In late 1972 Belfast, amid the uneasy quiet before a storm of violence, Cain Adams—a disturbed American soldier who has deserted from the Vietnam War—arrives with one clear aim: to return to the United States. Yet the port remains closed to him for about a week, leaving him to drift through the city’s shadowed streets and dim corners until fate nudges him toward a tense encounter with a middle‑aged prostitute. In her apartment, Cain humiliates her and menaces her with a knife before he finally leaves, his mind already turning the strange detour into another kind of burden.
Meanwhile, eight young international nursing students—Bridget, Christine, Leila, Jenny, Pam, Amy, Catherine, and Eileen—are preparing for the final stretch before graduation. They gather in their shared house to celebrate Eileen’s birthday, a moment of warmth and camaraderie that sits against the city’s creeping unrest. Leila, who is pregnant, looks forward to her own upcoming birthday, hoping for something small and intimate. Bridget, returning from a hospital shift, witnesses a street shooting that shatters the serenity of the day. Unseen by the women, Cain slips back into the house through a downstairs door, and is greeted by Amy and Leila with food and wine before they send him on his way. Pam heads out for her night shift, unaware that danger is already inside.
That evening unfolds with a mix of tenderness and unease. Christine and Jenny share a vulnerable moment, with Christine confessing romantic feelings for Jenny, while Christine tries to steady Jenny, who is shaken by the day’s violence. Unbeknownst to them, the intruder returns, breaking in through a window and confronting the two in the living room. Cain binds the eight women at knifepoint, promising to release them when Pam returns, and regales them with stories from his childhood, including the moment his aunt told him he was “born for hell.” He shows them a tattoo on his arm bearing that exact phrase.
> born for hell
Cain takes Amy downstairs and attempts to rape her, but she fights back, triggering a brutal struggle in which he strangles her with a belt. He then drags Jenny and Christine downstairs, strips them, and tries to coerce Jenny into performing oral sex on Christine. When Jenny resists, he beats her with a belt and compels Jenny to force Christine to die by stabbing her, before Cain kills Jenny himself.
Shortly after, Pam returns with her coworker Jill, and the house plunges into darkness. In the shadows, Cain ambushes the women, stabbing Jill to death and then killing Pam. With the lights back on, he discovers Eileen and Leila are missing. He tracks down Eileen, who has hidden in a closet, and stabs her to death. Leila hides under a bed, watching as Cain murders Bridget. Catherine, now dissociated, laughs as Cain brings her downstairs to the kitchen, where he displays the corpses of her friends and sets her at the table with a slice of Eileen’s birthday cake. In a broken reflex, Catherine grasps Cain’s switchblade and stabs herself, dying. Cain returns to the upper floor and collapses on the bed where Leila is hiding, his exhaustion mirroring the collapse of the lives around him.
Dawn comes and Cain staggers out into the morning light. He watches from a nearby pub as paramedics remove the bodies and locals discuss the murders. The news broadcasts highlight the killer’s distinctive tattoo that Leila described. Later, in a public bathroom, Cain tries to end his life with a slit to his wrist, but a passerby discovers him and sends him to a hospital, where a surgeon tends to his blood‑streaked arm. Cain wakes to see the surgeon staring at the tattoo and hears a quiet, accusatory question:
> So it was you.
The discussion turns to money, as Cain bluntly states, “5000 pounds. It’s a lot of money for a man who wants to die.” The film ends with a stark reminder of the fallen: black‑and‑white photos of the nine nurses, a final echo of their vanished lives.
