In 1959, a group of partygoers celebrate New Year’s Eve at the Grand Island Hotel before mysteriously vanishing.
Decades later, a group of teenagers – couples Lesley Suzy Aitchison and Tom Julian Ronnie, and Janet Nikki Brooks and Rick Mark Powley, with their friend Spud Colin Heywood – are spending the day at a seaside funfair when they witness three hooligans – Dad Steve Emerson, Ace Steve Wilsher and The Bear Jon Glentoran – terrorising an American tourist named Carol Catherine Roman. They rescueCarol and escape the thugs by taking a boat out to sea, only to run aground and end up stranded on Grand Island. They stumble across the hotel, which appears deserted; the lobby is adorned with Christmas decorations, despite that it is July.
Spud looks for a towel for Carol, who is damp and shivering. The Housemaid enters and hands her a towel, the first hint that the hotel is not what it seems. Meanwhile, Spud hears music coming from the ballroom. He sees a duo performing on stage only for them to vanish before his eyes. In one of the guestrooms, Janet and Rick swap their ruined clothes for 1950s attire. Janet is horrified by the sudden appearance of a disfigured woman in a mirror. While searching for the building's circuit breakers, Lesley and Tom are startled by fireworks that inexplicably ignite. The teens regroup and find the hotel's empty theatre, which is screening the film Fiend Without a Face. Rick, convinced that someone is staging an elaborate prank, tries to turn off the projector but inadvertently plays a promotional reel for the hotel showing partygoers in front of the entrance. One of the figures bursts through the screen, kills Spud, and vanishes.
Desperately trying to find a way off the island, the survivors separate and are each plagued by supernatural happenings: Lesley and Tom find a cottage near the shore, where Lesley is attacked by a monstrous figure that disappears after Tom spears it; Janet and Rick hear disembodied voices in the woods and see a plane crash into a nearby building; and Carol is suddenly caught in a snowstorm inside the hotel. Lesley Suzy Aitchison summons the group to the cottage to find Tom. There, they are attacked by the three hooligans, who have followed the group to the island in another boat. Dad kills Lesley by impaling her through the abdomen, upon which she transforms into a zombie. She kills Dad by throwing him out of a window, then The Bear by twisting his head around and breaking his neck. Meanwhile, Janet is attacked by a banister carving that comes to life. Rick takes an old shotgun and shoots Lesley, seemingly killing her.
An injured Tom returns to the hotel and is cared for by Janet. Rick and Carol search for the hooligans' boat and discover the site of another plane crash. Tom transforms into a zombie and attacks Janet, who runs to the hotel's lift with Tom in pursuit. Tom is killed when the rising lift traps and severs his arm, while a featureless figure envelops Janet and absorbs her into the walls of the lift. Elsewhere, Carol and Rick witness more apparitions and poltergeist activity, and Ace is killed in the kitchen after falling into a large vat.
Carol and Rick flee to the ballroom, where they are greeted by a woman resembling the zombified Lesley. She tells them that they are trapped in a time warp created when an aircraft carrying an experimental cloaking device crashed on the island on New Year's Eve, 1959. Carol and Rick flee the hotel, pursued by their friends and the hooligans – all now resurrected as zombies. They make it to the shore and Carol manages to board the hooligans' boat, but Rick is trapped in quicksand and killed by the zombified Dad, who slices his head with an outboard motor propeller. Carol is pulled through the floor of the boat and into the water by an unseen force. She emerges behind a mirror in the ballroom, where her friends and the hooligans, now restored to their original appearances, are happily joining in the New Year celebrations. As the picture fades to black, a woman's scream is heard.
