| Director | Brandon Cronenberg |
|---|---|
| Budget | $2.5 million |
| Box office | $901,093 |
Tasya Vos is an assassin who takes control of other people's bodies to carry out her hits. Through an implant installed in the unwitting host's brain, Vos' consciousness is inserted into their minds. She returns to her own body by forcing the host to commit suicide at the end of the job. In the first hit shown, she deviates from her protocol and struggles to control her own gun, instead getting the host shot by shooting at arriving police forces.
Vos struggles with neurological symptoms and increasing detachment from her own identity, and cannot fully separate her work from her interactions with her husband, Michael, and son, Ira. She "practices" assuming her normal persona the same way she practices impersonating her hosts. Thoughts of violence haunt her domestic life, such as when putting Ira to bed and having sex with Michael.
Vos's handler, retired assassin Girder, is critical of her desire to remain connected to her family and expresses the belief that Vos would be a better killer without personal attachments. In a debriefing session meant to reconnect her with her real identity, Vos sorts through a series of objects associated with personal memories and pauses on a butterfly that she pinned and framed as a child. She tells Girder she feels guilty for killing it.
Despite her fragile mental state and fatigue, Vos agrees to perform a major hit on wealthy CEO John Parse and his daughter, Ava, by possessing Ava's fiancé, Colin Tate. While assuming the host's life, the neurological symptoms worsen, but Vos hides this during her handler's check-ins. The hit is only a partial success as Ava dies, but not Parse.
Vos attempts to finish the job per protocol by forcing Tate to shoot himself, but again cannot make him pull the trigger. During a dissociative break, in which Vos struggles to remain in control of Tate's body, he stabs himself in the skull, damaging the implant and causing severe neurological symptoms on Vos's own body, causing her internal physical damage. Vos discovers she can neither leave Tate's body, nor overpower his consciousness. Tate regains control, but is severely disoriented, in shock and traumatised from the violence before him, so he flees the crime scene. He seeks refuge with his friend Reeta, while experiencing fragmented memories of Vos's life.
He kills Reeta while struggling with dissociative memories of the hit on Parse and Ava. Eddie, a co-employee from Tate's workplace reveals himself to be a plant from Vos' agency, and arrives at the apartment to help Vos regain control and complete Tate's suicide. The attempt fails and Tate kills Eddie during another dissociative episode in which Tate becomes aware of Vos's presence inside his body. His consciousness overpowers hers in a psychic confrontation, giving him access to memories of her husband, child and home.
Tate goes to Vos's home and holds her husband at gunpoint, demanding to know what she did to him. Vos appears inside Tate's mind and goads Tate into killing Michael. When Michael knocks the gun from Tate's hand, Tate kills him with a meat cleaver, after which he places the gun in his mouth and asks to be pulled out, suggesting it was Vos in control. Moments later, Ira stabs Tate in the throat, killing him, reminiscent of the opening sequence's stabbing. Vos uses Tate's last moments to shoot Ira dead. Ira is then revealed to also have been a host.
Vos returns to her own body and discovers that it was Girder who had taken control of Ira. With Ira and Michael both dead, she is now free of all human attachments, as Girder wanted.
In another debriefing, Vos sorts through her personal objects again. She contemplates and recognizes the butterfly, but does not express any guilt for killing it. Girder praises her.