| Director | Morgan O'Neill |
|---|---|
| Budget | $30 million |
In Buffalo, New York, a man named Carl picks up a woman he thinks is a prostitute and takes him to his home. When he spots that she is transgender, he angrily murders her, cuts up the body, and places the pieces in a freezer. Meanwhile, Mike Fletcher, a detective, becomes obsessed with the case, which is under threat of being shut down due to its inactivity. A troubled Thanksgiving holiday dinner reveals that he has been ignoring his family, including his rebellious daughter, Abby. Following an argument with her mother, Abby sneaks out of the house to be with her boyfriend Tad. At the diner where he works, Tad breaks up with her, and Abby runs outside. Tad sees her talk to a person in a car; when he next looks, she has disappeared. Carl kidnaps Abby and chains her up in his basement, where he keeps two other young women prisoner, Brittany and Lauren, who suffer from Stockholm syndrome.
Mike and his partner, Kelsey Walker, immediately investigate Abby's disappearance. Although he initially denies any knowledge of Abby's disappearance, Tad shows up at the police station the next day and identifies Darryl, a former suspect and Carl's co-conspirator, who he saw at the diner. Mike and Kelsey interrogate Darryl, but Mike physically assaults him and is taken off the case. Mike breaks into Darryl's house and finds a list of pharmaceuticals that Darryl has supplied to Carl, before Kelsey shows up to back him up. He takes the list to the hospital and has a brief conversation with Carl, who works as a cook there. Darryl's boss tells Mike that Darryl has not shown up for work and the list of drugs is written by a non-professional. Mike calls the company on the back of the list in the hope of finding him, but they are too busy to immediately respond.
That night, a snow storm shuts down the airport and forces Darryl to stay in town. Mike and Kelsey track Darryl to a hotel but find him dead and circumstantial evidence planted by Carl pointing to him as the kidnapper. Mike receives a call from the company, which turns out to be a catering company. He pieces that together with details of Carl's description by a would-be victim and realizes that Carl is the killer. He and Kelsey make their way to Carl's house as Kelsey reports it over the phone. Meanwhile, Abby, who had framed Brittany for breaking Carl's rules, convinces him that Brittany was just celebrating the fact she is pregnant, and Abby takes Brittany's place for a special dinner he had planned; she uses this opportunity to stab him with a corkscrew. Carl throws her back into the basement, where a pregnant Lauren's water has broken. Due to her immobility, she asks Abby to help cut the baby out.
Mike and Kelsey arrive at the house and find plenty of evidence, including a nursery with several babies in it. They hear noises from below, and, searching for the basement, Mike briefly talks to Abby over the house intercom. Abby tells him that Carl keeps the basement door key around his neck. Mike confronts and shoots Carl, but Kelsey picks up Carl's discarded shotgun and shoots Mike, revealing that she was with Carl the entire time (as she was Carl's first victim); her infertility left them unable to have children, so he set up the operation to kidnap prostitutes and force them to have children. Carl dies, but before Kelsey kills Mike, he reveals that Abby is pregnant. Kelsey frees Abby and takes Lauren's just-born baby, assuring them that they're safe. The police find Carl's nursery, which is now empty. Weeks later, Kelsey, using a new name, is shown to have moved to another city with the missing babies. She leaves a phone message to Abby in which she congratulates Abby on her expectant motherhood, which Abby later listens to, including the sound of a baby crying in the background. The film ends with Walker holding one of the abducted infants in her arms while staring towards the screen.