A space capsule crashes near Roswell, New Mexico. Linda Murphy, answering to Ethan Marcos, takes charge of the investigation, steering a focused probe to learn what the craft and its occupant might reveal. The capsule belongs to a clandestine project called ELBE, a joint US–Soviet effort aimed at ending the Cold War through a bold first-contact experiment. Marcos presses Linda to move quickly, hoping to uncover answers before the Russians learn of the capsule’s return.
Linda’s father, Noah Murphy, a former lead scientist on ELBE, looms large in her backstory. The two grew distant when Noah used Abraham, a chimp Linda had befriended, as the capsule’s pilot. The mission was ultimately declared a failure when Earth lost contact with the craft in 2007, leaving Linda to pick up the pieces of a project that never quite met its dawn.
Linda, aided by General Reynolds in command of the field team, leads the expedition to the crash site. They discover that the occupant escaped the capsule after the landing, and the craft is coated in a strange green fluid. The being, Abraham, grows alarmingly large and begins a terrifying rampage, killing Reynolds and several soldiers. Linda is knocked unconscious, but she overhears a nearby team’s arrival and glimpses the chaos only to realize the threat is far from over. The team’s arrival is followed by a second threat—an unseen Gila monster that has somehow ingested the green substance.
Abraham is captured and taken to Langley Research Center for study, while Linda, Eva Kuleshov — a scientist who is secretly a Russian agent — and a crew of researchers try to understand the mutation. At the crash site, the mutated Gila monster destroys a bridge and then a passenger train, underscoring the danger the planet faces. Marcos responds by sending Linda and Lab Tech Jones to pursue the evolving beasts, tracking them as they vanish underground.
Eva reveals a troubling twist: the alien substance loses its stability in Earth’s atmosphere, so she secretly injects the remaining supply into Abraham to keep him from collapsing. Abraham’s growth accelerates, and he escapes Langley. Linda, puzzled by his sudden, further mutation, confronts Marcos and Eva, who hint at rumors that Abraham may have played a part in destroying the Extraterrestrial Defense Initiative. Scientists eventually determine that Abraham inhaled the substance over time inside the capsule, whereas the Gila monster directly consumed it. General Delaney—the successor to Reynolds—orders the chase to bring the monsters back into custody as swiftly as possible.
The hunt moves to Huntington, West Virginia, where Linda uncovers a critical clue: the substance begins breaking down in the blood Abraham leaves behind, forcing Eva to admit her deception. Linda removes Eva from the operation and joins a group of Special Forces soldiers who engage Abraham, but the連 encounter proves deadly as the soldiers are killed and Abraham escapes. Eva disappears with an Apache helicopter, leaving a shaken team behind.
Back at Langley, Linda and Jones uncover beams of cosmic energy emanating from the Andromeda Galaxy, which appear to remotely control the monsters through the substance within their bodies. The Hubble Space Telescope detects an approaching alien ship, prompting Marcos to call Noah for help. Linda suspects Abraham may resist the aliens’ control, and she, Jones, and Noah devise a plan to jam the alien signal with a transmitter.
A transmitter is strapped to the Washington Monument, and Abraham makes a dramatic entrance into the city, seemingly guided to topple the U.S. government. The jam briefly frees him, but the Gila monster remains unaffected and returns to wreak havoc. A missile strike is ordered by Delaney, the plan backfires when the Washington Monument collapses, destroying the transmitter and allowing the aliens to regain control of Abraham.
Noah reappears with a prototype transmitter and, together with Linda and Jones, races to activate it. Jones is devoured by the Gila in the process, but the device is finally activated, freeing Abraham once more. Abraham fights the Gila, and Eva sacrifices herself with a suicide attack that disorients the Gila, giving Abraham the upper hand to kill it by snapping its neck. Marcos weighs his options, eventually choosing to trust Linda’s bond with Abraham and halting the attack.
With the alien ship retreating and the Gila’s energy neutralized, Abraham is moved to a facility outside Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he can live in relative peace. Marcos grants Linda exclusive rights to study him, and she accepts Noah’s invitation to join her in this ongoing work.
