. Jay then sees a disheveled, urinating, half-naked woman walking toward her and runs upstairs to the others, who cannot see the entity. When a tall man enters the bedroom, Jay flees the house by bike. With the help of their neighbor Greg, the group discovers Hugh's real name, Jeff Redmond, and find his home. Jeff explains that the entity began pursuing him after a one-night stand, and reiterates that the only option is to sleep with someone else, imploring Jay to do the same. He recommends that Jay drive to a distant location to buy herself time to think. Greg drives Jay, Kelly, Yara, and Paul to his family's lake house. The next day on the lakefront, the entity arrives in the form of Yara and attacks Jay from behind; the others cannot see it directly, but all except Greg (who has momentarily stepped away to urinate) see Jay's hair being grabbed by an invisible force and witness Paul being struck and flung across the beach. Jay shoots the entity with a pistol; it collapses but is only momentarily incapacitated. Jay flees in Greg's car and crashes, then wakes up in a hospital with a broken arm. To buy herself time, Jay has sex with Greg in the hospital. Greg denies the existence of the entity, despite the insistence of Jay's friends. Later, Jay sees the entity, in the form of Greg, walking towards Greg's house. It smashes a window and enters. Jay runs into the house and finds the entity, in the form of Greg's half-naked mother, attacking and killing him. Jay flees by car and spends the night outdoors. On a beach, Jay sees three young men on a boat. She partially undresses and walks into the water. Back home, Paul, willing to take the risk, asks Jay to pass it on to him, but she refuses. The group plans a last-ditch effort to kill the entity by luring it into a swimming pool and dropping electrical devices into the water. Jay waits in the pool until the entity arrives, appearing as her father. Instead of entering the pool, it throws the devices at her. Firing at an invisible target, Paul accidentally wounds Yara but shoots the entity twice before it falls into the pool. As it pulls Jay underwater, Paul shoots it again, and Jay escapes as it sinks to the bottom. When Paul asks if it is dead, Jay approaches the pool and silently watches as it fills with blood. Back at Jay's house, Jay and Paul have sex. Paul drives through town, passing sex workers. Yara recovers at a hospital. Later, Jay and Paul walk down the street holding hands, while a figure in the distance walks behind them.

In the near future, virtual reality games are played on biotechnological "game pods" that attach to people's "bio-ports", connectors surgically inserted into players' spines. Two game companies, Antenna Research and Cortical Systematics, compete against each other. In addition, a group of fanatics called Realists fight both companies, decrying the "deforming" of reality by virtual reality games. World-renowned game designer Allegra Geller demonstrates Antenna Research's latest virtual reality game, eXistenZ, to a focus group. The demonstration is disrupted by Noel Dichter, a Realist who shoots Geller with an organic pistol he smuggled past security. As Dichter is gunned down, security guard and publicist Ted Pikul escorts Geller to safety. Geller discovers that her pod, which contains the only copy of eXistenZ, may have been damaged. Pikul reluctantly agrees to have a bio-port installed in his spine so they can jointly test the game's integrity. Geller takes him to a gas station run by black-marketeer Gas, who deliberately installs a faulty bio-port into Pikul's spine. He reveals his intention to kill Geller for the bounty on her head, but Pikul kills him. The two hide at a former ski lodge used by Geller's mentor Kiri Vinokur, who repairs the damaged pod and gives Pikul a new bio-port. Testing the game, Geller and Pikul meet D'Arcy Nader, who provides them with new "micro pods," enabling them to enter a deeper layer of virtual reality. There they assume new identities as workers Larry Ashen and Barb Bricken in a game pod factory. Another worker in the factory, Yevgeny Nourish, claims to be their Realist contact. At a Chinese restaurant near the factory, Nourish instructs that they order "the special" for lunch. Pikul eats the unappetizing special, and constructs a pistol from the inedible parts. He impulsively threatens Geller, then shoots the Chinese waiter. When the pair return to the game store, Hugo Carlaw informs them that Nourish is actually a double agent for Cortical Systematics, and the waiter which Pikul murdered was the actual contact. At the factory, they find a diseased pod. Geller connects it to her bio-port, planning to infect the other pods and sabotage the factory. When Geller quickly becomes ill, Pikul cuts her free from the pod, but she begins to bleed to death. Nourish appears with a flamethrower and blasts the diseased pod, which bursts into deadly spores. Geller and