At the beginning of the film, we are introduced to our main characters,
the three sorority sisters: Erica, Tori, and Britt. They are spending vacation at a house
by the river that is owned by Tori’s family, which they dub as their last hoorah for a while,
because college is starting soon. On their first morning there,
the vacation seems to be going well for them as Tori brings them to the river.
Britt warns Erica that the river is infested with jellyfish, and she must watch out for them.
However, that isn’t going to stop the three from having fun:
they take a boat to the deepest part of the cove, and sends Britt tubing along the river.
However, despite Erica’s concerns, Tori who is behind the wheel keeps going faster and faster,
and only laughs when she discovers that Britt fell out of the tube.
Luckily, when they take Britt out of the water, she hasn’t been stung by the jellyfish this time.
Later that night, Torri and Britt have a prank planned for Erica, in which they will ask her
to change into her pajamas before they start their games. Once Erica is upstairs in her room,
unbeknownst to her, a camera has been installed by Tori and Britt, in hopes of watching Erica react
to a prank they´ve installed. But it doesn´t take long for Erica to sense that she is being watched,
so she steps closer to the camera and accidentally triggers a trip wire.
Tori and Britt’s mischievous looks suddenly turn grim. Tori dashes her way upstairs,
here they finds Erica lying motionless, her neck wrung by the trap. Tori checks for a pulse but
doesn’t find any, causing the two girls to panic. Unwilling to face repercussions for this incident,
instead of calling for helps, Tori drags Erica’s body out the yard.
They then start burying her in the rain,
despite Britt’s moral objections. And then to their surprise, Erica begins moving... As soon
as they see her condition, the two decide to turn around and carry her back inside.
Finding out that Erica is still alive causes more panic than relief. Once Erica regains
full consciousness, it appears that she doesn’t remember what happened to her.
So Tori takes this opportunity to lie and say that Erica got into an accident, which explains
the injury in her neck and pain in her head, and Tori promises to explain more in the morning.
To prevent Erica from remembering the previous incident, Tori and Britt bring her to Britt's
room instead of Erica's. After they leave her alone in Britt’s room to rest for the night,
Erica notices that she is covered in dirt, and starts to pull a piece of it out of her hair.
She then vaguely remembers being dragged outside in the pouring rain. Meanwhile, Tori and Britt are
arguing downstairs, disagreeing in regards of what to do. They stop arguing when they hear a
noise from upstairs, and go to check it out. This is where they come face to face with Erica, who
reveals to them that she remembers everything now. The horrified Erica heads downstairs to look for
her phone so she can get a ride out of here, but Tori doesn’t want to risk Erica telling anyone
about this. Britt is crying, as she tells her that they were just playing a prank, and didn't mean
for anything to happen. Tori then subdues the poor girl, and even gets the conflicted Britt to help.
They tie her up in a chair and leave her in the living room. The next morning, Tori suddenly comes
up to her and tells her that she will keep Erica hostage, until she’s sure Erica won’t tell anyone.
Not willing to resign to her fate, Erica voices that she would like to go to the bathroom, and
tries escaping through the bathroom window when Britt who is supposed to watch her is not looking.
Britt then realizes what she's doing but does nothing about it,
until the plan is foiled when Tori finds out what she’s up to.
They tie her up in the chair again, and go about their day in tension-filled silence,
but unexpectedly,
a group of yard workers arrive and Erica tries to scream for help.
But before the workers could hear her scream, Tori and Britt manage to gag and tape her mouth,
as well as throw her inside the closet. They then welcome Calvin, one of the workers who apparently
have been summoned to the scene by Tori’s grandpa, to fix the damages caused by the storm last night.
While Tori holds a conversation with the worker, Erica actively tries to cause a commotion to
alert the workers of her presence.
Calvin gets slightly suspicious, but Tori is quick to excuse
that it’s just her boyfriend goofing about in the house, and Calvin believes her right away.
After the workers leave for the day, Tori gets to work: she reprimands Erica for
making noises in the closet. Tori then calls off the yard workers from coming anymore,
under the reason that she’s checked the weather forecast for the upcoming week and notices there
will be constant storms, making it redundant to make repairs now. Afterwards, she also decides
to lock Erica and Britt’s cellphones away. Unlike the psychopathic Tori, Britt seems
to be plagued with moral dilemma over what they’re doing to Erica. She later decides to
try calling for help but soon realizes that Tori not only has taken away her phone, but
also cut off all the landlines inside the house. Furious, Britt confronts Tori, insisting that they
should let Erica go, because what they’re doing to her is not okay. Tori, however,
reminds her that if that happens, Erica would tell people and their future would be ruined
since they would end up in jail. According to Tori, they have three days to figure out
a way to ensure Erica won't tell anyone, and she assures Britt that it doesn't end here.
On the next morning, Britt attempts to clear her conscience by apologizing to Erica,
and reasons that she didn’t have a choice, because things just got out of hand so fast. But when
Erica calls her a coward, Britt gets defensive and starts victimizing herself. It is clear now that
Britt has chosen a side, and it isn’t Erica’s. Britt then leaves the room and lies in bed to
sit with her thoughts, while Tori pulls out her grandpa’s hunting rifle. Finally left alone,
Erica starts working on freeing herself with a tiny blade in her hand, but then
she accidentally drops it to the ground. Unable to pick it up, she comes up with another idea:
she slowly drags herself to the nearest door, twists it open with her mouth.
She plunges herself backwards, breaking the chair.
Erica is finally able to free herself, ignoring the pain it caused, and begins
running away.
