Big game hunter bill, Richard Brake, owner of Avex-Bio Tech, leads a hunting party that includes his best hunter Anna, Cassie Clare, to Dark Island, a private patch of territory where he hosts high-stakes safaris for wealthy clients who want to claim the ultimate trophy: a Graboids encounter. The crew sets up near a research site managed by Dr. Jasmine “Jas” Welker, Caroline Langrishe, and her colleague Jimmy, Jon Heder, who are studying disturbing seismic vibrations that seem to come from the island itself. As Jas notices Bill slipping off the island, she, Jimmy, and her friend Ishimon, Manop Vanasinsatrapon, begin to investigate and uneasily discover a dead Graboid—a sign that the island’s dangers are far more than a private playground. From this grim find emerges a terrifying truth: the Graboid has given birth to Shriekers, formidable predators that kill with speed and cunning, and Ishimon is among the first victims.
Fleeing the scene, Jas orders Jimmy to fetch Burt Gummer, [Michael Gross], a survivalist living in near-total isolation, long estranged from the government and long retired from anything tied to the Graboids. Jimmy finds Burt in his self-imposed exile, where he’s content to stay far from the world of government and monster hunts, but Jas reveals that Travis, her son, is unavailable due to other troubles, and the crisis forces Burt to reconsider coming back into the fray. Burt’s initial reluctance clashes with Jimmy’s desperate plea, but the urgency of the situation finally wins him over, and he agrees to reunite with the crew.
When Burt reaches Bill’s camp, the confrontation is immediate and tense. Bill’s aim is to continue the hunt at any cost, and he tries to back Burt off his own plan. Burt, though, is not easily cowed. As the group scrambles for weapons, they learn there are almost no firearms—only a World War II-era bunker stocked with machetes, two flamethrowers, and a cache of unstable dynamite. The more immediate threat, however, is on the surface: on Dark Island, the Shriekers are nearly as dangerous as the parent Graboid, and they’ve learned to use their piercing screams as sonic weapons to pick off Bill’s hunting party one by one. The survivors regroup just long enough for Burt and the others to arrive with improvised protection and a plan to weather the assault, killing a Shriekers and one Graboid, leaving two still prowling the island.
Back at Jas’s research site, the team learns that a Graboid has reached their location, an alarm that signals Bill to call off the hunt and restore communications. But Bill refuses, and in a bid to finally subdue the group, he tranquilizes Burt and locks him and the others into the bunker. The situation tightens as the hunt intensifies and a new menace—the Queen, a Graboid of astonishing superiority that has evolved in the breeding program—enters the picture and targets the crew with even greater menace. Anna quits the hunt when Bill’s single-minded obsession becomes too dangerous to risk anyone’s life.
With the bunker compromised and the Queen closing in, Anna frees Burt and the others, and they evacuate before a lethal Graboid ambush erupts again. They manage to blow apart a second Graboid with dynamite, but the Queen remains and continues its predatory siege. Burt tracks Bill down in an attempt to reason with him, but the stubborn hunter will not relent. The Queen finally corners the group, swallowing Bill in a brutal, emblematic moment that seals his fate.
As the dust settles, Burt, who is revealed to be the Alpha among the pack, must face the inevitable. Jimmy sees the danger in letting the Queen roam free and recognizes that the only way to stop it is to bait it toward a trap that has a history of fatal outcomes for the creatures. The plan is to lure The Queen to Devil’s Punchbowl, an inactive volcano, and force it onto a bed of spiked dynamite by pushing a key ally into danger to drive the creature toward the combustible trap. While Jas and the others set up the final ambush, Burt and Jimmy race to Dark Island and once again fight their way through the Shriekers with the bunker’s weapons, returning to the research site just as The Queen awaits their arrival.
As the climactic duel unfolds, Burt and Jimmy guide The Queen toward the edge of the punchbowl. In a selfless act of sacrifice, Burt pushes Jimmy out of harm’s way and places himself squarely in the monster’s path, offering himself as the bait that ensures the Queen’s doom. The Queen meets a pyrotechnic demise as the dynamite and spikes unleash, and Burt dies as the trap collapses around him. The survivors honor his sacrifice with a quiet memorial, leaving behind his hat and sunglasses among the weapons they’ve abandoned, a fitting tribute to a man who faced the danger head-on and chose to give his life to stop a threat that could not be contained by passion alone.
In the end, the island’s brutal cycle is broken not by wealth or bravado, but by a hard-won alliance, a willingness to face what lurks beneath the surface, and a death that becomes a turning point for those who remain. The story closes on the remaining crew, carrying forward Burt’s memory as they continue to navigate the dangerous line between curiosity and catastrophe on a private island where science and sport collide in the most perilous of ways.
