The film opens with a recently widowed woman, Jessica, shoving her things down a cargo trailer
for a road trip. Once she is done with the preparation, she opens a map app on her phone,
which reveals that she is leaving for a four-day trip out of town to start a new life.
Her trip out of town seems to be going well, and she enjoys the drive for a while,
until she finally arrives on the highway in the middle of the woods. At some point,
she finds herself driving down a quiet road, with a black car ahead of her behaving strangely.
The black car is moving too slowly, and whenever she tries to overtake it, it begins to speed up.
Jessica doesn't want to wait any longer, so she decides to speed up and swerve to the other lane.
However, the car matches her exact speed to keep her from returning to the right lane.
To make it worse, a huge truck appears to be driving towards her,
but the black car still refuses to slow down.
Fortunately, she successfully overtakes the car, just seconds away before the truck hits her.
But in a matter of seconds, the black car speeds up to catch up to her, and starts honking at her.
They then part ways at an intersection,
and she makes a stop to catch a breath from the adrenaline rush.
Later that evening, she’s filling up gas at a gas station while on call with her dad.
Based on the phone call, it appears that she’s not in good terms with her mother,
despite her father’s plea for them to make up.
In the middle of the call, she gets distracted
when she sees the black car from earlier pull up at the gas station, before quickly driving away.
Afterwards, she decides to rest up and spend the night at a small motel in the town.
She receives a call from her mother while she is there, but she chooses not to answer.
Before going to sleep, she looks at pictures of herself and her late husband,
and thinks about the good times they had together.
Sadness overwhelming her, she lets out a few tears before deciding to go to sleep.
In the morning, when she’s about to leave, a shady-looking stranger with an arm cast
walks up to her. Jessica is a little surprised when he introduces himself as
the guy driving the black car. He awkwardly apologizes for what happened the other day,
saying that he was texting while driving and didn’t pay attention to what was going on.
He then proceeds to ask her more questions, such as if she lives nearby and where she’s
headed, which creeps Jessica out so she excuses herself and resumes on her way.
Soon after, she finally leaves the town, and now drives on a highway through the forest. But after
some time of driving, she once more comes across the black car parked in the middle of the road,
with the shady stranger looking lost. Jessica appears wary and locks her car right away.
She then rolls down her window a bit, and lets the guy plead his case,
during which he claims that his car engine just died. He’s asking for her to help give him a ride
to the nearest gas station. Worried about her safety, Jessica suggests that she could just
hit up the gas station and send some mechanic to help him. The guy however, refuses and is
adamant that she comes out and help him, so she hits the gas and drives away out of suspicion.
She only makes her next stop way later that night at another gas station. While taking a break,
Jessica finally picks up when her mom calls. The mom sounds upset by the fact that Jessica
decided to skip town without notifying her family, but Jessica has made up her mind as
she is doing it to move on from her husband.
To her surprise, she finds the same damn car
again pulling up to the parking lot as it enters the resting area. Jessica gets scared and returns
to her car immediately, because it is clear that the guy is following her. As expected, the
stranger walks up to her window, but she begins driving away before he gets to say anything.
However, on her way out, a white van swoops in and blocks her path, enabling the creeper to
walk up to her again, saying that he’s just here to use the bathroom and that Jess is overreacting.
Jessica decides to ignore him, and drive away as soon as the white van moves out of the way.
She begins driving as fast as she could, as she’s able to see the black car from her rearview mirror.
It is at this point that she decides to call 911 to report that she’s being followed,
but she begins to get frustrated when the operator asks her where her location is,
which she doesn’t precisely know either. She panics even more when the black car
begins speeding up, but unexpectedly, it passes her and disappears into the night, showing that
it wasn’t the shady stranger’s car after all. Jessica then tells the 9-1-1 that the report
is a false alarm, and she starts to calm down a little bit. But I may have spoken to soon,
because right after, she suddenly loses control of her car, and it derails by the side of the road.
When she goes out to check, she finds that one of her cargo trailer’s tires has burst. Conveniently,
the black car begins driving towards her, instantly activating her fight or flight instinct.
