The film opens with a happily married couple, Linda and Mark, who are all dressed up and
ready to go have their anniversary dinner. They leave their trusted neighbor slash babysitter,
Barbara to look after Chloe, their young daughter. While Linda and Mark enjoy their time together at
the restaurant later, their daughter Chloe asks Barbara to cook her Mac n Cheese.
However, when Barbara is in the middle of boiling some water for the pasta, we can clearly see that
Barbara seems a little off. She suddenly looks confused and begins to zone out. Meanwhile, the
naïve Chloe offers to help her out in the kitchen.
With Barbara seemingly lost in her own head, unfortunately,
unfortunately, the young girl ends up getting her hand burnt by the boiling water.
The medics are called to the scene, as well as Linda and Mark, who rush right inside once
they get home to make sure their daughter is alright. Barbara apologizes profusely,
and according to an EMT personnel, it appears that Barbara suffers from Alzheimer’s, therefore
she is no longer fit to babysit a young child.
Later that night, Linda struggles to accept the idea
idea of quitting her job to care for Chloe full-time. The couple discusses
about getting a new nanny for Chloe, but neither are sure who would be a right fit.
Mark mentions that they are only a few weeks away from finishing their second home as an investment,
which will cover their living expenses if Linda does indeed quit her job in the future.
Right that next morning, Mark is fixing up their second house,
while Chloe wanders around like a child would, and ends up toying with what looks like a nail gun.
She might have seriously injured herself if it were not for a passerby stopping her.
The passerby takes Chloe right back to Mark, and we learn that her name is Heather.
Mark, who sees how Chloe seems to have taken a liking to this girl, promptly brings her home,
and introduces Heather to his wife. Linda is hesitant when Mark suggests Heather as
their new nanny, because they don't know much about her background. Mark,
on the other hand, persuades her that Heather is a good choice because she lives right in town.
Following the discussion, the married couple decides to ask Heather if she’d like to become
Chloe’s new nanny. Heather ecstatically takes the job, claiming that she happens to be looking for
some way to make extra money. Heather states that she has worked as a sitter in the past,
and provides the phone number of her previous employer as a reference.
Later that night, Linda who still hasn’t fully trusted Heather,
tries to call her previous employer and receives good feedbacks for Heather.
They then decides to
purchase a nanny-cam to install inside the house out of concern for their daughter's safety. Linda
goes shopping for nanny cams the very next day and is given the recommendation to purchase an
alarm clock radio with a built-in camera. The mother is at ease that the new hidden camera
is set up inside the house, and she can watch her daughter practicing violin like she always does.
Afterwards, Chloe is seen happily playing with Heather by the front porch.
When Heather enters the house to fetch some water, Barbara who lives right next door excitedly walks
up to her because she misses her. As the two share a pleasant chat, Heather turns up,
Heather starts getting overly protective, and acts completely hostile towards Barbara.
Barbara who is baffled turns around and walks home.
Linda turns up not long after, and asks what’s going on.
Heather immediately lies by telling her that Barbara was simply screaming at her about how
she stole Barbara's job. Linda feels sorry for Heather, and tells her that Barbara is unwell.
During supper that evening, the landline rings and Heather goes to answer. As it turns out,
the caller is Barbara, who is apologizing once again for the incident a few days ago, during
which boiling water spilled on Chloe’s hand. Yet again, Heather responds unkindly, but this time
she takes it an extra notch by impersonating Linda’s voice to basically tell Barbara off.
Later that night, Mrs. Barbara suddenly hears a strange noises in her house.
Unbeknownst to her, an ominous shadow passes by her.
On the next morning, Linda who is at work receives a phone call that informs
her that Barbara has committed suicide. This devastates her deeply, as she has
known Barbara for a long time and the last time she saw Barbara, the old woman seemed alright.
Linda and Mark then leave the house to attend Barbara’s funeral,
leaving Heather to watch over Chloe in the meantime. When they get home, they're
surprised to see how clean and tidy their house is. Linda then walks up to Heather, who informs
her that she is only doing it to pass the time while Chloe is sleeping. We can see that Linda
feels uneasy with this and tells Heather that they only hired her to watch Chloe, that's all.
Before going to bed that night, Linda decides to check out the latest footage in the nanny cam.
She discovers Heather and Chloe having a three-hour long conversation,
instead of practicing violin or doing other activities. On the next day, Linda becomes
stressed again when Chloe refuses to eat what she prepared, and claims that Heather is a better
cook than Linda. Moreover, Chloe informs Linda that she no longer wishes to play the violin,
because she has discovered a new hobby: monologue speech, which she learned from Heather.
When Heather arrives for her routine, Linda decides to ask Heather about the long-conversation
they had before. Heather tells her that she and Chloe were having a conversation about death,
because Chloe had a lot of questions about it after Barbara's death. Linda then advises her
to keep Chloe's violin practice going, and it is at this point Heather realizes that she’s
being watched this whole time. She immediately searches for the nanny-cam around the house.
