In 1913, the town seems to sparkle for its luckiest guy, Tommy Murphy [Burkely Duffield], when the girl he adores, Caitlin O'Leary, agrees to dance with him at the bustling festival. The moment is bright, but it sours quickly: a jealous kiss from Violet before Tommy’s date shatters Caitlin’s moment, and in a humiliating mishap he accidentally tears her dress, exposing her underwear. Caitlin’s anger isn’t just about the wardrobe malfunction; she believes the moment reveals a deeper fault line in their romance. The crowd’s whispers and the rumor mill breed fear around Caitlin, who is described by locals as a witch or a young gypsy woman—an accusation that weighs heavily on the pair. In a reflex of hurt and humiliation, Caitlin curses Tommy and all of his descendants with a heavy streak of bad luck, a curse that clangs through the generations.
A century later, Meg Murphy [Ciara Bravo], Tommy’s great-great-granddaughter, looks at the burden with a mix of frustration and tenacity. She refuses to let the family name remain a misfortune magnet, and with her brother Charlie [Jacob Bertrand], she digs into the past to uncover a way to lift the curse. Their search leads them to Tommy’s old diary, a fragile thread that ties the present to the past. The diary reveals a practical, if mystical, remedy: the curse could be broken if Tommy’s prized “lucky coin” is handed to a Caitlin descendant. Meg and Charlie hatch a plan to reclaim the coin and test the theory, knowing that time is of the essence.
Their mission brings them to the Harvest Hills Historical Museum, where they successfully seize Tommy’s coin from a display that has stood for generations. Meg quickly identifies a potential Caitlin descendant in their orbit: Ivy Murray [Elena Kampouris], a school rival whose mean-spirited behavior seems almost to be scripted by fate. The plot thickens when Meg learns that Ivy’s cousin Brett O’Leary [Jack Griffo] is a boy she already knows—someone whose presence is increasingly tied to the very family Caitlin belonged to. The coincidence feels almost scripted by destiny: Brett is a direct descendant of Caitlin, and Ivy herself is connected to the old feud in a way that makes the coin’s transfer feel like more than a simple swap.
At the school festival’s dance, the plan seems to be falling into place. Meg passes the lucky coin to Brett, hoping that this exchange will sever the curse’s thread. Yet a twist of fate emerges when a fragment of Tommy’s diary ends up in Charlie’s hands. Reading it, Charlie discovers that the coin doesn’t simply bestow luck; it acts as a conduit that can shift the curse from one family to another. The revelation rattles Meg, who rushes to Brett’s house only to find chaos—his home is being ransacked by an angry monkey, a manifestation of the misfortune that the coin has triggered. Ivy answers the door and reacts with a mix of anger and concern, realizing the cascade of trouble has come from the coin Meg gave Brett.
Meg pleads her case to Ivy, insisting she never intended for any harm to come from their plan. Ivy, who has often treated Meg with coldness, begins to see the truth in Meg’s words: her own misfortunes have shadowed her life, and the curse has touched them all in some way. The two girls put aside their long-standing tensions and sprint toward the closing ceremony to keep the plan from unraveling. As Brett returns the coin to Meg, a bolt of lightning strikes, and she teeters on a flag tower edge. Brett’s quick action saves her, and their shared moment of danger deepens their bond with a kiss.
From that point on, Meg and Ivy forge an unexpected alliance, and Meg starts dating Brett, turning the page from a cycle of misfortune to a new beginning. Meg's curiosity and talent lead her to science camp, where she accidentally invents a potion that grows hair on bald heads, a quirky demonstration of the unexpected twists that can stem from curiosity. In a reflective moment, Meg places Tommy’s diary back with the coin after reading the diary’s final note: Tommy, despite his lifelong bad luck, ultimately meets his loving wife at a hospital, and in a dramatic gesture he tosses his coin into a fountain, triggering a flood but reinforcing the belief that attitude matters as much as luck.
The family’s adventures continue with a vacation that takes them to the Grand Canyon, where the same streak of bad luck resurges in a wild sequence that the siblings witness and, to their relief, survive. Ivy and Brett remain in the orbit of the Murphy family, turning their misfortunes into stories they can laugh about together. The film closes with a playful nod to the family name: Murphy, a wink to Murphy’s Law—the idea that “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong”—reimagined as a tale about testing luck, learning forgiveness, and discovering that resilience and connection can outpace misfortune.
