Kim Levitt Neith Hunter is an aspiring journalist working for the Los Angeles Eye as a classified ads editor. Her boss, Eli Reggie Bannister, seems to give all of the men in his office the breaks, including her boyfriend Hank Tommy Hinkley. When a woman is found dead on the sidewalk, reduced to ashes by an apparent case of spontaneous combustion, Kim decides to chase the story on her own, even without Eli’s approval.
During her investigation, she crosses paths with Fima [Maud Adams], a used bookstore owner whose shop sits in the building where the woman plunged to her death. As a gift, Fima offers Kim a book on feminism and the occult, a clue that quietly pulls Kim deeper into a world she never expected to encounter.
Later, Kim has dinner at Hank’s family home, where Hank’s father makes thinly veiled anti-Jewish remarks. Back at her apartment, she starts reading the book Fima gave her and discovers a chapter on “The Fire of Lilith,” a legend about a woman consumed by flames. The next day, at a picnic Fima hosts, she meets Katherine Harrison [Jeanne Bates], who describes herself as an ancient crone, and Jane Yanana [Marjean Holden], who speaks of Lilith as “the spirit of all that crawls.”
Back at the office, Eli approves Kim’s attempt to publish the spontaneous combustion story, giving her the green light she’s been seeking. That afternoon, she goes to Fima’s apartment to ask more questions. Fima serves her tea that makes Kim nauseated, and she speaks of her daughter Lilith. Fima offers a date and insists that Kim eat what she’s given; Kim complies, though it looks like a roach in her hand.
Kim wakes up later in a room with Jane, Fima, Katherine, and Li [Ilsa Setzoil]. They perform a ritual: Ricky [Clint Howard] and Fima slice open a live rat over Kim, then insert a giant larva into her vagina. The larva emerges from her mouth as a full-grown, multi-segmented roach; she vomits it up, and Ricky slices the creature in half, letting its innards smear her face. Kim wakes again, fully dressed, and rushes home, where Hank seems to offer a reassuring presence. That relief is short-lived, as Ricky stabs Hank to death in front of her. Kim manages to answer a ringing phone and calls her co-worker Janice [Allyce Beasley], who arrives but declines to help; instead, she scolds Ricky and instructs him to take Kim straight to Fima.
Ricky locks Kim in the meat locker of a nearby meat shop, and she loses consciousness again. When she wakes, she is surrounded by the entire cult. Ricky, wearing a phallic mask, rapes Kim. She reawakens in the meat locker to find her fingers knotting together, and her legs beginning to fuse into an insect-like tail, until she collapses again. Jo the Butcher [Glen Chin] frees her legs from a brittle cocoon-like substance and covers her as best as he can, telling her she has been initiated and that she should leave.
Kim brings Detective Burt [David Wells] to her apartment, only to find it pristine and Hank’s body missing, which shakes her grip on reality. At the newspaper’s Christmas party, she confronts Eli, who claims Hank is away on assignment. Janice is there and welcomes Kim “to the family.” Furious and confused, Kim storms out. On the sidewalk, she notices Ricky following and ducks into a motel room. Her burning feet intensify, and even a shower cannot cool the flames. Ricky enters, and Kim agrees to kidnap Hank’s teenage brother Lonnie [Conan Yuzna] to complete the initiation.
On Christmas Eve, Kim lures Lonnie from his home, and Ricky murders Hank’s parents by strangling them with Christmas lights before setting the house on fire. On the building’s roof, Kim is urged to stab Lonnie; instead, she stabs Fima. In a whirlwind of anger, Fima pulls the knife from her own stomach and rams it into Ricky, who had tried to block her from stabbing Kim. A giant larva feeds on Ricky as Kim’s flames deepen. Her hands burn and knot themselves again, then burst into fire. Kim drives her singed hands into Fima’s wound, transferring the curse of Lilith to Fima, who dives off the roof just as her daughter had. The film closes on the cyclical, devastating cost of initiation and belief.
