The movie opens in a small Italian town named Avechot, where we see a girl walk out of her house
in the morning on Christmas Eve.
She suddenly stops along the way, but again continues walking.
Two months later, in February, a psychiatrist named Dr. Flores wakes up from his sleep due to an urgent call.
He rushes to the police station, where a cop tells him about a man who got into a car accident.
Dr. Flores recognizes the man as Detective Vogel,
who had investigated the mysterious disappearance of a girl last December.
This was a dramatic news case that shook Avechot during the Christmas holidays.
After a brief greeting, Dr. Flores asks him about the bloodstains on his shirt,
and how he escaped unharmed from the accident.
Vogel looks at the stain, and begins to talk about what led him to this situation.
The scene then shifts to a flashback to December, when Vogel arrives in Avechot to investigate the
disappearance of 16-year-old Anna Lou Kastner.
It turns out he is a famous detective who has solved every case he has taken on.
He is greeted by his subordinate, Borghi,
and he asks Borghi to take him to Anna’s parents.
Later, Vogel arrives at Anna’s house and meets with her parents, the Kastners.
They explain that their daughter was very obedient and wasn't even
on social media sites due to their religious beliefs.
They further reveal that on December 23rd, Anna left her house in the morning for church,
but she never made it there.
Upon hearing this, Vogel requests that they issue a public appeal to divert media attention to the case.
Afterward, Vogel arrives outside the house, and he suddenly begins clapping.
Hearing the sound, all the neighbors come out to see what is happening,
and he did this to see if people would come out when they heard any noise.
At his office, Vogel explains that Anna's phone was turned off 7 minutes after she left the house.
She is not the type of girl who flees from her family, and CCTV footage shows no evidence of her leaving town.
So, she must still be in town, and the perpetrator must be someone she knows.
Days later, Anna’s parents go live on TV to make a public appeal for their daughter.
They explain that Anna was a 16-year-old red-haired girl, and describe what she was wearing on that fateful day.
Her mother breaks down and reveals how Anna always asked for cats, but they refused her.
She then begs her daughter to return and promises to get her the cat she always wanted.
As days pass, Vogel and his team persist in their investigation,
but there is still no progress.
Since it is a small town, their resources are limited,
and they lack enough employees.
So, Vogel asks his team to wear white uniforms, and sends them
to investigate a random location in the town.
The media mistakes them for forensic officials, and this news spreads rapidly.
As the case gains popularity, Vogel is provided with all
the necessary resources, and his small office is soon filled with numerous investigators.
One morning, Anna’s father visits Vogel’s office,
and reveals that his wife found their daughter’s diary while cleaning up the room.
Inside the diary, Vogel notices a picture of Anna with her
best friend, Priscilla.
Here, the father admits he did something he's still embarrassed about.
Finding Priscilla's number on his daughter's phone, he constantly called her and remained silent.
He doesn't know why he did that, so Vogel advises him to forget about it and return home to his family.
Later that evening, Vogel secretly meets up with a journalist named Stella to discuss the case.
He hands her Anna’s diary, and upon reading it, Stella realizes that it is very well-written.
She explains that Anna likely knew her parents would read it, so she only wrote nice things.
Stella then urges him to find the real diary to discover the truth.
And so, Vogel asks her to help him make this case famous, in exchange for exclusive information for her news channel.
Stella will anonymously place a stuffed kitten in front of Anna’s house.
She then reports this in the news, and people begin gathering at the house with candles to pay their respects.
The police officers keep a close eye on all the people, because there's a possibility the criminal might come here too.
Amidst the crowd, a suspicious teenage boy secretly takes a picture,
and picks up the stuffed kitten before leaving.
An officer notices this and tries to intervene,
but Vogel stops her, suggesting they avoid creating a scene while the media is still present.
The next evening, Vogel receives a call from Borghi, who tells him that the suspicious
teenage guy from earlier, Mattia, goes to the same school as Anna.
Mattia was previously caught photographing couples in public places, and is currently under psychiatric observation.
Following this, Vogel informs Stella that something might happen today, and he's
giving Stella a 25-minute head start before the competitors.
He then breaks into Mattia’s house,
and after snooping for a while, finds a video on his laptop featuring Anna.
Just then, Mattia shows up and is horrified to see the cop, so Vogel assures him that he wanted to
help Mattia become famous.
He asks Mattia to lead him to Anna and promises he’ll have all
the attention he deserves.
So, Mattia silently shows Vogel another video of Anna.
It becomes clear that this guy is obsessed with her and has been following her for a while.
Here, Vogel notices a suspicious SUV showing up over and over in the video.
The scene then takes us a few weeks earlier, where we meet Professor Loris Martini,
who works as an English teacher at Anna’s school.
One day after class, Anna’s best friend, Priscilla,
approaches him and begins flirting with him.
