Polly is a directionless woman in her 30s, stuck in a dead-end job and fretting over the idea of returning to school. She lives alone in a house she rents from her sister Lainie, and she’s unusually close to Lainie’s young daughter Aly. As Polly gears up for a pivotal interview, an eerie visitor arrives: an elderly woman who gifts her a small wooden box and an hourglass, insisting that Polly will die tonight. Startled and unsettled, Polly ejects the stranger and discards the box, hoping to banish the unease.
But a malevolent force soon manipulates events, masquerading as Polly’s mother and warning that Polly will meet a grim end unless she delivers the box itself—something Polly already hates, something she fears, something she both needs and loves. To understand the box’s cryptic demand, Polly taps into a closet she has long avoided, a repository of her deceased father’s possessions. She retrieves a cross necklace from the stash and hands it to the box, a gesture tied to her resentment toward religion after her father’s cancer, and the box accepts the offering.
The tension escalates as Lainie receives troubling, even threatening, phone calls that Polly suspects are the box’s handiwork. Lainie’s next message is alarming: she claims Polly was seen outside, despite Polly’s protests. In a further bid to appease the box, Polly begins a grim ritual of self-sacrifice. She first contemplates, then attempts, cutting off her pinky toe, and when that fails to satisfy the box, she moves on to her index finger, offering it in the box’s name and finally finding it content with the sacrifice.
A door to terror opens when Polly rushes to Lainie’s house and discovers her sister and the rest of the family dead inside. In a desperate measure, Polly severs a lock of Aly’s hair and offers it to the box, which seems to accept. The supposed reprieve is short-lived, as Aly’s violent apparition lunges at Polly and stabs her. Polly awakens to find the hourglass still running, realizing that the box will not release her until she can pass it on to someone else. She seeks out Lainie’s neighbor Tara, forcing the box upon her in a bid to escape its pull.
Returning home, Polly confronts the old woman who initially brought the box into her life and is attacked. She does not hesitate and kills the visitor, who coldly muses about the box’s evil nature. Polly steps outside to find the box has vanished and Tara appears to be alive. Polly is momentarily hopeful as she reunites with Lainie and Aly and heads to check on Tara. But Tara claims not to recognize Polly or the box, a red flag that lingers beneath her calm surface. The final revelation is chilling: Tara has killed her own parents and sacrificed several fingers to please the box, underscoring the box’s inexorable reach and the way it corrupts trust and safety.
