Impulse

Stuart, Tim Matheson, and his girlfriend Jennifer Russell, Meg Tilly, come to the town to visit her hospitalized mother. From the moment they arrive, a creeping unease settles over the place as several residents display increasingly odd behavior. While Stuart drinks the local milk, Jennifer abstains, and the day slowly spirals from curious oddities into something far more disturbing as the townspeople and Stuart begin to show signs of violence and extreme sexuality.

Jennifer visits her friend Margo, Amy Stryker, and discovers evidence that Margo’s son Jimmy has suffered a serious injury to his arm. When Jennifer tries to leave in her car, she finds her tires slashed by Jimmy and Shawn, trapping her in a cycle of escalating danger. If she escapes in Margo’s car, Jimmy and Shawn chase and trap her in the garage, setting it on fire. She barely makes it out alive as the fire closes in around her.

The town’s strain deepens as the local physician, Dr. Carr, Hume Cronyn, euthanizes Margaret and then takes his own life. The shock of these events ripples through the community and into Jennifer’s circle, especially when Stuart learns that Jennifer’s brother Eddie, Bill Paxton, harbors incestuous feelings for her and kills him, intensifying the sense that something has corrupted the town from within.

As chaos takes hold, Jennifer flees in a pickup, only to be stranded outside the town. Meanwhile, Stuart hides in the woods and uncovers a recently repaired toxic waste vault that leaks into a vat of milk, a discovery that ties the outbreak to a deliberate contamination. He follows the conduit back toward town, and fate puts him face to face with Jennifer in the stranded vehicle; he frees the truck and urges her to leave, explaining that she is the only uninfected person who can escape, even as he vows to return and help as best he can.

Two men are seen loading a biplane with barrels of liquid, and after the plane takes off, a government vehicle filled with radios reveals plans to spray the town. When Stuart confronts the man, the orderly exchange ends with him being shot. Jennifer, who had started back toward town, witnesses her boyfriend struck down, and she drives down the assailant, killing him in a desperate act of self-preservation.

The town sits in a grim tableau: roads and streets are littered with corpses, and a news report notes that government agencies have no explanation for the mass death that has befallen the town. Jennifer walks away as the sun sets, moving forward into an unsure future, the weight of the night still heavy on her shoulders.

Last Updated: October 09, 2025 at 14:47