As she resumes running, we can see that Tori and Britt have learned of her escape,
and pile inside the car to go after her. Erica keeps running despite the odds,
and this scene was shot in a single take, so we can appreciate her effort in running this far.
She then hides behind a tree until the car pass by,
but it returns soon after and forces her to keep running.
After a while, they stop the car and Britt walks out, begging for Erica to come inside the car with
them. This soft gesture infuriates Tori, who takes out her weapon and shoots around Erica.
Like a psycho, Tori who is pissed yells at Erica to keep running now as a punishment,
and Erica ends up crawling down a vast field, until she passes out from exhaustion.
The two captors drag her back inside the house, and proceed to have a discussion
upstairs about what they’re going to do next. Tori tells Britt to toughen up and proceeds
with her grand plan, which involves her going downstairs and forcefully cleaning Erica up.
She then takes a bottle of liquor and forces Erica to down it. It's unclear what her plan is,
but the drunk Tori begins playing some music and starts dancing around Erica, until she gets
tired and sits down. Erica tries telling her that none of this needed to happen, but there
is no talking Tori out of this now. Tori takes out a bat and starts smashing liquor bottles,
and even smashes one above Erica’s head.
She then begins slapping Erica and proceeds to scream at her, during which Erica screams back.
Tori then touches her thigh, as if she is about to do something more,
but then decides against it when she realizes Erica is on her period and leaves.
Britt doesn’t go downstairs to check the damages until the next morning, but when she does,
she decides Tori has gone too far when she sees how bad Erica's condition is. Britt then confronts
Tori, and tells her she’s had enough of what Tori did. Hearing this, Tori tells Britt that
she just tested Erica, and reveals that Britt was the one who came up with the idea for the trap,
and that she had only been covering for Britt. Britt again tells Tori that Tori was the one who
dragged her downstairs, which shows that they are both to blame from the beginning. Britt then ready
to walk out of the house, but Erica stops her and begs her to put a stop to Tori before it’s
too late. According to her, Tori will eventually kill Erica, and Britt will be the next victim.
As Britt ruminates on what to do by the pier, the unhinged Tori bangs her head against the wall,
before she gets ready for what she is about to do next. Meanwhile outside, Britt attempts to
end her life by jumping off the pier, hoping the jellyfish would sting her to death.
Tori goes downstairs and begins hitting Erica in the head, hoping she would get an amnesia,
while Erica begs for her to stop. Back to Britt, as it turns out, makes it out alive.
Britt who is now given a second chance has decided that she is not going to waste it.
She faces off against Tori, and the two end up in a violent scuffle. Britt smashes a
bottle against her knee, and Tori falls on top of smashed glass pieces. When Britt is
only a step away from killing her, Tori tries convincing her to once again work together,
because they only have tonight until Tori’s family shows up at the house to check things out.
Disappointingly, Britt switches to Tori’s side again since Britt also has no idea what to do at
this point. Later that night, they start getting ready for Erica's forced test so she won't tell
anyone else about what happened. Before they begin, Tori wants to check Erica’s phone to see
if there's anything to blackmail Erica with. Erica who is now running out of options decides to tell
Tori her password, but luckily, they don't find anything useful. Hence, Tori starts with breaking
Erica's finger, and gives her one last chance to convince them she won’t tell anyone about this,
but nothing Erica says seems to convince her.
She pushes the chair down and the two proceed
to water board the poor girl, while asking her the same question, which is whether or not she would
tell anyone about this.
The next time Erica gets to speak, she personally asks Britt to snap her
finger because she doesn’t care anymore. Hearing this, Britt breaks another one of her fingers,
and the two captors water board her again. The next time they ask her if she’s going
to tell anyone, she says yes because it seems like she’s lost the will to live.
The psychotic Tori then sits Erica up again, and proceeds to force some more liquor down
her throat. It is now obvious that Tori is simply doing this for her own satisfaction;
she gets cocky and starts flashing a lighter in front of Erica’s face, but then…
Erica blows the fire with her liquor-filled mouth, triggering the automatic fire alarm
which immediately summons the fire department to the scene. Tori panics
and immediately goes to shut it off. Because it’s probably too late to cover their asses,
Tori and Britt get ready to take Erica to the boat, but then unexpectedly,
a vehicle pulls up at the house, prompting the two captors to hide.
As it turns out, the newcomers are Calvin and a friend of his, who have made their way inside to
rob the house. Calvin finds Erica and immediately questions what happened to her, while Erica simply
begs for Calvin to end her life. Calvin then tells his friend to begin looking for the safe
upstairs. He again asks Erica what happened to her, to which Erica tells that Calvin just missed
her friends. Meanwhile upstairs, Britt and Tori apprehend Calvin’s friend and chokes him to death.
Seeing the state of Erica triggers Calvin’s compassion, so he releases her and embraces
her in his arms. But unexpectedly, Erica reaches for his gun and shoots him dead
with the last of her strength.
Now assured that Erica won’t tell a soul about what actually happened,
Tori drops her gun and helps her up. In the end, they call up 911 and present
the police with a fake story about a couple of robbers breaking in, and attempting to
kill them. According to Tori, they were able to defend themselves and the robbers are now
dead. Afterwards, they clean themselves up and peacefully head back to their sorority house.
On the next scene, it appears that some time has passed, leaving Erica traumatized by her pass incident,
but she still stands by her word and hasn't told anyone about what happened. The film ends
with Erica having to live alongside Tori and Britt in the sorority house for years to come.