Born for Hell

A disturbed American soldier named Cain Adams arrives in Belfast amid the Troubles after deserting in Vietnam. He is eager to return to the United States but discovers he cannot board a ship for about a week. The city becomes the backdrop for the violent arc that follows.

While wandering the city, Cain is propositioned by a middle-aged prostitute. In her apartment, he humiliates her and threatens her with a knife, then leaves. The encounter signals his volatile temper and predatory impulses.

Eight international nursing students—Bridget, Christine, Leila, Jenny, Pam, Amy, Catherine, and Eileen—live together and prepare for exams. They gather in their house to celebrate Eileen's birthday, offering a sense of normalcy before danger intrudes. The scene establishes their close yet precarious daily life.

Bridget witnesses a shooting in the streets after finishing a hospital shift, an alarming moment that foreshadows the violence surrounding the house. The event outside amplifies the tension the women will soon face inside. It etches a mood of fear into the day.

Cain stumbles upon the women's residence and enters through a kitchen door, where Amy and Leila greet him with food and wine. They treat him as a guest, unaware of the danger he carries. He remains outwardly calm as his threat looms in the background.

Pam leaves the house for her night shift at the hospital, briefly leaving the others unattended. Her departure creates a window of vulnerability inside the home. The routine of their schedule contrasts with the looming threat.

Cain returns and breaks in through a downstairs window, confronting Jenny and Christine in the living room. He binds the women and warns that they will be released when Pam returns, all while recounting childhood anecdotes and showing off a tattoo that reads born for hell. The intimate cruelty of the moment marks the shift from intrusion to captivity.

Cain takes Amy downstairs and attempts to rape her; she resists and fights back. He ends up strangling her to death with a belt, the violence inside the house escalating rapidly. The brutality underscores the slippage from control to murder.

Cain moves Jenny and Christine downstairs, strips them, and attempts to coerce Jenny into performing oral sex on Christine. When Jenny refuses, he beats her; he then forces Jenny to stab Christine to death and finally strangles Jenny. The two women become the next victims in a sequence of horrific acts.

Pam returns with her coworker Jill, only to find the lights disabled. In darkness, Cain ambushes them, stabbing Jill to death before killing Pam. The house slips further into chaos as the survivors confront the new reality of their massacre.

Cain finds Eileen hiding in a closet and stabs her to death. Leila, hidden under a bed, watches Bridget be murdered. Catherine, in a dissociated state, laughs as the carnage unfolds, then takes Cain's knife and kills herself, unable to cope with the horror.

Cain returns upstairs, collapses on the bed under which Leila is hiding, and falls asleep. The lull in violence is brief, as dawn soon approaches and the aftermath begins to unfold.

At dawn, Cain awakens and leaves the house. Paramedics and locals begin to remove the bodies, and news broadcasts highlight the killer's distinctive tattoo as the city begins to process what happened. The community reacts to the enormity of the tragedy.

In a public bathroom, Cain attempts to take his own life by slashing his wrist. A civilian stops him and takes him to a hospital where a surgeon treats the wound. The surgeon recognizes him as the killer and comments on the identity, while Cain mutters about money as a motive for his actions.

The film ends with black-and-white photos memorializing the nine nurses, providing a visual coda to the harrowing events. The final images linger on the victims and the lives cut short by the violence.