Absolution

A travelling motorcyclist named Blakey arrives at the rural Catholic school and asks Fr. Goddard if there are any odd jobs he can do. He is told there are none available. This meeting sets the tension between the outsider and the school's authorities and foreshadows his uneasy place at the school.

Blakey establishes a camp in the woods near the school and quietly begins stealing food from the kitchen at night. Stanfield, a unpopular schoolboy, notices him and forms an uneasy friendship with the outsider. The two outsiders become allies while Fr. Goddard watches from a distance.

Fr. Goddard uses a class to discuss the Catholic concept of confession, stressing that a priest cannot break the seal of confession. He warns that even serious crimes, including murder, must remain secret. The lesson foreshadows the moral trap waiting for the boys.

Stanfield grows closer to Blakey and begins spending less time with his friend Dyson. Goddard forbids Stanfield to see Blakey, but Stanfield disobeys. Blakey prods him to make up stories about sexual dalliances, which Stanfield later recounts to Fr. Goddard in confession.

Two policemen arrive at the school invited by Fr. Goddard to remove Blakey from the grounds. They beat him and tell him to move on. Stanfield arrives later and Blakey, still upset, swears at him while Stanfield nervously clutches a rock.

During confession, Stanfield tells Fr. Goddard that he has accidentally killed Blakey and buried the body in the woods. Goddard goes to the burial site to verify what he has heard. He digs and finds what looks like a head, but it is revealed to be a pumpkin, signaling that this is a cruel prank by the boys.

Dyson appears and offers to take the blame for the prank, but Stanfield pushes him away and walks off. The tension between the boys grows as the idea of guilt and confession becomes tangled with fear of the seal of confession.

In the chapel, Dyson enters the confessional to say he was a willing accomplice. An unseen person then enters, but Stanfield's voice is heard confessing that this time he really has murdered Blakey. Fr. Goddard realizes the confessions have become a dangerous tangle of lies and truth.

Unable to ignore the mounting danger, Goddard returns to the woods and finds what looks like a leg brace half-exposed in the ground, surrounded by the boys' laughter. He demands the culprit reveal themselves and the scene signals a fatal confrontation looming on the horizon.

Goddard locates Stanfield in the woods and, in a moment of desperate resolve, strikes him repeatedly with a shovel, killing him. He staggers back toward the chapel, overwhelmed by guilt and the moral burden of the confession.

Back in the chapel, Dyson reveals that he actually killed Blakey and later moved the body, motivated by revenge for Fr. Goddard's cruelty. He explains the other confessions were part of a dangerous deception and presses the priest to confront the truth.

Fr. Goddard declares that he will take the blame for both killings and asks Dyson for forgiveness, a decision complicated by the seal of confession. Dyson offers the choice of confessing or suicide, refuses forgiveness, and walks away whistling as the priest collapses in mortification.