On a hotel’s escalator, an old lady dressed in a wedding dress is about to die while holding a red
diary. During her last moments, she remembers the day she got married and entered this hotel
with her husband. Meanwhile Carlos returns to his apartment and finds his younger brother Oliver in
a rather restless and anxious state. Carlos tries to cheer him up by explaining their mother has
lent him a good chunk of money, so they won’t have to do anything illegal to survive anymore. This
still doesn’t calm Oliver down, but before he can explain the reason for his mood, Detective Marco
bursts into the room. Carlos immediately freaks out and points out they aren’t doing anything
wrong, but it’s too late: Marco has already gotten a confession from Oliver by threatening
him. As Oliver begs for forgiveness, Carlos asks for an arrest warrant, which Marco doesn’t have.
However the detective still wants to drag the brothers to the station at gunpoint, causing
Carlos to panic and start fighting him. Oliver helps him and once they get Marco out of the way,
they rush to the stairwell to escape. Marco immediately follows them and as he moves his hand,
he accidentally shoots Carlos in the leg and makes him fall. While Marco wonders what happened to his
hand, Oliver runs to his brother's side and starts yelling for help to no avail. At that moment, they
hear an explosion in the distance, but no yelling or sirens. Carlos’ wound is bleeding pretty badly,
so Oliver ties his hoodie around it. Furious, Oliver tries grabbing Marco to get revenge,
but Marco pushes him against the bad and threatens him into shutting up. When Oliver says they should
take Carlos to the hospital, Marco refuses because he’s sure that they can treat him at the police
station. Then Oliver helps Carlos walk and the three men start going downstairs. As he moves,
Marco finds some loose hairs on his clothes but doesn’t know where they come from. The trio gets
to the door only to find it locked, so they keep going. However no matter how much they walk, they
don’t seem to make any progress. It’s as if the same floor repeats over and over. The group looks
up and down, noticing there isn’t an end in sight. Marco tells the brothers not to move and starts
quickly running downstairs, keeping an eye on the floor numbers going down and trying all the doors,
which are locked. However after lots of running, he finds Carlos and Oliver again, appearing behind
them from above. Carlos can’t help wondering if he’s hallucinating from the pain. Losing his mind,
Marco takes the stairs again and Oliver re-tries the door to no avail. At that moment Marco returns
and is so shocked to see the brothers again that he runs a test. He throws his keys through the
center of the stairwell, only for the keys to fall back to them from above. Marco asks the brothers
if they gave him anything illegal as he points his gun at them, but they assure him they’re
trapped just like him. It seems the stairs are an infinite loop. Oliver has no signal on his phone
and yelling for help gets no answers. He hears his brother in pain and says he wants to remove the
bullet but Carlos refuses, saying it may end up in an infection because Oliver can’t do even the most
basic everyday chores. Marco breaks the vending machine with a fire extinguisher to get some
water, so Oliver gets a bottle as well to at least wash the wound. Four hours later, the trio is
still stuck there. Marco opens his wallet to look at a family picture and finds a tiny card that he
doesn’t recognize, so he tears it into pieces and throws it away. Then he reveals he has some uppers
for personal use, so he gives them to Carlos to help him escape his pain for a few hours. Once
Carlos is unconscious, Marco and Oliver get food from the vending machine and sit together to chat.
Marco shows Oliver the family picture, explaining that he was supposed to celebrate his fifteenth
anniversary with his wife tonight. Oliver’s only answer is to threaten to kill him if Carlos dies,
then he gets his bag to check if it has anything useful, but it’s not much. The next day,
Carlos wakes up but he’s barely alive. With his last breath, he tells Oliver to value his life and
enjoy it, which he was never able to do. Carlos dies in Oliver’s arms and while Oliver cries,
Marco checks the vending machine to discover it’s restocked itself. As Marco freaks out over the
loop, a devastated Oliver grabs the gun and almost kills him, but Marco calms him down by pointing
out his shooting had been an accident and that he’s just losing his mind because of the grief.
Meanwhile in a nice house in the countryside, Daniel is helping his sister Camila learn a
magic trick involving cards while their stepfather Roberto watches. Their mother Sandra reminds them
to finish packing, since they’ll go on a road trip to visit the children’s biological father. Daniel
takes his hamster and a deck of mini playing cards, Sandra also asks him to grab Camila’s
spare inhaler. Before they get to leave, they get a phone call from the children’s father and Sandra
furiously assures him that Roberto hasn’t drunk in five years so he’ll drive perfectly soberly.