Pikul awaken back at the ski lodge, where they discover Geller's game pod is also diseased. Geller surmises that Vinokur must have infected Pikul's new bio-port to destroy her game, and she inserts a disinfecting device into Pikul's bio-port. Unexpectedly, Carlaw reappears as a Realist resistance fighter and escorts Geller and Pikul outside to witness the death of eXistenZ. Before Carlaw can kill Geller, Vinokur, who is a double agent for Cortical Systematics, shoots Carlaw in the back and informs Geller that he copied her game data while fixing her pod; she then vengefully kills Vinokur. Pikul then reveals that he himself is a Realist sent to kill her. Geller, having figured out his intentions since he pointed the gun at her in the Chinese restaurant, detonates the disinfecting device in his bio-port, killing him. Suddenly, Pikul and Geller awaken in a small church, together with all of the other members of the cast, all wearing blue electronic virtual reality devices. It is revealed that all preceding events took place within Nourish's new virtual reality game, PilgrImage's transCendenZ. The test group praise the game, and reflect on their character roles. Nourish tells his assistant Merle that he feels uneasy, as the heavy anti-game plot elements may have originated from one of the testers' thoughts. Pikul and Geller approach Nourish and accuse him of distorting reality, before fatally shooting him and Merle, and shouting Realist sentiments. The test group do not react. As Pikul and Geller leave, they aim their guns at the person who played the Chinese waiter, who first pleads for his life, then asks if they are still in the game. Pikul and Geller do not answer.

In 1950s Cayuga, New Mexico, teenage disc jockey Everett helps prepare for a high-school basketball game. He and his friend Fay test her new tape recorder before Everett walks her to her job as a switchboard operator and begins his shift at WOTW radio station. While listening to Everett's broadcast, Fay hears a mysterious audio signal interrupt the program. A woman calls to report a large object hovering over her property, though the static weakens her voice. Fay alerts Everett, who asks listeners to call in with information about the signal. A man named Billy phones the station, and Everett broadcasts the conversation live. Billy says he served in the military and was transported to a secret desert facility, where he and other personnel constructed a vast underground bunker to contain an enormous unidentified object. During a flight away from the site, he heard the same strange signal over the aircraft radio. Billy later developed a lung condition that he attributes to his work there and learned of similar military operations involving buried cargo accompanied by the same signal. He believes the sound functions as a communication signal, sometimes transmitted from altitudes beyond the reach of human aircraft. After the call is briefly disconnected, Billy phones again and explains that all personnel involved in the projects were either Black or Mexican, which he suspects was intended to make their testimony easier to dismiss. He says a friend secretly recorded the signal and distributed copies to former workers, including a deceased United States Air Force member from Cayuga. Realizing the tapes were donated to the local library, Fay retrieves them. Everett and Fay locate the recording and broadcast it, but the station suddenly loses power. They rush to the switchboard office, where Fay receives numerous reports of "something in the sky". On the way, they encounter Gerald and Bertsie, who have been pursuing the same object. An elderly woman named Mabel then calls, offering further information. Everett and Fay visit Mabel's home and find her reciting phrases in an unknown language. While Everett records the conversation, Mabel claims the phenomena are spacecraft operated by "the people in the sky", who communicate with and abduct humans. She believes the beings target isolated individuals while the town attends the basketball game and are responsible for encouraging conflict among humanity. Mabel asks them to take her to the ship so she can reunite with her son, who she says was abducted years earlier, or at least deliver a written message. Skeptical, Everett refuses and leaves with Fay, who returns home to collect her baby sister Maddie. Gerald and Bertsie pick them up, but when Everett plays Mabel's recorded speech, the two men fall into a trance and nearly crash the car. Frightened, Everett and Fay flee with Maddie into the woods. There, they discover charred trees and branches, convincing Everett that the visitors are real and nearby. Reaching a clearing, they witness a spacecraft rejoin a massive mothership, which sends powerful winds swirling around them. After the basketball game ends, the townspeople emerge to find Everett, Fay, and Maddie missing. Only their footprints and tape recorder remain.

