Anguish

In Los Angeles, the theater The Rex opens by showing The Mommy, a film within a film. The opening session places the audience directly into a claustrophobic mood as onscreen events intrude on the real world. The line between cinema and reality begins to blur as the audience settles in.

John Pressman is a myopic, increasingly blind ophthalmologist's assistant who becomes a pawn in his mother Alice's plot. Alice hypnotizes him and pushes him to murder, collecting his victims' eyes to bring them back to her. This perverse motive underpins the escalating violence that follows.

One evening, John barricades himself inside a movie theater showing The Lost World and begins killing patrons with a scalpel. The violence is brutal and methodical as he roams the aisles, sealing off the cinema for his mother’s purposes. Patrons scramble to evacuate as the siege unfolds.

As authorities attempt to talk John down, Alice arrives at the theater and is accidentally shot dead by the police. The tragedy heightens the emotional stakes and intensifies the confrontation inside The Rex. The siege continues with the surviving patrons seeking escape.

As The Mommy continues, patrons experience anxiety attacks and disorientation in response to the onscreen violence. A man fixates on his watch, while a teenage girl named Patty breaks down in tears, showing the film's grip on their psyches. The tension in the theater mirrors the chaos unfolding onscreen.

The man moves from the auditorium to the concession stand, pulls a gun, and shoots a concession worker and another employee, dragging their bodies toward the bathroom. Linda witnesses the carnage as it parallels John’s killings in The Mommy. The theater's fear intensifies as the bodies are hidden from the audience.

Linda escapes the theater and stops a passerby on the street, asking him to call the police. She becomes a critical witness to the unfolding violence and coordinates outside help. The escape underscores the widening threat beyond the theater walls.

Inside The Rex, The Man barricades the projectionist in the projector booth, returns to threaten Patty, and begins reciting dialogue from The Mommy. His actions fuse with John Pressman’s onscreen rampage as he uses Patty as a human shield.

A SWAT team converges on The Rex, gaining access to the projector booth via the roof while a police sniper aims to end the siege. The tension peaks as Patty remains in danger, watching the deadly confrontation unfold on screen.

The police sniper shoots and kills The Man after Alice's death, and the siege collapses. Looking up at the screen, Patty experiences a vision of John gouging out her eye, linking her trauma to the events she witnessed.

Patty is taken to the hospital for evaluation while Linda waits nearby. Doctors reassure her that she is physically okay, but they warn that the experience will leave deep psychological scars. The hospital environment reflects the aftermath of the trauma.

An unseen orderly in the hospital elevator aims a scalpel at Linda, heightening the sense of danger. Later, the figure that enters Patty's room is revealed to be John, who claims he is only a figment of her imagination as he examines her eyes.

The final sequence reveals that Patty's story was a film within a film within a film, as patrons in a theater watch the events unfold onscreen. The Mommy's credits roll while the audience files out, leaving a lingering sense of unreality about what was real and what was imagined.