She asks him to teach her acting lessons,
as she has found out that he used to be in the theater club.
Loris tries to refuse, but she is persistent and gives him her number anyway.
Afterward, Loris returns home, and we see that he has a wife named Clea.
She used to be a successful lawyer, but since they moved to this small town,
she's been unable to find work in her field.
So, she spends her days at home, depressed, while Loris bears the financial burden of supporting his family.
Loris informs her that he is planning a solo mountain hike the next day.
The following day, on December 23rd, Loris sets off for his solo hike early in the morning.
He returns late in the evening, and Clea informs him that a girl named Anna has gone missing.
She mentions that Anna is in Loris’s school, but he claims that he doesn’t know her because she isn't his student.
He suggests that Anna may have become rebellious and run away from her parents.
Just then, Clea notices a wound on his hand and asks what happened,
so Loris claims that he simply slipped on the hike and was impaled by a branch.
The couple has a 16-year-old daughter, Monica; the girl spends a lot of time on social media,
and conflicts with her parents due to their relocation.
They suggest that she go out and make some friends, but Monica screams that all her friends are back in their old town,
and storms off without eating anything.
The following morning, Loris is at school when he sees Priscilla hanging out with her friends.
Suddenly, he has a change of heart and texts her, inviting her to his place for acting lessons.
Meanwhile, flyers about Anna Lou’s disappearance are posted around the town.
Days later, while at a gas station,
he notices that his SUV has gone viral in the news, and he is considered Anna’s kidnapper.
He quickly rushes back home, where his family is also bewildered by the situation.
Loris immediately calls the police, and Borghi answers the phone.
Loris explains that the SUV belongs to him, and insists that it's all a misunderstanding because he is not the kidnapper.
However, Borghi advises him to find a lawyer and not to call again.
The following morning, Loris decides to head to the police station to clear up the misunderstanding.
But as he leaves his house, he finds himself surrounded
by a crowd of journalists demanding to know if he's the culprit.
A car pulls up and a man asks him to get in.
Once inside, the man introduces himself as a lawyer named Georgio.
He advises Loris against going to the police, explaining that if the video were solid evidence,
he would have been arrested already.
to break him through media pressure. Georgio offers to represent him,
but Loris replies that he doesn't have much money and promises to discuss it with his wife first.
In the evening, Borghi and some other cops arrive at Loris’s house to collect his DNA sample.
Loris cooperates, and allows them to do their job.
After collecting the samples,
the cops confiscate his SUV, and Vogel discovers that the SUV had
recently been cleaned, and there is nothing inside except cat hairs.
He then goes to see Anna’s mother, who seems to have lost her mind after everything she has been through.
She cannot believe that a schoolteacher would hurt Anna and asks Vogel if this is true.
However, he doesn’t give her a direct answer and assures her that he is doing everything
in his power to find Anna.
Just then, he receives a message from an unknown number,
claiming that Loris is innocent.
In the meantime, Loris and Clea decide to hire Georgio as their lawyer.
Loris is confused because he is still not being called in for questioning.
However, Georgio clarifies that Vogel does not need to question him; he simply wants to
buy some time before framing him.
He then tells the couple about Vogel's previous investigation, The Mutilator Case.
During that time, Vogel mishandled the investigation, which led to the wrongful conviction of an innocent man.
The man lost his family in the process, and also suffered a stroke during his four-year stay in prison.
When his innocence was proven, he was allowed to walk and the state compensated him heavily,
$1 million, for the injustice.
Despite this, the man was never able to overcome the trauma he had endured during those four years.
In the next scene, Priscilla appears on TV for an interview, pretending to be modest.
While crying, she claims that Loris texted her and invited her to his place.
Watching the interview, Clea becomes furious and gets into an argument with her husband.
Loris insists that Priscilla is lying;
he genuinely called Priscilla for acting lessons and nothing more.
Unbeknownst to them, Vogel has tapped their house and is listening to their conversation.
As a result, Clea declares that she is leaving the house with Monica.
That evening, Loris is alone at his house when suddenly Georgio calls him,
and arranges a meeting with Stella.
Loris goes to the given address, and Stella tells him that she knows everything about him.
She reveals how his wife cheated on him a few months ago, which is why they moved here.
Stella explains that he can't win, because people and the police have already labeled him as a monster.
So, she offers him a paid interview to tell his side of the story.
She claims that he will be useless after he goes to jail, so he can make some money now.
However, Loris declines her offer and departs.
In the meantime, Vogel continues to receive anonymous messages, stating Loris is innocent.
He asks Stella if she's playing sick games by sending him texts,
but she has no idea what he’s talking about.
The following day, Vogel arranges a meeting with Loris.
He gives Loris one last chance to prove that he is innocent.
Vogel explains that Loris has no alibi for that day,
and his wound also seems suspicious.
Furthermore, cat hair was found inside his SUV, although his family doesn't have a cat.
