Four friends—Jonesy, Beaver, Pete, and Henry—head on their annual hunting trip in Maine, a tradition tied to the strange bond they formed years earlier after a childhood moment that changed everything. They discovered that they shared telepathic abilities they call “the line,” a secret they unlocked after befriending a boy with disabilities named Douglas “Duddits” Cavell. The long-standing camaraderie and the quiet magic of their connection have shaped who they are as adults, even as the forest around them keeps its own dangerous secrets.
One night, Jonesy is drawn by a mysterious summons from Duddits and steps into the street, only to be struck by a car. His wounds heal with improbable swiftness, and half a year later he re-joins his friends for the planned trip. Their quiet adventure quickly takes a darker turn when Jonesy saves a man named Rick McCarthy who is lost in the woods and very ill. They bring him back to their cabin to give him shelter as he recovers.
Then chaos erupts. A forest full of animals—predator and prey alike—runs in a single direction, followed by two military helicopters that announce the area is quarantined. Inside the cabin, the group discovers a gruesome scene: Rick lies dead in the bathroom, a trail of blood leading from the bedroom to the sink, and in the toilet a worm-like creature writhes and screams. Beaver attempts to trap the creature on the toilet lid, but the thing bursts free and kills him. Jonesy, trying to escape, encounters a much larger threat in the form of a malevolent alien named Mr. Gray who has taken possession of Jonesy’s body.
Nearby, Henry and Pete are in a separate emergency when they crash their SUV to avoid a frostbitten woman from Rick’s hunting party. Henry sets out to find help while Pete stays with the woman. She dies and, in a final grotesque twist, also excretes a worm that Pete barely manages to kill. Mr. Gray deceives and abducts Pete, but Jonesy manages to telepathically warn Henry to stay hidden. When Henry returns to the cabin, he finds Beaver dead and the room filled with eggs—the worm’s offspring that threaten to overrun them all. In a desperate move to stop the infestation, Henry lights the cabin on fire.
Meanwhile, a highly trained military unit specializing in extraterrestrials—led by the unhinged Colonel Abraham Curtis—works to contain everyone exposed to a deadly alien virus known as “Ripley.” Curtis plans to retire after this operation and will hand command and a pistol to his trusted second-in-command, Captain Owen Underhill. The team launches an air strike into a vast forest clearing where the aliens’ spacecraft has crash-landed. The aliens use telepathy to plead for mercy, but the helicopters massacre most of them with heavy firepower. The alien ship self-destructs, destroying the remaining aliens and the support helicopters.
As the investigation unfolds, Jonesy bravely revisits his memories, while Mr. Gray continues to use Jonesy’s body to reach the memories of Duddits, who holds the key to the bigger threat. Mr. Gray tries to coerce Pete into cooperating but ends up killing him when Pete resists. Henry realizes that Mr. Gray’s true aim is to reach the Quabbin Reservoir, and the telepathic link helps him understand that Duddits is central to stopping this threat.
Henry reaches the quarantined camp just as the military leaders clash over Curtis’s ruthless plan to eradicate everyone exposed to the infection. He convinces Underhill to resist Curtis by going over his head and seeking relief from the command structure. United in their purpose, Henry and Underhill break out of the camp and head toward Duddits’s home to confront the evolving crisis.
Duddits, who is dying of leukemia, reveals that Mr. Gray is headed for the Quabbin Reservoir to seed the water with alien larvae and contaminate the world. Curtis intensifies his pursuit, intent on stopping the group at any cost, and a fierce confrontation ensues at the reservoir. Underhill is mortally wounded, and he dies after firing a final shot that seems to end Curtis’s threat.
In the reservoir’s pump house, Henry fights to stop Mr. Gray’s plan, and he faces a devastating internal struggle over whether to kill Jonesy to save the world. Unseen by him, a larva hatches, threatening to contaminate the water supply. Duddits confronts Mr. Gray, who finally leaves Jonesy’s body. Mr. Gray uses a stinger to infect Duddits with an overdose of Ripley, mutating him badly; in a last act of resistance, Duddits manages to infect Mr. Gray as well. The two aliens explode into a red-dust cloud that briefly resembles a dreamcatcher. With the threat momentarily neutralized, Jonesy, now himself again, steps on the final alien larva, preventing it from reaching the reservoir and ensuring the water remains untainted.
In the end, the line between friend and foe has been tested, and the group’s bond—read through the growth of their telepathic gift—stands as the quiet witness to a battle fought not just with weapons, but with memory, courage, and unshakable loyalty to one another.