Then the family finally leaves and during the ride, Roberto finds a random piece of bamboo,
which he throws out the window. Eventually they stop at a gas station and Roberto gives Camila
a sip of juice even though she isn’t supposed to have sugar because she’s allergic. Then she
goes to the bathroom, but first she gives her inhaler to Roberto to keep it safe. Soon Sandra
learns about what happened and snaps at Roberto, calling him careless. The group gets back in the
car but just after a few minutes, Camila starts having an asthma attack. Sandra and Roberto
get out of the car to check on her and Roberto accidentally drops and steps on Camila’s inhaler,
instantly destroying it. To make matters worse, Daniel forgot to grab the spare. The family
decides to go back home for another inhaler, and soon after getting in the car, they hear an
explosion going off in the distance. They return to the gas station but there’s nobody around, so
Sandra just grabs some allergy medicine for Camila without paying. The trip continues and Daniel sees
the road sign again while Sandra is yelling at Roberto, saying her ex had been right to call him
a clumsy drunkard. An argument ensues and Daniel tries to tell them they aren’t helping, but they
don’t listen so Daniel has to help his sister stay calm. After driving for a while, they find another
gas station, although Roberto thinks it looks exactly the same as the last one. There’s nobody
here either, so they have to keep going. Minutes later they see the same sign again, so they stop
the car as Roberto swears the road is just repeating itself. Daniel doesn’t trust the guy
anymore and tries to leave, but Robert picks him up and brings him back to the car. Sandra insists
on keeping going because she’s desperate to help Camila, who is starting to turn blue. They just
keep passing by the same sign and gas station, not to mention the car’s clock and Roberto’s watch
show a late hour even though the sun is still out. Eventually Camila passes out and Sandra
keeps on crying and yelling during the whole ride. After seeing the same sign for the zillionth time,
Roberto stops the car and tells the others to wait while he walks off through the field on the right,
hoping a different direction will give a different result. Camila is getting worse and Sandra can’t
stand it, so she drives away with her kids while ignoring Daniel’s warnings. She thinks she’s stuck
in a nightmare and keeps telling herself to wake up. When she stops the car to have a breakdown,
Daniel gets out with Camila, and Sandra keeps going without noticing the children are gone.
Carrying his sister in his arms, Daniel walks all the way back to the road sign and watches Sandra
pass through the loop. The next time she sees the gas station, she goes inside and hides to cry over
her lack of hope. Back to Daniel, he lies down on the ground next to Camila and unfortunately has
to watch her die. At that moment Roberto returns from the field on the left, confirming that every
area is in the loop. Time starts to pass and after thirty-five years, both men are still stuck on the
stairs. Marco is an old man that can’t walk and has to drag his body through the steps,
but Oliver is middle-aged and keeps himself active and healthy by reading the book from his bag,
listening to his music player, and doing daily exercise. Since both the vending machine and
the bag reset every day, Oliver takes out all the objects each morning and waits for the loop
to duplicate them. This way he’s built a whole collection of things that he keeps on the stairs,
plus a shower made of water bottles. The nail clipper from his bag helps him cut his hair and
mustache. Marco’s side isn’t as tidy, and Oliver often has to help him relieve himself into a
bottle. It’s clear they’ve both lost their minds though. Oliver prays to Carlos’ skeleton when it’s
time for the bag to reset, and sometimes he brings Marco along, covering their faces with paper bags
as they say a made-up prayer. There’s also lots of writing on the wall that keeps track of the days
and works as a diary for the duo’s mad thoughts. Marco is obsessed with remembering things and is
always calculating his age, Oliver’s, and even his daughters’, who must be full adults by now. Before
going to sleep, Marco always repeats his own name so as not to forget it. On the hotel escalator,
the old lady finally dies and someone passes by to take a hamster from her hand. On the endless road,
thirty-five years have also passed for the family, and they get food from the gas
station which also restocks itself. Roberto is an old man that lives like a pig in the
car still parked next to the road sign. Sandra is also very old and has become unresponsive,
yet Roberto still regularly sits her on his lap to do the dirty. In the meantime, an adult Daniel
lives on the field with his hamster. Using the things from the gas station, he’s built a decent
camp and has a system in place to keep things comfortable for survival. He’s also kept all the
drawings he made through the years. Whenever the reset happens, he finds an unbroken inhaler, which
he furiously tosses away into a big pile. He tries to keep himself busy by listening to his walkman,
going on walks to have lunch with nature, and playing cards with his hamster. One afternoon,
Roberto finds Camila’s plushie on the road and leaves it near Daniel’s camp. After seeing it,
Daniel goes to find Roberto, who mentions Sandra and notices that Daniel doesn’t remember her.
