It's January in the year 2012 and nurse Anna is on a bus returning home after a vacation. The only
other person on the bus is aspiring comic book artist Freddy, who tries to chat with her for a
while. They discover they live on the same block, but Anna is a bit uncomfortable with the way
Freddy keeps trying to hit on her, so Freddy tries to win her over by drawing her portrait. Suddenly,
the bus is hit by another vehicle. A memory of young Anna putting up a play for her Aunt Lu,
who is reading a story her niece wrote, takes over Anna's mind before she wakes up in her house.
Looking at the clock, she sees she's late for work and rushes to get ready, and when she looks
at herself in the mirror, she's surprised to notice her armpit hair has grown really long.
Moments later, when she makes it to the hospital, she discovers there's not a single person there.
Phones and televisions aren't working either, the screens from the security cameras are all gray,
and the only noise comes from a barely-intelligible audio recording.
That same recording shows the date to be March 13th, which doesn't match Anna's memory.
Freaked out, Anna begins wandering around the city in her car and knocking at various houses,
but she still can't find anyone, not even bugs or birds in the sky.
She decides to return to her house and try to sleep it off in case it's a nightmare,
but her resting is interrupted by extremely loud music coming from a few houses down the road.
Anna goes to investigate and is surprised to find Freddy is the one playing music, and he
remembers her from the bus as well. Freddy hasn't found anyone in town either, so they decide to go
together to the police station. This building is empty too, and all of the communication channels
are down. Anna sees some pictures of an accident on a board that reminds her of a fire in her life,
but she decides to ignore those flashbacks for now. After Freddy takes a gun in case they need
it, the pair gets in Anna's car and drives out of town, only to find the road blocked by a wall of
dark fog. Freddy tries touching it, but it makes him feel sick, so they decide to try another road.
Unfortunately, the situation here is the same, and this time Freddy notices the fog is moving
towards the city. Back in town, the pair goes to the roof of a building and notices the entire town
is surrounded by the dark fog on all borders. They go back to wander around town, hoping
to find clues, and Anna comes across a diner that hasn't been around since she was a child.
When they enter it, they find there are tons of people, but none of them can see or hear them.
Freddy notices people are outside now as well so he leaves the building, but he isn't seen outside
either, and a flier tells him a carnival is coming to town, which he remembers from his childhood.
Meanwhile, Anna finds her younger self having a birthday meal with Aunt Lu while she writes
more stories in her notebook. Anna tries to touch her aunt and this breaks the illusion,
but one thing is clear: for a moment there, both of them traveled back to 1992.
Freddy and Anna decide to sit and compare information. Just like Anna,
after the bus accident, Freddy woke up in his bed and found he had a full beard on his face.
Anna wonders if there was an evacuation, but that wouldn't explain the hair growth.
Freddy grabs a tape measure and takes it to the fog to calculate how fast it's moving, coming to
the conclusion that it'll cover the whole city in a little less than three days. Next, they grab a
map and visit every road out of town to calculate which will be the safe spot in the last few hours.
By the time they're done, the sky is already getting dark because the fog is blocking the sun.
Afterward, they break into a grocery store to gather supplies and discuss their options,
like maybe escaping through the sewer system. Anna begins wondering if perhaps they're both dead,
and Freddy agrees it's a possibility, but he also thinks it could be an alternate dimension
or parallel universe. At that moment, Anna remembers the recording in the hospital and drags
Freddy there to show it to him. Freddy manages to rewind it and they get to hear a couple of doctors
discussing the state of a patient that has been in a coma for two months. Since there hasn't been
any progress, they agree to wait three more days just in case, and if there aren't any signs of
recovery, they'll cut off life support. Suddenly, the doctors refer to the patient as Anna, which
can't be a coincidence. Freddy rushes towards the rooms where Anna says they usually leave
their comatose patients and finds a heart monitor showing a very high heart rate. With a theory in
mind, Freddy makes Anna sit and calm down, which makes the numbers on the monitor go down as well.
Then they search for another room with a working heart monitor, and Anna confirms
this one matches Freddy's current heart rate. The conclusion is obvious: they've both been
unconscious for two months because of the bus crash, which explains why they woke up looking
like wookies. The recording was just the voices of the doctors looking over Anna in her room,
and the darkness will take three days to cover the city because that's when she'll finally
be disconnected. To get out of here they need to wake up, and Freddy thinks that to achieve
that they'll have to walk through the fog. Using flashlights, they make their way through the dark
fog as they fight down the feeling of sickness. Eventually, they make it to a small fogless area
where a door stands with a candle, and Freddy can't help thinking it looks very familiar.
There are thousands of keys on the floor and Freddy tries one to no avail. While he tries
to think of a way to find the right key, Anna finds a rock with some chains on top of it,
and when the pair come closer, the chains move as a monster roars in the darkness.
Anna and Freddy run back to the car, where Freddy grabs the gun and tries to find the monster to
shoot it. The chains suddenly appear on the ground and close around Freddy's ankle to drag him away,
but Freddy manages to hold onto the car and push the chain away with his foot to free himself.
Then, the pair drives away and returns to town to think of something else.
After stopping at a store to grab more supplies and a weapon more powerful than a gun,
they decide that since all roads are closed they should try the water. Freddy takes Anna to his
childhood home to find an old family boat and suddenly finds lights inside the house.
