Karyn Beatty, a middle-class wife living in Los Angeles, endures a devastating assault that leaves her traumatized with a miscarriage and a fractured sense of safety. In search of peace, she and her husband Roy retreat to a secluded California mountain village called Drago, hoping the quiet can help her heal. Yet the nights in this remote place bring a haunting sound: a strange, feral howling that drifts from the woods surrounding their new home. The eerie chorus unsettles Karyn long after the sun has gone down, casting a shadow over her marriage and feeding a creeping sense that something primal lurks just beyond the tree line.
As the couple tries to rebuild their relationship, pressure mounts. Roy, whether out of hurt or frustration, grows distant and restless, while Karyn remains convinced that the woods keep secrets she cannot shake. The tension between them intensifies when Roy begins an affair with Marcia Lura, a local shopkeeper, adding another layer of strain to an already fragile union. The idyllic veneer of Drago begins to crack as the forest seems to close in around the couple, and the feeling of being watched grows stronger with each passing night.
Then the nightmare takes a brutal turn: Roy is attacked on his way home by a large black werewolf. He is bitten and begins to transform, a terrifying reminder that the town's calm masks something dangerous and inexorable. The horrifying realization dawns on Karyn that the entire population of Drago is made up of werewolves, leaving her isolated and surrounded by a curse that she cannot escape. With no one else to turn to, she reaches out to Chris Halloran, Roy’s best friend, who travels up from Los Angeles to help her navigate this impossible situation. Chris arrives armed with silver bullets—an emergency plan that Karyn had insisted on long before this crisis began.
In the tense, star-filled hours that follow, Karyn and Chris confront a pack of werewolves that stalks the village and the woods. Among them is Roy, his humanity partially submerged beneath the blood-wild frenzy of the curse. The confrontation escalates into a clash of survival, with Karyn taking desperate action to end the threat. She shoots the head of the black werewolf, uncovering a cruel truth: the victim is Marcia, the town’s shopkeeper who had become entangled in the nightmare.
The blast of violence is followed by a new kind of devastation as a fire tears through Karyn’s woodland house, quickly spreading to engulf the surrounding forest and, ultimately, the town of Drago. The flames sweep everything into a blazing inferno, the light casting long shadows as Karyn and Chris make a perilous escape. Even as they flee into the night, the howling persists in the distance, a haunting reminder that the curse remains alive beyond the flames and the ashes.
In the end, the couple’s harrowing ordeal leaves them with a hard-won—but fragile—sense of release. Drago, burned to its core, is left behind as Karyn and Chris escape, their futures uncertain but their bond bolstered by the ordeal. The story lingers on the edge of the woods, where the night’s chorus continues to echo, suggesting that some horrors do not die with the fire, but instead wait for the next howling wind to return.
