A young woman, Clara Macedo, arrives in a fancy apartment building for a job interview. The woman
that is looking for a nanny is called Ana and she is still pregnant with her baby. She tells
Clara to wait in the living room as she finishes interviewing the previous woman, so Clara has a
few moments to admire the enormous apartment. During the interview, Ana asks Clara about
her training and previous jobs. Clara had been trained as a nurse but she never got the degree.
She has previously looked after elderly people and children but she has never worked as a nanny
before. She currently lives alone, with no husband or children, which benefits Ana greatly
because she needs help around the house while she is pregnant. She says that she would feel
safer if she had a helpful and discreet live-in housekeeper. However, Clara’s recommendations
aren’t very trustworthy. Ana talks to one of the elderly women Clara used to take care of; an old,
confused lady who happens to be Clara’s landlord and who is only interested in Clara paying her
rent for the month. Ana is ready to dismiss her when she suddenly feels a sharp pain in her belly.
Clara quickly gets up, straightens Clara’s back and tried to comfort her. After how
helpful she proved to me, Ana reconsiders her choice and decides to hire Clara right away.
After the interview, Clara returns to her small apartment. She wants to start packing a suitcase
to take with her to work, but when she opens the closet, she finds that all her clothes
have vanished. She suspects her landlady at once and demands her clothes back. Amelia, however,
tells her that she can have the clothes back once she pays the rent. Clara explains that she starts
a new job tomorrow and that she will be able to pay her back very soon. Amelia doubts that
Clara will be able to keep this job for very long but gives her back the clothes anyway, keeping
only her microwave until she pays her back. On her first day of work, Clara arrives at Ana’s
house, which is seemingly empty. On the floor, she finds the shards of a pot and cleans it up
at once. She does some chores around the house and builds the crib in the new baby’s room. Clara is
startled when she finds a gun on the bedside table as she is tidying up Ana’s room. At dinner time,
Clara has prepared a plain soup for Ana and tells her that she would have made something
better if she kept anything else other than meat in her fridge. Ana agrees that Clara should be
the one who does the shopping from now on. On the next day, Ana has her ultrasound
appointment, which she attends with Clara. The doctor says that everything about her pregnancy,
including her pains, is normal and also confirms that she is expecting a boy. However,
Ana doesn’t seem excited or happy about the news but is rather anxious and concerned instead.
After the appointment, Ana goes to a fancy store and her mood is quickly restored.
As she is trying on a pair of high heels, she sees an old friend who is also browsing. The woman
avoids her, hardly greeting her before leaving. Ana frivolously decides to buy the new pair of
shoes but when she goes to the cash table, her card gets declined and she has to try another one.
After a tiring day of cleaning and painting the baby’s room,
Clara runs in for the night, when she hears music playing from the living room. She finds Ana,
wearing a fancy dress and drinking a beer while dancing alone. At first, Clara tries to take the
beer away from her but Ana convinces her to have a drink with her since it was her 29th birthday.
Ana seems like a lonely woman and confides that her family didn’t wish her a happy birthday that
year. When she lived in Pagode, Ana was engaged with a man named Alecio but she
cheated on him and conceived a child from the affair. Her family brought Ana to the city to
get an abortion but when she refused to go through with it, they cut all ties with her. Furthermore,
Alecio broke up with her and ridiculed her on the internet, so Ana had no reason to go back
to Pagode. She stayed in Sao Paulo, where she at least owned the house she lived in,
but she missed her home and family terribly. On her 28-weeks’ checkup, the doctor detects
high blood pressure and orders her to cut the meat out of her diet.
Clara gets rid of all the meat in Ana’s fridge and replaces it with fresh vegetables.
Meanwhile, the two women bond more and more every day. Clara helps Ana listen
to the baby’s heart with an ultrasound device and even buys her a baby name book.
After coming home from a bar one night, Clara catches Ana rifling through the fridge insatiably.
At first, she thinks that Ana is awake but then she sees that her eyes are half-closed.
In this sleepwalking state, Ana kisses Clara but bites on her lip and seems satisfied with
the taste of her blood in her mouth. The next morning, Ana remembers nothing from the previous
night but admits that she had a bad dream. Later, Clara is going through Ana’s pregnancy
notes, when she realizes that the sleepwalking incident coincided with the full moon.
