In 1970, a disturbing pursuit of answers leads Professor Norihasa Omori to a local hotel where he records himself killing eleven people—including hotel guests, staff, and his own children—before taking his own life. He does this in a rarefied attempt to grasp the idea of reincarnation, but after the act, the footage mysteriously vanishes, as if the truth itself had hidden away with the crime.
Thirty-five years pass, and horror movie director Ikuo Matsumura decides to bring the massacre to life on screen. As the production nears, Nagisa Sugiura, the actress set to star as Omori’s daughter Chisato, is besieged by the lingering presence of the victims’ ghosts. Her reality begins to blur as she experiences vivid hallucinations and nightmares of the killings, and she stumbles upon an old film camera that resembles the one Omori used.
Meanwhile, college student Yayoi Kinoshita encounters Yuka Morita, an actress who had auditioned for Matsumura’s film. Yuka speaks of a “past life” and shows Yayoi a birthmark that she believes serves as evidence of strangulation. Soon after, the ghosts reappear and drag Yuka away, leaving Yayoi to piece together the eerie clues. Her investigation leads to Ayumi, Omori’s wife and the massacre’s sole survivor, who explains Omori’s fixation on the body as merely a vessel and his unsettling belief that deeper forces governed what a body could become.
As filming continues, Nagisa’s visions intensify. Her agent reviews the recovered camera—the same device Omori used to document his killings—and as the film runs, Nagisa is pulled into reenactment after reenactment of the past. She watches the people around her—Yayoi, Ikuo, and the two men from the opening—transform into the very figures they portray. The victims begin to walk toward her, and she bolts away, fleeing into the town. At the same moment, her agent observes Nagisa’s escape from Omori’s own point of view. Cornered in a shop, Nagisa seizes a shard of glass and teeters on the edge of suicide; when she looks into the glass, she sees Omori’s face reflected back at her. Her agent witnesses Omori witnessing Nagisa’s reflection instead of his own before he cuts his throat. Nagisa tries to repeat Omori’s suicide, but a doll stops her, whispering that they will be together forever.
A team of executives watches Nagisa’s performance, including Ayumi, who remains a quiet, ominous presence. As the shoot nears its end, Nagisa collapses—trembling, screaming—while crew members rush to assist. Later, in a mental ward, Nagisa lies wrapped in a full-body restraint, still haunted by the souls of Omori’s children. Ayumi looks in through the door window and then presents Nagisa with her children’s favorite toys—a red ball and a doll. Nagisa screams at first, but a chilling calm gradually settles over her as the ghosts of the children close in, leaving a lingering sense that the past has not finished speaking.
