Crawlspace

Lori Bancroft has recently moved and inquires at the building about an advertised vacancy. The landlord, Karl Gunther, gives her a tour of the apartment and mentions that the last tenant disappeared without paying rent. His polite hospitality hints at something sinister beneath the surface.

During the tour, Gunther secretly performs a masochistic rite, placing his hand over an open stove-top flame. The moment reveals his self-harm impulses and a hidden, dangerous dual life behind his courteous façade.

Outwardly normal, Gunther leads a double life as a sadistic predator who abducts and tortures young tenants. He locks his victims in attic cages and even removes their tongues, keeping them alive so he can have someone to talk to.

Gunther was once a respected doctor who performed euthanasia and harbors shame about his past. He mentions his father, a Dachau doctor, and suggests that history fuels his crimes.

He toys with death through self-harm and dangerous rituals, signaling his deep self-loathing. He also plays Russian roulette, clinging to a dangerous sense of control over life and death.

Gunther murders a tenant and removes their eyes, marking an escalation in his brutality. Josef Steiner, who has been searching for Gunther for three years, arrives at the building.

Steiner recounts his past as chief resident at a Buenos Aires hospital, noting sixty-seven patient deaths under his watch and the death of his brother. He confronts Gunther with his family's Nazi ties, including a photograph of Karl in a Hitler Youth uniform.

Gunther expands his predation by spying on and murdering tenants via reinforced crawlspace vents and mechanized traps controlled from his home. He revels in his godlike power to grant life or death.

Steiner attempts to assassinate Gunther, but is killed by one of Gunther's traps inside the apartment. Gunther proclaims himself as his own god, jury, and executioner.

Lori returns home to a grisly scene—Steiner's corpse in the bathtub and a swastika carved on his forehead, with live rats in the refrigerator. She tries to call for help, but Gunther activates security mechanisms that trap her inside the building.

Lori escapes into Gunther's attic hideout and discovers his last surviving female prisoner. Gunther closes in, but Lori slips through a booby-trapped crawlspace vent, continuing to evade him.

Gunther chases Lori through the apartment and a trap impales him on a blade, ending his killing spree. Lori and the rescued prisoner seize the chance to run toward safety and call the police.

Lori and the survivor hurry to Karl's apartment to seek help, but Karl pursues with a knife. Her revolver misfires several times before she finally fires the last round, killing Karl; he accepts his death with a final, resigned line: so be it.