The Afflicted

Hank Kane Hodder makes a late-night bid to run away with his four children, just hours after his daughter Carla’s sixteenth birthday, but is intercepted by his volatile wife, Maggie Leslie Easterbrook. A heated argument over trust and infidelity escalates; Hank even threatens to take the children away, and Maggie snaps, beating him to death with a baseball bat. She hides the body and tells the rest of the family that Hank has absconded with his mistress.

Maggie sinks into isolation, alcoholism, and religious mania, spending most of her time obsessing over Pastor Jon Stackwell, an unscrupulous local televangelist nicknamed the ‘Cowboy Prophet’ J.D. Hart. She begins abusing her children and pulls them out of school after Cathy Michele Grey Hartsoe seeks help from Principal Walsh. When money runs low, she coerce s her son Bill into day labor and starts pimping Carla out to a man named Randy.

Seeing herself as overweight and hideous, Maggie unleashes her anger on Cathy, forcing her to eat canned foods blended with lard; Cathy stands up to her, and Maggie shoots her in the shoulder, leaving her shackled in the bathtub after an inept attempt to treat the wound. When Cathy begs to be released, Maggie allows it only if Cathy can have the bullet removed from her shoulder. The ‘surgery’ Maggie performs worsens the injury, and Cathy dies from the combination of the wound and the vodka-and-pill anesthetic Maggie had given her.

While Maggie sleeps and Bill is out disposing of Cathy’s body, Carla tries to run away and stumbles onto her father’s remains. Maggie catches Carla, brings her home, and threatens her other children into bludgeoning their sister with a wooden paddle before locking her in a closet, where she is left to die.

After Carla’s death, Maggie pimps her youngest daughter, Grace, out to Randy, and orders Bill to dump and burn Carla’s corpse. The police soon discover Carla’s charred body, and Pastor Jon recognizes the signs and races to Maggie’s home. Grace, traumatized from being raped by Randy, shoots Maggie to death with her own gun, and fatally stabs Bill, unaware that he had also been planning on killing Maggie. Pastor Jon arrives at the house, and tries to talk the suicidal Grace down, offering to take the blame for all of the murders, but Grace shoots herself anyway.

Last Updated: October 09, 2025 at 16:08