The opening scene of the movie introduces us to a young girl, Annie, peacefully sleeping
in her bedroom.
Suddenly, the door to her room creaks open, and a deep, manly voice calls out Annie's name.
Annie thinks it’s her father, but then, a growl fills the air, causing her to cry.
Just as she's screaming, the thing comes closer, and blood splatters on a nearby family photograph.
The scene then shifts to a completely different setting;
a new house, a new family.
William Harper, a psychiatrist who meets his patients at his home, and his two kids,
teenage Sadie, and little Sawyer.
Their lives have been shattered by the recent loss of William's wife in a tragic car accident.
Sadie decides to wear her late mother's clothes to school, trying to keep a piece of her mom's
memory close.
As William gets ready to drop his kids off at school, he notices Sadie in her mother's
dress and says she looks nice.
At school, Sadie meets up with her friend, Bethany, who warmly welcomes her back.
Sadie thanks Bethany for being nice to her, as everyone else seems to be giving her the
cold shoulder.
Right then, another girl named Natalie, and her crew of friends go over to talk to Sadie.
Natalie tells Sadie that she doesn’t think wearing her mother’s dress is a great idea,
and tries to make fun of Sadie.
Things get heated when Sadie calls Natalie a bitch, and Natalie shoves Sadie, causing
a mess with food all over Sadie's dress.
Visibly upset, Sadie leaves school.
In the next scene, a man named Lester Billings, arrives at William's home office in a bit of a mess.
Lester looks really disturbed and urgently wants to have a chat with William.
Initially, Will explains that he usually requires a phone consultation first, but he eventually
agrees to listen to Lester's story.
As Lester settles into his chair, he can’t help but notice a closet in the room.
Feeling a bit uneasy, he asks if Will can close the closet door.
After Lester fills out the client’s form, William sets up a recorder for their session.
Lester opens up and reveals that he has lost three of his children, one right after the
other, and the circumstances around their deaths were very mysterious.
Curious, William questions whether these deaths were due to natural causes, but Lester states
that there's nothing natural about it.
He believes something drained the life out of them.
Lester admits he's unsure exactly what ‘it’ is, but he saw ‘it’ once, just before
his youngest child, Annie, suffered a broken neck.
Before their deaths, Lester thought it was merely their imagination running wild, and
his oldest child even tried to draw this mysterious entity.
He hands over the drawing to William, who is shocked by what he sees.
Lester describes this entity as something that targets their children when they're not paying attention.
William, feeling uneasy, tells Lester that he needs to use the restroom.
Once outside, he dials the police instead, and tells them that there is a man in his
office who might be dangerous.
But he doesn't notice that Lester is going up the stairs.
Meanwhile, Sadie returns home to change her clothes, unknown to William.
She tosses her mom’s dress into the washing machine, and little does she know that Lester
is watching her from a distance.
As Sadie makes her way to her room, she hears a noise.
Startled, she heads toward the source of the sound, but accidentally steps on something
wet and red, giving her a fright.
To her relief, it turns out to be spilled paint from her late mother's art studio.
When Sadie enters the studio, she's shocked to find it scattered.
Her family's painting lies ruined on the floor, and as she bends down to inspect it, she hears
muffled sounds and thumping coming from inside a nearby closet.
She enters the closet but finds it empty.
As William arrives asking if she's okay, the two are shocked to see Lester's dead body
hanging from the closet door.
Later, the police arrive, and William explains how Lester talked about a shadow monster he
believed had taken the lives of all his children.
The detective suggests that Lester's overwhelming guilt or the fear might have driven him to
commit suicide.
Sadie, feeling uncertain, asks if they're sure it was a suicide, and explains that before
she opened the closet, she heard fight noises coming from it.
The detective points out that a grown man hanging himself in a closet would naturally
make quite a noise.
When it's time for Sawyer to turn in for the night, she always makes sure there's no monster
lurking by having her dad check under her bed and in her closet.
At the same time, Sadie notices a strange mold beginning to form around the house.
Later that night, as Sawyer attempts to sleep,
the closet door slams open forcefully, and she sees something dash under the bed.
When Sawyer checks under her bed, she sees a figure growling at her,
causing her to fall out of bed in fear.
Scared, Sawyer rushes into Sadie’s room, and tells her there's something in her room.
Sadie dismisses it as a nightmare, and upon inspecting Sawyer, she finds that her younger
sister is bleeding from a loose tooth.
Determined to help, Sadie assists in pulling out the tooth; she tells Sawyer she'll count
to three before slamming the door,
but strangely, the door shuts on its own after just two counts, causing the tooth to pop out.
This leaves Sadie shocked as she didn't push the door, and she hugs her sister, who is in tears.
She settles Sawyer in bed, singing a lullaby to help her sleep peacefully.