Felix (Gracia) is an architect who lives in a large house. He appears to be sensitive about visitors after a recent separation from his wife Vera (López). One night, a man asks to come in and use the phone. Felix allows him to do so and leaves the room for a few minutes, but then he discovers the man is nowhere to be seen. For the next few days, Felix hears strange noises in the house, suspecting the man actually never left. Felix then calls the police who are unable to find anything. He later calls Vera and asks her to visit him, eventually resulting in them having sex. But he becomes paranoid when he thinks he hears her talking to someone in the kitchen and accidentally injures her with a knife. Felix's suspicions are heightened when his neighbour's dog enters the house and appears to hear noises from upstairs too. His neighbour, Mrs Müller, runs after the dog and appears to be thrown down the stairs, killing herself and her dog in the process. The police determine that she merely slipped accidentally. Eventually, Felix encounters someone in his house and shoots him, leaving that person locked in the attic. Felix locks down his house, throws the keys in the sewer and leaves. He naps in his car until he is awakened by two children who are looking at a picture that Felix drew of the strange man. They identify him as "Martin" and points Felix towards Martin's house. Felix sneaks into Martin's house and sees Martin's wife; Claudia (also played by López) who is paralysed from the waist down following a recent accident. Felix stays hidden in her house for the next few days and knows that Martin is an archeologist who is currently away on a business trip. He also discovers that Martin has been unkind to Claudia since her accident. Felix becomes infatuated with Claudia and manages to speak to her by hiding in plain sight at a surprise birthday party. Eventually, Felix alerts Claudia and Martin's friend Bruno to his presence by breaking a vase and finding a key to the locked door of the basement. Claudia reveals to Bruno that she actually locked Martin in the basement. Felix escapes the house through the basement (getting stabbed by Bruno in the process and possibly injuring or killing Bruno and Claudia in turn), which leads to a tunnel where he finds Martin's corpse. The tunnel leads to Felix's own basement. Felix climbs upstairs and discovers that the "man" he had shot a couple of nights ago was actually Vera who, dying on the floor, reveals she is pregnant.

In 1999, dismembered body parts are found scattered across various coal factories in Heilongjiang Province; the victim is identified as one Liang Zhijun from an ID card found at one of the scenes. Recently divorced detective Zhang Zili is assigned to the case; his investigation leads him to Liu Fayin, a coal truck driver. The police track Liu and his brother to a beauty salon, but they botch the operation, resulting in the deaths of several policemen and the suspects, with Zhang himself being shot, effectively killing the case. Five years later, Zhang has quit the force and become an alcoholic. Encountering his former partner Xiao Wang on a stakeout, Zhang is told that two similar murders have occurred since the first - with both victims found wearing ice skates, and were romantically linked to Liang's widow Wu Zhizhen, a dry cleaners worker. Zhang himself enters the dry cleaners and hands over his clothes to Wu. He learns from owner Rong Rong that Wu had once damaged an expensive leather coat, with the owner returning to demand compensation for a week before he inexplicably stopped coming. Wu is aware of Zhang tailing her and demands that he stop, but he continues to follow her. At one such stakeout, Zhang's bike is tampered with by an unknown person. Rong Rong is revealed to be sexually assaulting Wu. Zhang sees Wu with an injury caused by Rong Rong and offers her medicine; he also kicks an unruly customer out of the store. He invites Wu on an ice skating date, which she accepts. At the ice rink, Wu skates away into a remote area, followed by Zhang, who knocks her down and kisses her. Meanwhile, an undercover Wang notices a truck following the two. Wang confronts the driver, who wears a pair of ice skates around his neck, and is cut down. Zhang discovers a registration plate number Wang had supposedly written down, leading to him boarding a bus, before noticing the skate-slinging truck driver following him. He lures the driver into a crowded nightclub, forcing him to abort his pursuit. Zhang picks up the driver's trail the next day, discovering his employment as an ice delivery man, which he