She also notices that every full moon, Ana notes a restless sleep. That night, still a full moon,
Ana has a nightmare while she sleeps and Clara comforts her. The night ends with
them kissing passionately and sleeping together. In the middle of the night, Ana’s eyes open widely
and look feral in the darkness. She gets out of bed and Clara realizes that she is sleepwalking
again. Clara follows as she walks out of the house and the building. She walks like a ghost
around the city with the light of the fool moon shining overhead. Clara watches in shock as Ana
picks up a stray ground from a street and breaks its neck and feasts on its blood.
Once again, she remembers nothing the next morning and is full of energy during her morning workout.
As Clara prepares her lunch, she wonders what she can do to relieve her thirst for blood and
her sleepwalking. She has the idea of cutting her hand and letting her blood drip into her meal.
After she devours her food, Clara explains what she has noticed since she had started
working for Ana, along with her observations over the full moon. She also reveals that she
is the one that hurt her shoulder the first time she found her sleepwalking.
Ana has noticed that she has nightmares every night and she starts blaming the condition on
the pregnancy. Clara, however, tries to calm her down and advised that she doesn’t blame herself.
Her grandma always said that on full moon nights, babies tend to be restless.
She suggests that since it would still be a full moon that night, that they do a test. She
sprinkles flour around Ana’s bed so that they can check in the morning if she sleepwalked
again or not. When they see that the flour is intact the next morning, Ana finally calms down.
Days pass and Ana is preparing herself for the arrival of the baby.
One night when the two women are talking, Clara asks why Ana keeps a gun near her bed.
She tells her that she is used to having one near her, as she had grown up near a hunting area.
Clara remembers the cat Ana killed a few nights ago and asks when was the last time she hunted
or killed an animal. Clara then tells her the story of the night she met Jorge Mario,
the man with whom she cheated on her fiancée. She reveals that she first saw him at a cowboy
bar in the countryside and spent a passionate night with him in his car. She slept exhausted
from the wild night but was awakened by a growl. Jorge was gone and a wolf was lurking around the
car. Ana tried to shoot him but missed before the yellow-eyed beast vanished in the darkness.
Next month, when the full moon comes, Ana is craving pine-nuts and begs Clara to go out
and buy her some. Clara doesn’t want to leave Ana alone at first but soon gives in. She locks Ana’s
door before leaving, thinking that this should keep her safe in the house even if she sleepwalks.
When Ana is alone, however, her pains worsen and not even the sleeping pills the doctor has
prescribed for her can help. Desperate as she was to ease her pain, Ana takes three times the
prescribed dosage. When Clara comes back from the store, she finds Ana paralyzed with pain,
the baby kicking like crazy in her belly. Before she is able to call for help,
Ana’s stomach raptures. She finds Ana leaving her last breath on her bloody bed, with a dark,
little beast crawling on the floor next to her. Clara’s first reaction is to point the gun at
whatever that thing is, but she soon realizes that it is Ana’s baby. The creature looks
like something between a human baby and a wolf. Clara decides to run away and abandon the baby,
but she changes her mind when she hears the child's cries. She decides to take the baby
home with her and raise it herself, naming him Joel, the name Ana had chosen for her baby.
Some years later, Joel is still living with Clara in their small apartment. Clara now works as a
nurse and is raising Joel as a normal child who goes to school and has friends like everyone else;
although Clara doesn’t let him go outside that much. Joel was also raised to be a vegetarian
and doesn’t seem very interested in the meat his friend Mauricio offers him because Clara
has told him that he is allergic to it. On Joel’s seventh birthday, it is a full
moon. On every full moon, Joel spends the nights chained up in a small room,
called the little bedroom. That night, Joel asks his mother if he can go to his friend Amanda’s
birthday party on Friday, but she reminds him that on Friday the moon will still be full and he will
have to spend the night in the little bedroom. Joel is disappointed that he is never allowed to
do anything but Clara promises that it will all be over soon. On the nights Joel is chained up,
Clara enjoys looking at Ana’s old photograph which she keeps hidden along with some of her belongings
in the shoebox Ana had bought all those years ago. On the next day, while Joel is still tired
from his werewolf night, Clara baths him, shaves the long hair from his body and trims his nails.
One day, Amelia is looking after Joel while Clara is working and notices that he seems pale and
tired. She asks him if he has eaten any breakfast and he replies that he has only eaten some bread.
Amelia thinks that he needs something meaty to straighten him up and she starts cooking him a
steak. Joel tells her that he is not allowed to eat that but Amelia insists
and simply asks him to keep it a secret from his mother. Joel indeed thinks that the meat
smells delicious. Joel is overwhelmed by the taste of the steak and devours it in seconds.