But after the two sisters fall into a deep slumber, the same lullaby echoes outside the room,
and something or someone mysteriously takes Sawyer's tooth away.
Even though their father is a therapist, the sisters choose to see a different therapist
the following day in order to deal with their grief.
Dr. Weller wants to help young Sawyer overcome her fear of a thing she sees in the dark.
To do this, she switches off the lights in the room to demonstrate that there's nothing
to be afraid of.
The room's lights start flickering on and off, which terrifies Sawyer.
After a while, she's horrified to see the mysterious entity crawling on the ceiling.
When the lights finally come back on, Dr. Weller tries to comfort her, insisting that
it was all just her imagination.
During William's session, Dr. Weller suggests a joint family session, but William refuses;
he doesn't seem to want to think too much about this monster story and his wife's passing.
William apologizes to his family, expressing regret that he ever allowed Lester into their home.
That night in her bedroom, Sawyer hears her bedroom door open and her sister Sadie's voice,
reassuring her that it's all in her head.
However, when Sawyer peeks out from under her blanket, she finds no one there.
The closet door is mysteriously open, and then someone knocks on her door.
Meanwhile, as Sadie looks into Lester's background in her father's office, she discovers a form
that he filled out.
She also discovers an audio recording of William's session with Lester.
After her dad excuses himself to go to the restroom, she hears Lester yelling at someone
to get away from him.
Sadie then finds Lester's notepad hidden beneath the sofa, and learns from the recording that
Lester's child drew the thing she saw in the notepad, but it has been torn out.
Seeing that the pressure from the pencil sketching is still there, Sadie attempts to redo the sketch,
and encounters the frightening creature with long limbs.
Back to Sawyer; she checks outside her room, and the light bulb in Sadie's room explodes.
She then hears a voice telling her that what she's experiencing isn't real.
As Sawyer tries to find her way through the darkness, she suddenly hears a voice singing
a lullaby, just like Sadie’s voice, but in a darker tone.
She then rolls her night light down the hallway to the dark area.
But the night light rolls back to her, broken, and the monster appears behind her.
In the kitchen, Sadie catches a glimpse of a figure hiding in the darkness, but when
she opens the fridge door, the figure disappears.
Sawyer then enters the kitchen, and accuses Sadie of trying to scare her.
But when she sees the sketch on the notepad, she becomes frightened, and says it’s the
dark thing she has been seeing.
The following day at school, Sadie asks her friend Bethany for a ride to Lester’s home.
However, when they arrive, the place appears abandoned, with trash scattered everywhere.
Sadie decides to enter the house, but finds no one inside.
Since she is eager to find out about this mysterious thing, she leaves her contact number
on the fridge in case someone returns.
As she heads back, she notices a flickering light in the house.
And so, she goes to investigate.
Here she discovers that the walls are covered
with strange, plant-like roots; it’s the same thing she saw in her house earlier.
As Sadie explores the house, she heads upstairs, following a trail of candles.
She notices some photos on the wall, and suddenly, she sees someone behind her,
and it turns out to be Rita, Lester's wife.
Sadie then explains that her dad had a visit from Lester, and shows Rita the drawing she
found and asks her about it.
Rita, however, warns Sadie that she should pray she never encounters one, so Sadie mentions
that her sister saw it.
Rita then reveals that this entity goes after her children,
and they refer to it as "The Boogeyman."
She says that the boogeyman enjoys playing with its victims and follows them anywhere,
and it can even mimic human speech.
Rita explains that this creature needs darkness to stay hidden.
All of a sudden, she warns Sadie not to move as it's right behind her.
Rita shoots her rifle, causing Sadie to run back to Bethany's car.
When she gets back home, she ignores her sister Sawyer, and rushes to her bedroom.
And then this happens…
Sadie wakes up as if it was a terrible dream she had.
She steps out of her room, hearing some noises.
When she goes into her mother's room to check, she finds it empty.
It's then that William, her father, comes out holding a box of their mother's belongings.
William tells her to keep what she wants, and take the rest down to the basement.
Sadie then carries the box downstairs, and discovers other old items, including her mom's lighter,
and a video camera with a recording of her mom singing to her when she was a baby.
She attempts to connect with her mother's spirit using the lighter, and suddenly,
she hears her mother's voice.
Spooked, Sadie goes to the source of the voice, and finds her mom standing in the darkness.
But as she turns on the light, her mother vanishes.
The following day, Bethany suggests that she and her friends hang out at Sadie's place
to help her forget about her problems for a while.
However, in Sadie’s house, they grow bored, until Sadie reveals she has something they shouldn't have.
She shows them a box she found among her mom's belongings, and they end up enjoying it.
Bethany passes the drug to Sadie, but she starts coughing uncontrollably.