She quickly unhooks the cargo trailer from her car and climbs in, but she fails to start the
car in time. This time the shady stranger decides he's had enough of pretending to be a nice guy,
and breaks her window right away.
Jessica fights against him for a short while, but he’s stronger,
and he’s quick to inject her with a sedative.
The next day when she wakes up, she finds herself
inside an unfamiliar room with barred windows and a barb-wired-fenced lawn.
She tries looking through the locked door, but finds nothing that could help her.
She then begins hearing footsteps outside, which belongs to none other than the shady stranger.
He simply looks at her smugly, and tells her to keep quiet when she begs him to let her go.
The man doesn’t come check on her until later that night, when he shines his
flashlight inside the pitch-black room, and walks up to her with a lewd smile.
She yet again pleads for his mercy, and offers him money in exchange for her freedom. The
man doesn’t budge, and creepily replies that she’s not the first person to say that to him,
clarifying that he’s a serial killer. Like the freak he is, he asks her to
take her clothes off, so she tries to trick him by saying that she needs to use the bathroom.
But as soon as she sprints towards the door, he beats her to the ground. He then drags her to
the middle of the room, before kneeling on top of her and caressing her face.
Up next, he takes out her iPad, and shows her a video of happy moments of her with her husband.
He then looks at the wedding ring she wears as a necklace, while asking if her husband divorced her.
Though initially reluctant to answer, she finally admits that her husband died by suicide,
but the serial killer wasn’t satisfied with that answer. He forces her to admit that her husband
shot himself, and that she found his dead body.
In the morning, she wakes and immediately tries
the door, but it doesn’t budge. When she looks through the keyhole, she sees that
the key is sticking to the other side of the door. Therefore, she looks around the room,
until she finds a nail sticking to a beam, and pulls it out with all her might.
Afterwards, she flattens her jacket, and slides it outside the door, and pushes the key out using
the nail. Once the key falls, she slides it inside the room, and uses it to break out.
Just then, the serial killer came home from grocery shopping, forcing her to hide inside
the closet, right when he enters the room. She nervously watches him through the door gap,
trying to stay quiet, while the serial killer answers a phone call. It turns out that it’s from
his family. He appears to be talking to his young daughter, sweetly telling her to say hi to mommy
and to tell mommy that his business trip is taking a bit longer, so he’d be home in a couple of days.
He then hangs up the phone and heads downstairs to look in the basement. Jessica sees this as a
chance, so she dashes out of the house and into the woods as fast as she can.
She’s soon followed by the serial killer who realizes she has escaped.
Jessica keeps running until she trips, and finds that a twig has punctured her foot,
forcing her to painfully take it out.
Her scream while doing so drawing the killer’s attention.
But this doesn’t deter her; she limps her way forward, until she has no other choice but to
step into the river as the killer finds her.
Although she might drown, she decides to jump
in the water, and let the stream carry her towards the other part of the woods.
At this point in the film, it isn't the right time for her to die, so she survives.
The stream has washed her over to the side, so she continues to tread down the woods,
using a stem to help her walk. But then all of the sudden,
she hears footsteps, prompting her to hide and wait, before hitting the man with the stem.
As it turns out, it is just an old hunter, who is taken by surprise by the sudden attack.
She immediately apologizes and begs for his help, saying that someone is
trying to kill her and asks to borrow his phone. But unfortunately, it’s now broken
because she smacked the shit out of him earlier. Feeling sorry for the woman, the hunter guides her
back to his car, and lets her borrow his wife’s hunting boots before they drive away together.
He kindly lets her eat his lunch sandwich during the drive, while he tries to calm
her down. But then suddenly, they come across a fallen tree blocking their path. This causes
Jessica to freak out, and try to move the tree out of the way, but it's obviously too heavy.
And as if on cue, the killer drives up towards them, and the old hunter tells Jessica to calm down.
The man then proceeds to tell the hunter that Jessica is his mentally unstable sister
who ran away from the house, which confuses the hunter. At this moment, the hunter starts
to believe him, and allows him to get her. The killer then proceeds to try apprehending Jessica,
but the way he roughly handles her gets the hunter suspicious so he raises his gun,
forcing the killer to release her.