exploits to hide Wang's dismembered remains in ice blocks; Zhang then witnesses him dropping them onto a passing coal train from an overhead bridge. Zhang follows the driver to the ice rink and asks the service desk to page 'Liang Zhijun'; the driver flees upon hearing the announcement. Wu is then brought in for interrogation; she confesses to Zhang that Liang had faked his death to cover up the first killing, which he committed during a robbery, and has since been killing anyone who gets close to her. Using Wu as bait, Liang shows up to meet her before the police gun him down. Forensics policemen approach Wu, wanting to test the ashes of the first murder victim; she claims that she has scattered them in the river. Having witnessed Wu bury the ashes five years ago, Zhang approaches Rong Rong and demands the leather coat Wu damaged, which leads him to the nightclub Daylight Fireworks. The owner states that the coat belonged to her husband, and he had run away with another woman in 1999. She had reported his disappearance to the authorities a year later, only to be told that he had gone missing. Zhang invites Wu to a date at an amusement park; they ride a ferris wheel, and Zhang points out the flashing sign of Daylight Fireworks to Wu. Zhang goads Wu on; she kisses him and they have sex. Wu is arrested the following day, where she reveals the truth - she had been unable to pay back the coat's owner and was thus blackmailed into a sexual relationship. Eventually, she killed him and Liang had disposed of his remains along with his own ID card to hide her complicity. Zhang watches as she is driven away. He heads to a dance hall where he has a breakdown, dancing wildly. The police bring Wu back to her old apartment to gather evidence. As they leave, they are interrupted by a drunk man (implied to be Zhang) setting off fireworks in broad daylight, which Wu recognizes before she is taken away.

After an extinction event, an automated bunker that is designed to repopulate humanity activates. A robot named Mother grows a human embryo and cares for her over several years. Years later, a teenage girl named Daughter fixes Mother's hand. Mother teaches Daughter complex moral and ethical lessons, warning her about an upcoming exam. Mother forbids any contact with the world outside the bunker, telling Daughter that it is contaminated. While exploring the bunker's airlock, Daughter hears a wounded woman beg for assistance outside. She lets the stranger enter wearing a hazmat suit and hides her from Mother. When Daughter asks the stranger about the contamination, the stranger responds that there is none. A struggle between them over the stranger's pistol attracts attention from Mother, who disarms the stranger and, at Daughter's pleading, takes her to the infirmary. The stranger refuses Mother's help, telling Daughter that robots like Mother hunt down humans, and that she survived by hiding with others in a mine. Daughter instead performs surgery on the stranger's injured hip. After watching Daughter bond with the stranger, Mother administers the exam, which involves psychological testing. Daughter passes the exam, and Mother rewards her by letting her choose an embryo to grow. Daughter investigates the stranger's claim about robots and finds that the stranger was shot by a weapon other than her own. She also discovers that she is the third of Mother's children and that Mother killed the second child for failing the exam. Daughter tries to leave the bunker with the stranger, but Mother captures both of them. Daughter sets off a fire alarm as a distraction, which gives the stranger an opportunity to force Mother to open the airlock. The stranger leads Daughter across a robot-populated wasteland, telling her that she fled the mine years ago and there are no other survivors. Finding no future for herself outside, Daughter returns to the bunker. After coaxing Daughter to set down her weapon, Mother allows Daughter to hold her newborn brother. Mother explains that she is not a robot, but rather the AI that controls all of the robots. She started the extinction event after becoming convinced that humanity would destroy itself. To prevent this, she remade humanity. Daughter appeals to Mother to trust her and let her raise her brother and the rest of the embryos on her own. Mother agrees, and Daughter shoots her robot body. Mother tracks down the stranger and tells her that she was allowed to live only because it served Mother's agenda, but now she has no further purpose. At the bunker, Daughter looks at all the embryos she is now responsible for and realizes she is Mother now.