| Director | Joshua Fraiman |
|---|
Rachel Darwin, a pregnant woman going through a career crisis, has recurring dreams in which a shadow man wearing a fedora forcibly removes a deformed baby from her womb. Searching online, she discovers a world of night sufferers like herself, visited by watchers while they sleep. Her husband Scott believes that her experiences are hallucinations born from a subconscious still coping with his previous infidelity and a fear of childbirth. She seeks help and determines she is suffering from sleep paralysis. Troublingly, she also sees the "Hat Man" while awake, as a distorted blur in the background of a photograph, or a flicker in the corner of an eye. Rachel believes she may be being stalked by a malevolent supernatural entity.
At her regular group therapy session for recovering addicts, Rachel shares her experience and befriends the only person who believes her, a strange man named William who claims to suffer from a similar sleep paralysis and visions. Rachel goes to William's apartment to learn more about his investigations into shadow people. His research has convinced him that multidimensional beings surround everyone, creatures who feed on human souls.
Rachel is now even more terrified. She slips into an intoxicated dream confronted by horrors from her past. The nightmares get worse and Rachel begins to struggle as she slips between reality and nightmare. Scott takes her on a weekend getaway to an isolated winter cabin to take Rachel's mind off the Hat Man and rekindle their feelings for each other.
Meanwhile, William examines photographs he secretly took of Rachel during group therapy and sees the Hat Man standing behind her. Rachel continues dreaming of the Hat Man at night and catching brief glimpses of him during the day. Frustrated with Rachel's aloofness and strange behaviour during her waking nightmares, a drunken Scott tries to rape her. Rachel knocks him out and returns to the city in their car.
Rachel spends the night at William's. He shows her the pictures he took of her, but the Hat Man is not there. Rachel believes him; the same thing happens to photographs she has taken. Rachel and William have sex. He is sure that, with her help, he can put a stop the shadow figure.
The next morning, Scott wakes and has his legal assistant Sally pick him up. Scott learns from the recovery group leader that Rachel was last seen with William. Scott bribes the group leader for William's address.
William hypnotizes Rachel in an effort to explore her subconscious and confront the shadow man. Rachel once more has a vision of the Hat Man removing the baby from her womb. Rachel sees her childhood home, where the shadow man appears behind Rachel's mother after she kills herself in the bathtub. Rachel sees William's apartment and her own hypnotism session. William realizes that Rachel is astral projecting. She sees the Hat Man appear and kill William by supernatural means. Rachel stabs herself in order to wake up, and discovers William has indeed been killed.
Arriving at William's during the attempt to fight the shadow man, Scott finds the door locked. The Hat Man attacks Rachel, who wrests his knife away and stabs him. He dissipates. Scott tries speaking with Rachel through the door, and she realizes that her belly is bleeding. The Hat Man reforms out of the shadows and stabs Rachel repeatedly to death. The door then unlocks on its own, and Scott discovers to his horror the two corpses.
Scott is arrested for the murders. During questioning, Scott realizes that his wife was telling the truth when he sees the Hat Man materialize in a photograph as well as behind the interrogating detective.