That afternoon, Mark arrives home from work and decides to sit down
and converse with Heather. Mark reveals that he got injured during work,
and the girl gives him a painkiller. Heather then takes this opportunity to flirt with him,
and eventually tries to kiss him. Mark who feels uncomfortable proceeds
to tell Heather to go home. Heather then suggestively tells him to check out the nanny cam
and asks him if he ever watched her.
Mark pays the question no attention, and continues on his way to the upstairs.
Later on, Mark decides to check out the nanny cam footage, and finds Heather
deliberately taking her clothes off, and making compromising poses in front of the camera.
Creeped out but possibly a little inappropriately intrigued, Mark shuts his laptop.
As this is going on right under Linda’s nose, Linda begins to develop a strange hunch that
something is amiss, so she decides to add more nanny cams around the house.
On the next day, we learn that Linda is taking a half-day leave at work,
because she is going to watch Chloe’s school recital. Though her boss initially objects,
he finally lets her leave work early. On her way there, she suddenly gets pulled over
by the cops. Upon exiting the vehicle, they inform her that they received a report claiming that she
has kidnapped a child. Linda who is confused tries telling them that they are mistaken.
The cops then take her in for questioning, and don’t let her go until much later that night,
which means that she missed her daughter’s recital. Chloe throws a tantrum as she is
understandably disappointed in her mom, and so is Mark. Linda tries explaining
that she got pulled over by the cops, but Mark is unwilling to take her excuse.
The mother has a hunch that this has something to do with Heather.
Linda tries to call Heather's previous employer,
which reveals that it is Heather's own phone number, which she promptly rejects.
Unbeknownst to Linda, earlier that day, Heather was actually the one who called the police,
and told them to go after Linda’s car under the guise of kidnapping.
Linda tries to check all the recorded videos from the nanny cams later that night,
and discovers they have been deleted. She and Mark are arguing about the deleted nanny cam files,
and Mark admits that he deleted the files because it's no longer a good idea to monitor someone's
privacy, despite the fact that it was their idea. We also learn that Heather is watching them from a
nanny cam that she secretly installed inside the house. Not only that, she is watching from where
she secretly lives, which is Mark and Linda's second house that is still under renovation.
On the next day, Linda begins her search for any information regarding Heather’s identity
with the help of the cams seller. She calls her landline and leaves a message saying she'll be
home late that day. While Linda is off doing her own search, Mark gets home and is greeted
by Heather as per usual. The girl sits Mark down and drugs him with a drink until he gets drowsy,
and proceeds to flirt with him again. While Mark is struggling to keep his mind coherent,
Heather creepily starts rambling about a supposed relationship between her and Mark,
and that she wants him to leave his wife for her. Meanwhile, Linda's search leads her to Heather’s
parents house, and as they welcome her inside, they proceed to show her pictures of their
daughter in skimpy outfits, that should not have been appropriate for someone Heather’s
age. The father compliments her on her beauty, and says he likes her in that
outfit. Linda then tells them that the girl in the picture isn't Heather she's looking for,
and proceeds to go home , right when the mother tells her not to bring Heather back to her father.
We do not know for sure what happens before, except that when Linda gets home
later that night, she finds Mark already in bed. On the next morning, Linda proposes to Mark that
they should fire Heather, because she has a bad feeling about her and that ever since they hired
her, strange things have been happening around them. Mark doesn’t argue, so they let Heather go.
Later that day, Linda is about to deliver a big presentation at work. But unexpectedly,
the screen suddenly glitches and ends up playing a video of Heather having sex with her husband.
Furious, Linda storms back home to confront Mark, and the two heatedly argue.
Linda then runs up the stairs to fetch Chloe but to her surprise, Chloe is nowhere to be found.
They call up the police, who later sits them down to inform them that after some investigation,
they discovered that Heather’s parents that Linda visited the
other day are not her biological parents, but are instead her foster ones. As it turns out,
Heather was an orphan. Hearing this, things are beginning to click in Linda’s mind.
She then decides to check out the nanny cam she installed in Chloe’s room, wherein she discovers
Heather talking to the camera, and asking Linda to go see her in Mark's construction site.
Linda rushes to the house, and finds her daughter Chloe, with her other daughter, Heather.
Well, you heard that right: Heather finally reveals that she is Linda’s daughter,
who she put up for adoption a long time ago when she was younger. Heather who
felt betrayed for being left behind, decided to concoct an elaborate plan to ruin Linda’s life.
Linda then pulls out her necklace that she put on her daughter, when her daughter was placed outside
of a hospital long time ago. The mother explains that Heather is lying since her daughter has died
in a car accident 8 years ago, when she started tracking her down and retrieving the necklace.
The two end up scuffling, with Heather managing to knock Linda down.
Mark arrives soon after and tries reasoning with her, but then this happens:
While Mark bleeds out on the floor and little Chloe cries in fear, Linda rises up and once
again scuffles with Heather. This time, Linda manages to gain the upper hand :
Heather falls down the window, and Linda is finally reunited her daughter.
However, the next time the camera pans outside the window, Heather is no longer there.
On the next scene, it appears that some time has passed, and we see Linda, Mark and Chloe spending
time with each other and they look happy. The movie then takes us to a view of inside
greyhound bus, where an old lady approaches a woman holding a baby.
It turns out that she is none other than Heather. And this is where the film ends.