Vogel suspects that the kidnapper used the cat as bait to attract Anna and kidnap her.
He warns Loris that if he finds the cat, it will be over for him, and he will go to jail.
Upon hearing this, Loris becomes enraged and says that the devil's dumbest sin is vanity.
After he storms out, Vogel notices Loris' blood from an earlier wound on the table.
The following morning, the police discover Anna’s backpack in the nearby river.
Meanwhile, Loris shaves his beard and arrives at the school.
While he is teaching a class, Vogel suddenly appears and claims that he is merely there to observe.
Loris gives a lecture, following which Vogel claps and praises his teaching.
He then approaches Loris,
and whispers that his blood was found on Anna’s backpack.
The scene shifts to the present, where Vogel is recounting the events to Dr. Flores.
Dr. Flores realizes that it was Vogel who planted the blood in Anna’s backpack and framed Loris.
He asks if it's true, and Vogel only replies that justice doesn't interest anyone.
Returning to the past, Loris is arrested for Anna’s murder, and Vogel is about to leave town.
But then, he receives another anonymous message, and when he calls the number,
a journalist named Beatrice speaks to him.
She tells him that she knows Loris is not guilty, and can prove it.
She asks Vogel to search online for ‘The Fog Man’.
Upon looking it up, Vogel discovers that thirty years before,
six girls of the same age as Anna disappeared from Avechot.
He realizes that all the girls have red hair and freckles, just like Anna.
Beatrice claims that she has spent her entire life searching for the Fog Man, who murdered these girls.
The cops closed the case, claiming the girls just ran away, and Beatrice was called crazy.
She explains that Loris could not have done it because he was a child at the time, and lived in a different location.
On the day of Anna Lou Kastner’s disappearance, Beatrice received a package,
inside which was the real diary of Anna, and it was delivered to her with Vogel’s name.
When Vogel asks what she wants in return, she responds that she just wants justice.
Afterward, Vogel starts reading Anna’s diary, and discovers that she met a guy
named Oliver during summer vacation and fell in love with him.
As a symbol of their love, she drew the letter "O" on her wrist with a pen.
Vogel also finds a photo addressed to him, showing a location in the forest.
He goes to that place,
and begins digging, until he finds a package with a video cassette inside.
Upon returning home, Vogel plays the video, and sees a mysterious man holding an old
postcard from a hotel in the area, which has been closed for some time.
Next to him is Anna Lou, who is unconscious.
Shocked, Vogel decides to visit the abandoned hotel where the video was shot.
He believes that this one case also turned out to be a failure, so the frustrated Vogel
proceeds to destroy the VHS so that no one will know about it.
But then, he is startled by the arrival of Stella with a whole camera crew, who accuses him of destroying evidence.
After the incident, Vogel loses credibility once again and is fired.
Meanwhile, Loris is released from prison, and acclaimed as a hero.
His family also comes back to him, and they reconcile.
Georgio suggests that Loris sue the police for falsely accusing him,
and that he could receive huge compensation.
Furthermore, a publishing house also wants
to write a book on his story, and many news channels are offering him paid interviews.
To try to redeem himself in the eyes of the public, Vogel decides to participate
in an interview with Loris to make amends on live television.
However, when he shows up for the interview, he notices a small letter "O" drawn on Loris's wrist.
It is the same one Anna mentioned in her secret diary, which was drawn in memory of Oliver.
Through a series of flashbacks, we learn that Loris was frustrated by his inability to support his family.
When he learned about the mutilator case,
he saw it as an opportunity to make a huge amount of money.
He also read about the Fog Man, responsible for the disappearance of six girls.
Therefore, Loris devised a plan to frame himself for murder,
while ensuring there was evidence of his innocence.
After this, Loris targeted Anna because she resembled the earlier victims of the Fog Man
with her red hair and freckles.
He followed her for a few days, learning about her routine and preferences.
On December 23, as she was leaving for church,
she saw the teacher trying to catch the cat.
Seeing this, Anna agreed to help him.
He took advantage of her kindness and abducted her.
Loris brought her to the abandoned hotel, where he recorded a video, before eventually killing her.
In the present, Vogel confesses to Dr. Flores that he felt the cops wouldn't help,
so he took matters into his own hands.
Dr Flores suspects that after the live broadcast, Vogel pursued and then eliminated Loris.
He immediately calls the police to inform them of the situation.
Moments later, they enter the room and arrest Vogel for the crime.
Seeing one fish sculpture on the wall,
Vogel remarks that Flores might be the kind of man who only catches one kind of fish.
In the final scene, Dr. Flores returns home, and heads straight to his basement.
He arranges some boxes, and carefully selects one to place on a bench.
Inside the box, we see six strands of red hair.
It is at this point that we realize that the infamous "Fog Man,"
who murdered six girls, thirty years ago is none other than Dr. Flores.