However it doesn’t surprise him because Sandra doesn’t remember anyone either. Roberto is sure
he has something important to tell Daniel, but he can’t remember what. Suddenly Roberto says
“that’s how old people are” at the same time as Marco, who starts screaming at three a.m. Oliver
rushes to his side and hears Marco’s epiphany: he says he’s finally remembered what he had to say,
which means he’ll die soon. At that moment Marco reveals he’s actually Daniel and that none of
their memories are real because it’s an alternate version of their real lives. He was the one that
triggered the loop when he killed Carlos. Back on the road, Sandra finally dies and Roberto buries
her next to Camila. Daniel watches the process in tears while thinking about his memories with
his sister. Roberto reveals that Sandra stopped talking around twenty years ago when Daniel left
them to live alone. He thinks it’s a good thing she died because she’s finally free
from that hell. At that moment both Roberto and Marco start feeling a horrible headache
that causes them to wiggle in pain for a while before announcing they see everything clearly,
meaning they’ll die soon. They confirm none of this is real and it’s just an alternate
version of their lives. Roberto and Marco caused an incident that triggered the loop,
so they advise Daniel and Oliver not to do the same or they’ll just get another loop going. They
also advise them to write their names down not to forget them, in fact they got the same advice and
forgot to do it. Roberto tells Daniel that when he finally sees a police car, he’ll forget his
name. Marco tells the same to Oliver but about an elevator, which the building doesn’t have.
Then Roberto reveals his real name is Rubén. When he was ten, he got stuck on a bamboo raft with a
classmate and a teacher. Unfortunately the teacher slipped and hurt the other boy in the process,
causing the incident. The boy bled for three days and died, so then Roberto and his teacher spent
thirty-five years alone on a raft that could never find land. When the teacher was about to die,
he also had a moment of clarity and shared the same explanation Roberto is retelling now. The
teacher had also been stuck in a thirty-five-year loop, but his happened in an infinite train
track. Roberto then was able to return to land and started a new life in which he met Sandra and the
kids, but he didn’t remember anything else until now. Marco is telling a similar story to Oliver,
explaining he used to be Daniel and that Roberto advised him not to get into the police car, but he
did it anyway and restarted his life as Marco with no memories. Both old men swear this isn’t real,
they’re just stuck in an emotional hell while their real selves live good lives. By moving
physically and emotionally, they send their energy to their real selves to keep them happy. They’re
the machine that moves the real world. This is why a death is needed to trigger the incident and why
younger people survive the thirty-five years in a healthier way, they’re subconsciously working
for their real selves who are still on the cusp of life. Old people can’t do the same because
they’re always stuck in the past and don’t enjoy life. Before dying, Roberto and Marco give Oliver
and Daniel a little red diary full of pictures and life notes. Oliver decides to return to his
routine, but Daniel buries Roberto with the rest of his family. Then he goes to the road and sees a
police car that wasn’t there before. After making sure it’s empty inside, he goes back to the camp,
retrieves his hamster, and grabs a few things before burning down the rest. However when he
returns to the car and touches it, he forgets everything and drops the hamster before driving
away. With the police uniform he finds in the car, Daniel reaches the city, cuts his hair,
and starts a life as Detective Marco, triggering a new loop by killing Carlos. Meanwhile Oliver tries
to ignore the elevator door that has appeared next to the stairs, but he’s slowly losing his mind.
He even considers self deleting, but he can’t do it. When not even praying helps, he finally gets
in the elevator and finds a uniform to start a new life as Karl, a hotel bellhop. Soon the
married couple gets in the elevator and can’t stop getting handsy. Oliver stays professional
until the couple gets off on their floor, where Oliver releases a bee that stings the groom and
causes an allergic reaction. Nearby an explosion can be heard, marking the beginning of a new loop.