Once again, they travel back to 1992, where young Freddy is drawing a comic called "Beyond the
veil". His stepfather tries to bond with him after he had some trouble at school and even
offers to have some fun together, but Freddy turns him down. As soon as the conversation ends, Freddy
and Anna return to the present and take the boat to try to escape through the river. Freddy tells
her all about his love for comics, which were his way to escape, and in return, Anna tells him she
used to want to be a writer. She was raised by her aunt Lu, who had been in an accident and spent the
last year of her life wasting away in a hospital bed, unconscious. This is why Anna dropped writing
and became a nurse, it's also the reason why she has a living will that allows doctors to
disconnect her in case of coma; she doesn't want to end like her aunt. After rowing for a while,
they find the river is also blocked by the black fog, so they have no choice but to return to town.
Deciding it's not a good idea to split, they agree to spend the night at Anna's. However
in the middle of the night, Freddy remembers something and rushes back to his old house.
There, he finds his old "Beyond the veil" comic, which pictures the door with all the keys on
the ground. The date he drew this matches Anna's birthday, the same as the memory from the diner.
That day, both of them also went to the carnival, so they decide to visit that area now.
When they arrive, they find the carnival is in 1992, showing them memories of that day.
Anna is there with her aunt celebrating her birthday while Freddy is hanging
out with some kids that bully him for being a nerd and dare him to go into a haunted house.
When both groups are on their way out of the carnival, young Freddy and Anna accidentally bump
into each other but barely get to glance at the other before moving on. Once the memory is over,
they return to 2012, where Anna realizes that it was after the carnival that the first memory she
got after the bus crash happened. She and her aunt were acting out her story, and Anna accidentally
knocked over a candle that started a fire and hurt aunt Lu so badly that it put her into a coma.
Anna still feels guilty about it, no matter how Freddy tells her it had been just an accident.
Their conversation is suddenly interrupted when they hear the monster is nearby, and the pair
runs away to hide in the local school. The monster follows them inside the building, but it can't go
very far because of the length limit of the chain around his neck. Freddy spies through a hole on
the table they're hiding behind and notices something on the monster's chest: it's the
key to the door in the fog. He decides to try to get the key by shooting the monster with the gun,
and while the bullet does hit, it only grazes the monster's body, although at least it scares him
away. The pair then returns to Anna's house, where Freddy calculates how long the monster's chain is
in order to know what spots in town are safe. Anna recovers her old notebook with her story,
which reveals the monster chasing them is the same one she had written about. This means this world
is a mix of both their creative endeavors. The story says the monster eats people but not how
to destroy it because Anna had only written that a knight killed it, so Freddy comes up with an idea.
By gathering supplies from various stores, Freddy creates a trap to attract the monster. They put
two mannequins in the middle of the street with raw meat in them to make the monster
think they're people, and between them, a homemade bomb. Freddy and Anna hide on a roof to wait, and
when the monster finally shows up, Freddy pulls a cord to make the bomb explodes, but it fails.
They'll have to make the bomb explode by shooting it, but their first try fails
and the monster gets scared, so it begins walking away. By the time a shot finally lands on a bomb,
the explosion doesn't reach the monster, but it breaks the chain and frees it.
The dark fog is about to reach the center of the city and the monster is roaming around now. Anna
and Freddy go to Anna's house to retrieve a bag of supplies, then they go to the local movie theatre
to hide. Unfortunately, the monster finds them there, thus the pair escapes and runs to hide in
the church instead, locking the door with a cross. They sit to rest for a while and Anna apologizes
to Freddy for not accepting his date back on the bus, so Freddy takes the chance to try to confess
something. However when he's about to talk, Anna begins throwing up and trembling in pain. Freddy
can't stand the idea of watching her die and goes out to confront the monster after telling Anna not
to follow him. Worried, Anna disobeys and goes outside just in time to see the monster dragging
Freddy's body away. After breaking the church's broom to have a wood stick to defend herself,
a devastated Anna returns to her old house to find comfort in the last memory of that day in 1992:
her and aunt Lu performing the story she had written. It's revealed then that Anna's house
was the same house Freddy's bullies thought was haunted because it used to be a hospital during
the Civil War, and the boys arrived at that moment to pull off the dare. Young Freddy threw a rock to
hit the windchimes, but his aim was awful and the rock ended up going through the window instead,
knocking off the candles. It turns out the accident had been his fault all along.
When the memory ends, a bleeding Freddy shows up at the house, apologizing to Anna and coming to
the conclusion they're probably here to deal with their guilt. The monster appears in the house too,
and after hugging a now unconscious Freddy, Anna goes to confront the beast, telling it she isn't
afraid of it. The monster attacks her and after some struggle, Anna manages to stab it with the
broom handle. Then, Anna takes the key from its chest and goes back to Freddy as the black fog
finally reaches the middle of the town, entering the house through the window. Suddenly, Anna and
Freddy find themselves in front of the creepy door. Anna uses the key and it fits perfectly,
but the door still won't open. When a drop of Freddy's blood floats towards the lock, Anna
understands they both need to touch it, so she guides Freddy's hand to push the key too, causing
the door to finally open. After crossing, Anna wakes up from her coma in the hospital bed. Still
worried about Freddy, she rushes to his room, only to find out he's already been discharged.
Sometime later, once Anna has properly been discharged too, she goes to Freddy's house and
is received by his caretaker. It turns out Freddy is wheelchair-bound now and suffers from amnesia,
the only thing he remembers is being on the bus. However, he has very vivid dreams at night that
allows him to see fragments of his memories, and when he wakes up, he sketches them. By looking
at the drawings, Anna confirms their comatose adventure did happen and decides to try something.
She grabs the portrait of herself and shows it to Freddy, pointing out that is her on the drawing.
This allows Freddy to see flashes of their moments together and the two of them finally kiss.