As Jessica runs into the woods, the confused
hunter demands to borrow the killer’s phone, because if Jessica really is his sister, then the
police could probably corroborate his claim. But it won't be that simple.
He beats the old hunter bloody, and shoots him with the hunting rifle to finish him off.
At the same time, Jess starts running away deep into the woods as the now-armed killer looks for her.
Night falls, Jessica finally takes a rest by a rock under the raging storm.
But unlucky for her, the killer is nearby, shining his flashlight around looking for her.
Once she thinks it’s safe, she moves to leave, but it is revealed that the
man is still there and shoots her in the leg.
The adrenaline-fueled Jessica still manages to
slip past him though; she hides under the bushes while he looks for her yet again.
The killer then starts trying to scare her; he tells her that with a gunshot wound,
she has 2 hours to come out otherwise she will bleed to death. Thus, he suggests that she come
out now to fight him while she still can. To taunt her even more, he even puts down
the rifle, and says that she’s free to try and grab it for the next one minute.
He continues to taunt her, even going as far as mentioning about her dead husband,
and calling him a coward to spark her anger. The longer Jessica refuses to come out,
the more impatient he gets; he begins yelling and saying that he’s coming to get her.
Kudos to Jessica though, she doesn’t go for the rifle, and instead waits until
the killer picks it up and leaves.
Afterwards, she comes out of hiding, and walks some more,
until she falls asleep under a tree out of exhaustion.
The following morning, she wakes up and finds herself still in the middle of the forest.
She then forces herself to keep walking through the difficult terrain,
until she hears the sound of a running car, which belongs to none other than the killer.
He takes out the dead hunter’s dead body, and drags him into a shallow grave he made.
As he goes to bury the body, Jessica sneaks up to his car and tries to open the car door.
It’s not locked, so she enters it and proceeds to look for anything
that might help her, until she finds his phone.
Unfortunately, once she finds it, the killer has finished burying the man,
so she quickly rolls up to the back, as he reenters his car and starts driving again.
There she finds a tire wrench to arm herself, and starts dialing 911, but is unable to say
anything clearly because she can’t make a noise. It doesn’t take long for the killer to notice
that his phone is missing; he looks around for it, and stops the car when he can’t seem to find it.
Realizing there’s only so much time before her position’s compromised,
she decides to jump out and starts beating him with the tire wrench.
The man then starts driving like a maniac, while repeatedly trying to stab her with his hunting knife,
up until she hits his arm and gets him to let go of his knife.
She then chokes him with the tire wrench repeatedly, and stabs him in the wrist,
causing him to lose control of the steering wheel, and sending them to a car crash.
Jessica crawls out of the wreck afterwards, and she witnesses a helicopter pass while her vision blurs.
Hopeful after seeing the helicopter, she gathers the strength to stand and walks,
until she reaches a clearing. Meanwhile back at the wreck,
we see that the killer is still alive. Jessica still has the killer’s phone with her,
and decides to call the man’s wife to reveal to her that her husband is not away on a business
trip, and that he’s actually a serial killer. When she sees the killer approach, she puts the call
on speaker to let the man know that she’s told his wife. Jessica proceeds to inform the wife
her full name before saying that if she dies today, it’s because her husband’s killed her.
This of course infuriates the killer, who immediately ends the call after
Jessica threw the phone at his direction.
The killer’s face shows pure desperation,
and since both of them have nothing to lose, they end in a violent brawl.
He uses his knife in this fight, but Jessica has her metal tool to fight back against him.
She manages to land quite a few hits with the wrench,
until at one point, the man stabs her on her limb and almost kills her,
but she manages to fight back, and bite the wound on his arm.
And now it's Jessica's
time to do the fatality move; she stabs him deep in the gut, pinning him down.
Once she’s sure he has no strength left in him, she lays on the ground due to tiredness.
Her eyes fill with madness as she watches him die. Before the film ends,
the helicopter finally finds her, and swoops down to pick her up.