Cigarette Burns

Kirby Sweetman, a rare-films dealer, is in deep debt to the father of his late fiancée and has less than a month to raise $200,000 to save his struggling theater. The clock is ticking and failure would mean the end of everything he’s fighting to preserve.

A fateful phone call leads him to Mr. Bellinger, a legendary cinephile who hires him to secure the sole surviving print of La Fin Absolue. Bellinger offers an initial sum of $100,000 to seal the deal, pushing Kirby to aim higher and risk everything.

Within Bellinger's mansion, The Willowy Being is chained and presented as a star of La Fin Absolue. The gruesome display makes clear that the film is more than a relic; it is a conduit of something malignant.

With the price set, Kirby begins his search in earnest to secure the full amount. The hunt takes him from shadowy contacts to dangerous rumors about the film's supposed curse.

In New York, reclusive critic A.K. Meyers clings to the film and has spent decades drafting and revising his review. He hands Kirby an audiotape of an interview with director Hans Backovic, pulling Kirby into a nightmare when he listens as Annie's suicide resurfaces in his mind.

In Paris, archivist Henri Cotillard reveals a terrifying link: he once presided over a secret private screening and escaped with his sanity intact when he looked away. Cotillard directs Kirby to the enigmatic filmmaker Dalibor who holds further keys to the film's power.

Dalibor abducts Kirby, injects him with anesthetic, and binds him in a chair while a woman is killed before his eyes to illustrate the film's demonic logic. He explains that an angel sacrificed in the movie curses all who witness it and urges Kirby to seek Katja Backovic, the director's widow.

Kirby travels to Vancouver where Katja Backovic reveals she has the only remaining copy of La Fin Absolue. She supports halting the horror by handing over the film but hints the truth behind its creation may be darker than anyone suspects.

With Katja's copy in hand, Kirby returns to deliver the film to Bellinger and hoped-for payday, only to realize the debt is a catalyst for something far more sinister. The celebration in Bellinger's private theater is undercut by the sense that the film's power extends beyond money.

Fung, the mansion's butler, gouges his own eyes out after watching the film, a brutal symbol of the price paid for gazing into the abyss. His act underscores that the film's influence has already begun to consume those around Kirby.

Mr. Matthews, Annie's father, arrives and confronts Kirby, drawing them into the same warped perception unleashed by the film. In the projection room, the Willowy Being's influence culminates in a shared hallucination and a burning cue that blooms across the screen.

Kirby kills Matthews and, in a final act of sacrifice, takes his own life. The Willowy Being retrieves the reels and departs, pausing to acknowledge Kirby with a somber, grateful tone as it vanishes into the theater's gloom.

The reels remain seeds of something beyond cinema, ensuring the film's lure will bind future viewers to a fate that transcends the screen. Kirby's desperate bid to save his theater ends as a cautionary tale about chasing legends.