When Clara returns home that night, she is confronted by angry Joel who had gone
through her belongings and has found Ana’s old photograph. He demands to know who that woman is
and he has suspected that she is his mother. Clara wanted to tell him about her death when Joel was a
little older but now she has no choice. The two of them fight and for the first time Joel rages
before being detained in the little bedroom. Clara knows that something has changed in
her son and when she confronts Amelia, she admits that she gave him a steak. She has
noticed that the child is getting sick every month. Joel’s friends definitely notice that
there is something wrong with their friend and find it odd that his mother never lets him out.
The next day, when Joel is calmer, he asks questions about his mother.
Clara tells him that she was a kind woman who loved to dance and that she lived near the bridge,
across the river. She promises to tell him how she died when he is older.
However, Joel still doesn’t know who his father is and he is determined to find him.
That day, Joel tells his friend, Mauricio that he wants to go across the river, to the city. He
remembers that the shoebox his mother’s picture was hidden was from the Crystal Woods Mall,
so this is his first stop to look for him. The two boys take the train and arrive at the mall.
Meanwhile, Clara is waiting outside his school to pick him up, but he never shows up.
She asks all his teachers if they have seen him but they are clueless and so
are all the people who might have seen him. At the same, the two boys are walking around
in the mall, searching for Joel’s father. They search for hours and of course find no
one until the stores start slowly closing. They are afraid that the security is going to make
them leave the mall, so they hide amongst the clothes. The mall soon goes quiet and dark but
the boys do not give up on their search, which soon turns into a game for Mauricio. Joel on
the other hand is very serious about this. As they are walking around in the mall,
the clouds seen through the ceiling clear, revealing the full moon. Joel grunts and,
knowing his transformation is coming, now wants to go home, to his little room, but it is too late.
His body is now covered in hair, his nails grow long and sharp, his face turns wolfish and wild.
Joel starts chasing his scared friend in the empty halls of the mall, grunting and
roaring. He corners him up and attacks savagely. At home, Clara can’t do anything but wait. She
hears a noise coming from the yard and finds Joel sleeping quietly in his bed,
his face smeared with blood. Amelia, who is very religious, thinks that the child is the devil
himself and blames Clara for never baptizing him. She says that she will call the priest right away,
presumably for an exorcism that would drive the wolf out of the boy. However,
Clara doesn’t want anyone to know the secret she has kept for all those years, so she stops
Amelia by injecting her with a tranquillizer. Clara hastily packs all their belongings and
announces that Joel will not be going to school that day. First, she demands to know where Joel
had been all night. Joel tells her that they were looking for his father at the mall but
doesn’t remember how they came back. He also says that he had a strange dream with Mauricio.
Clara soon realizes that Joel attacked him and that her son is a peril to those around him.
When she tells him that they are running away, Joel angers and refuses to leave. He runs into
the little room and tries to take the fairy lights from the wall. He tells Clara he wants
to take them with him but this is all a trick to lock her up in the little bedroom instead.
Joel goes to school as usual, where he finds that Mauricio is not sitting next to him as always.
He also asks Amanda to go with him to the school dance. Amanda is surprised because she knows
that his mother never lets him go out after dark, but agrees to go with him nonetheless.
In the little bedroom, Clara is desperately trying to break free, but the door is way too sturdy.
Clara’s coworker, Angela comes steps by the house, worried that Clara didn’t show up at work that
day. She finds the front door open but finds the house empty. When she tries to call Clara’s phone,
she hears it ringing in the child’s bedroom. There, Clara is banging the door of the little
room, screaming for help. Angela sets Clara free and is startled when she sees what
sort of room they have in their house. Clara, however, doesn’t have much time for explaining.
She loads Ana’s gun and leaves for the school dance, where she knows she will find Joel.
Meanwhile, Joel is dancing with Amanda when suddenly, the transformation process begins.
His nails sharpen so much that they rip Amanda’s little hand.
Joel warns her to run away from him but the vicious wolf in him is already praying on her.
A second before he attacks her, Clara shots Joel in the back. Amanda runs to the crowd and tells
them what has happened and the locals quickly pick up weapons and run to Clara’s apartment.
Clara has taken Joel to the little bedroom, where she chains him up and starts cleaning his wounds
as the little wolf whines and cries. Behind the heavy door, they can already hear the shouts of
the crowds that are approaching. Clara sings Joel a lullaby Ana used to sing to him while she was
pregnant, hoping this will calm him down. Indeed, when Clara sets him free, he doesn’t attack her.
Clara finally decides that she cannot keep Joel locked up, chained and hungry all his life.
They hold hands and prepare to face the people together, as Joel lets out one final howl.