In the midst of her coughing fit, she pulls out what appears to be a string, and is shocked
to see that it's the same string she used to pull Sawyer's loose tooth.
Bethany comes over to help, but Natalie makes things worse by recording the scene on her
mom's camera.
She also asks if Sadie can show them the closet where Lester had hanged himself.
Sadie leads her friends to the closet, pointing out the strange plant-like roots on the walls.
Suddenly, Natalie closes the door, and claims it's a form of exposure therapy.
Panic sets in as the boogeyman appears, inching closer.
Desperate, Sadie manages to open the door, and her friends ask if she's okay, but Natalie brushes it off as drama.
Frustrated, Sadie slaps Natalie.
Bethany insists that they were trying to open the door, but it wouldn't open.
In anger, the girls leave the house, telling William that his daughter was psychotic.
Afterwards, Sawyer is seen playing a game when she spots the boogeyman nearby.
Scared, she tries to hide.
The Boogeyman approaches the couch, searching for her, then eventually leaves.
Thinking she's safe, Sawyer gets up and sits on the couch.
But then all of a sudden,
The boogeyman tosses her against the TV,
and the next thing she knows, she's waking up in the hospital.
Sadie is by her side, trying to comfort her, and she finally believes Sawyer’s claim.
In the midst of this, Sadie reveals seeing something in the closet, but William asks
if Sadie is high, as he could smell weed on her.
Frustrated, Sadie decides to leave, saying that he never listens to her.
She then visits Rita, Lester’s wife, who advises that if the entity is drawn to weakness,
they need to show it strength.
Rita warns Sadie to be careful, mentioning she has installed spring-loaded firing pins.
When Sadie questions whether she believes they can kill it, Rita suddenly attacks her,
and uses Sadie as bait to lure the Boogeyman out.
However, Rita reassures Sadie that she won't let anything happen to her,
and switches off the lights.
As expected, the Boogeyman appears, causing the candles in the room to blow out.
When he tries to attack, he walks to the loaded guns' rope and triggers it, causing the monster
to collapse.
Rita checks on him, and shoots him again, saying that she had told him he could be killed.
But the victory is short-lived as the Boogeyman attacks again, tearing Rita in half.
Sadie manages to free herself and attempts to escape, with the Boogeyman pursuing her.
Fortunately, she manages to make it out of the house.
Soon after, Sadie receives a call from William, who tells her they've just returned.
She urgently instructs him to go back to the car
and find a brightly lit place with lots of people.
But then…
The Boogeyman pulls them in, and Sadie rushes
back to the house to help them.
Once she gets home, she quickly locates Sawyer with a rope light on her body,
and asks where their father is.
Sawyer tells her that the Boogeyman took him down to the basement, so Sadie reassures her
sister that they won't lose their father too.
She mentions that she saw the Boogeyman bleed, so it can be hurt, and maybe they can stop it.
Determined to save their father, Sadie heads down to the basement, with Sawyer insisting
on following her rather than staying alone upstairs.
Soon, they come face to face with the Boogeyman, who has their father in his grasp.
He drops their father, and jumps to attack.
Then, he vanishes into the darkness.
The Boogeyman strikes again, causing Sawyer to lose consciousness.
He then pounces on Sadie, opening his mouth, and attempting to drain her life away.
Luckily, William manages to get up and intervenes to save his daughter.
The Boogeyman throws him aside, and as Sawyer rushes to her father's side,
the Christmas lights are unplugged.
In a desperate move, William hands Sawyer her mother's lighter, and as they try to escape,
the Boogeyman reappears in front of them.
Just as he lunges at them, Sawyer uses hairspray to stop the creature, causing it to retreat.
In a final attempt to defeat the Boogeyman, Sadie tries to burn it with fire.
However, the hairspray runs out.
Thinking fast, Sawyer soaks the Boogeyman with lighter fluid,
and Sadie throws her lighter at him.
As a result, the Boogeyman catches fire, and is consumed in flames.
The Boogeyman turns to ashes,
while the family escapes the burning home.
The fire quickly spreads throughout the house, and Sadie sees her mother’s dress for the
last time, before they manage to flee the burning house.
Afterwards, together with his loved ones, William finally decides to seek help from
Dr. Weller, hoping to move past their traumatic experiences together.
He eventually agrees to express what he's been holding inside since his wife's death.
But as they prepare to leave, Sadie hears Dr. Weller calling her back inside.
However, when she returns to the office, she finds that she is not there.
Then, she hears a strange sound as the door to this dark space starts to creak open.
Cautiously, Sadie approaches the door, but before she can investigate further,
Dr. Weller returns, asking if she can help her with something.
Without a word, Sadie closes the door, leaving the audience in suspense as the movie ends.