| Director | Richard Shepard |
|---|
Charlotte Willmore is a talented young cellist who left Bachoff, a prestigious music school in Boston, to care for her terminally ill mother. Following her mother's death, Charlotte reaches out to Anton, the head of Bachoff, who invites her to Shanghai in hopes of selecting a new student. Charlotte befriends Elizabeth “Lizzie” Wells, Anton's star pupil and her replacement. After a night of clubbing, they return to Lizzie's hotel room and have sex.
The next morning, Charlotte offers the hungover Lizzie some ibuprofen, which she takes with alcohol, and the two go on a trip through rural China. Boarding a bus after a street food meal, Lizzie feels sick and takes more of Charlotte's ibuprofen. Lizzie later throws up maggots and panics, frightening the other passengers until the driver kicks her and Charlotte from the bus. Increasingly ill and paranoid, Lizzie hallucinates bugs bursting out of her skin. Charlotte offers her a meat cleaver, and Lizzie hacks off her own right hand. It is revealed that Charlotte drugged Lizzie with her late mother's medication, which induces nausea and hallucinations as well as stealing the meat cleaver and manipulating Lizzie into amputating herself.
Three weeks later, Anton and his wife, Paloma, give their new student from China, Zhang Li, a tour of Bachoff and the "Chapel," an acoustically perfect room where the academy's best students perform. That night, Lizzie arrives unexpectedly, her right hand missing. She explains her recollection of events to Anton and Paloma, and that she was discovered unconscious on the side of the road with a makeshift tourniquet keeping her alive. Lizzie is adamant that Charlotte orchestrated the incident out of jealousy. Anton, initially sympathetic, turns cold and expels Lizzie from the academy.
Lizzie confronts Charlotte in her home, subdues her with a taser, and drags her back to Bachoff. When Charlotte awakens, she is confronted by Anton and reveals why she orchestrated Lizzie's dismemberment. Charlotte figured out Bachoff's elite students are indoctrinated and forced to "pay the price" by Anton's sex cult. In flashbacks, Charlotte had also experienced years of rape and torture at the hands of Anton for failing to achieve musical "Perfection." She planned Lizzie's amputation to save her from Bachoff.
Anton brings Charlotte to the Chapel and forces her to perform, saying a small mistake will result in Zhang receiving the same treatment. Unsettled, Charlotte eventually makes a mistake. Everyone leaves except Anton's associates, Theis and Geoffrey, who prepare to rape her. Lizzie threatens to rape Charlotte with her hand stump as revenge, but Theis and Geoffrey suddenly collapse and die. Lizzie and Charlotte kiss and it is revealed the two conspired together, poisoning the men's drinks. Charlotte's plot to render Lizzie expendable to the academy resulted in Lizzie coming to her senses about Anton's brainwashing, and together they plotted revenge.
The two drug and kill Paloma, then confront Anton, armed with kitchen knives. Anton manages to mutilate Charlotte's left arm before Lizzie knocks him unconscious. Some unspecified time later, Anton, his mouth and eyes sewn shut and limbs amputated, is forced to listen as Charlotte and Lizzie perform for him in the Chapel playing as one, each compensating for the other's missing hand.