The film opens with a woman named Tess Marshall, pulling up in front of a
house she booked on Airbnb in the pouring rain. However, when she reaches the door,
she finds that the house keys aren’t inside the lockbox as per instructed by the booking agent.
Tess tries to get in touch with whoever booked her, but is only able to reach voicemail, so she
only leaves a call back request in the voicemail. To add to her confusion, she finds that the lights
inside the house are on. She then rings the bell, and is surprised to see a man inside.
The man's name is Keith, and here we learn that he is currently renting the same house,
thus it appears that the booking agent accidentally double-booked the place.
Since they cannot reach the bookers, plus,
it's pouring rain outside, the man lets Tess inside because he feels sorry for her.
Keith then shows her his booking confirmation on the app, to prove that he’s not lying.
Still feeling awkward about being in the same house with the man,
Tess begins browsing for the nearest hotel, but finds that it’s fully booked for tonight.
Keith who’s eavesdropping on her call informs her that there’s currently a huge medical
convention in town, which would make it impossible to find a vacant hotel room.
And so, he proposes that she should stay the night, and lets her stay in the bedroom.
After he carries her suitcase inside, she moves inside the bedroom,
where she finds his wallet and decides to take a picture of his ID for safety measure.
She gives him back the wallet, and then she takes a shower. When Tess gets back to the hall,
she finds him waiting for her with an unopened bottle of wine and two glasses.
Still alert, she politely refuses to drink, but agrees to sit across from him and the two casually chat.
After revealing that she’s in town for a job interview with a filmmaker named Catherine
James, Keith reveals that he’s actually seen Catherine James’ latest film. Not only that,
Catherine James’ next film would centre around a Detroit music collective,
and Keith just happens to be one of the founders. Having shared a common ground, Tess eases
up and the two get engrossed in an engaging conversation, until finally, Keith showcases
a silly act on how to flip a set of fresh sheets, which gets her to laugh.
Together, the two put the new sheets over the bed for her to sleep in, and as Keith bids her good night, it is
clear that he's starting to like her.
At night though, she gets woken up by a creak
of the door, and finds it swinging open.
What makes it creepier, Keith can be heard
panting in his sleep while saying “help me,” which prompts her to start walking up to him.
Unbeknownst to her, a bedroom door slowly swings in the background.
She then snaps Keith awake, freaking him out.
Tess explains that she heard
her door swing open, and wondered if it was him, which he confusedly says no to.
After apologizing, she makes sure to lock her door before falling back to sleep.
In the morning, she doesn’t see Keith, but finds a note from him saying that he’s out and about,
and that he had a great time with her last night. When she finally exits the house
for her job interview, for the first time she finally notices that every single house in this
neighbourhood is completely run down, and empty save for the one Keith and her are staying at.
However as she’s running late, she ignores the major red flag, and proceeds to her interview.
After the interview, Catherine James asks her which part of Detroit she’s staying at,
to which she replies Brightmoor. Simply hearing the name concerns Catherine, who warns her to
not stay in the area because it isn’t a safe neighborhood, but Tess convinces her she’s fine.
When Tess returns to the house, a homeless man can be seen running in the background.
He starts yelling at her to get out of the house. Scared, Tess rushes to get the house keys,
and locks herself inside just before the man could get to her. She tries calling 911 while
watching out for the man, but they sadly could not dispatch any unit for her at the moment.
Therefore, she packs her bags, and tries to make do inside the house for the time being.
Later, she discovers that they’ve run out of toilet paper upstairs,
so she heads to the basement to fetch it. But when she goes back up,
the door slowly swings and closes on its own, locking her inside.
Then she realizes that she left her phone in the bedroom. To make things worse,
the house key is inside her pocket, which would make it impossible for Keith to return inside.
Seeing that there’s a window there, she tries to look around for whatever may help her break it.
But instead, she discovers a rope sticking out of the wall and decides to pull it.
It is revealed that there is an ominous door in the basement, and she can see how dark it is inside.
She then sits around the basement until she gets bored, and tries using a mirror
to reflect some light into the dark room, which turns out to be a straight hall.
With nothing else to do, she finally decides to venture it, and once inside the straight hall,
she discovers another door. When she opens it, it leads her into a small room,
with dried blood on the bed, a bucket, and a really old camera. The sight horrifies her
beyond measure, and she runs back to the basement.
Luckily, Keith finally arrives,
and so she calls to him through the small window, and hands him the key to come and save her.
After he does, she begins freaking out and takes her bag to leave,
while rambling about finding a scary room with a bed, camera, and pail.
Keith, however, doesn’t think there’s anything weird about finding these things in a basement,
and decides to check it out for himself. He tells her to wait upstairs
in case the basement door shuts on its own. It doesn’t take long before she gets impatient,
She tries checking up on him, but at the same time, the door is slowly closing,
and this time, she makes sure to hold the door open using a chair,
before heading downstairs. She tries calling for him again, but he doesn’t answer.
Tess then heads down the dark hall again, until she reaches the room. Oddly enough, she doesn’t
find him there.
Upon returning to the dark hall, she discovers that there’s actually another door,
leading to a set of stairs heading downwards. She yells his name again, and this time he
begins screaming for help, leaving her no choice but to descend.
Tess follows the sound of his screams to navigate the dark halls, and discovers
multiple rusty cages with doggie bowls.
As she ventures deeper,
she finally finds
a terrified Keith, who claims that someone bit him. Keith senses danger around every corner,
and they argue about which way is the way out.
But before they can run,
they get interrupted by a horrifying naked humanoid monstrosity, who bashes Keith’s skull
against the wall until he is dead. The creature then screams at Tess,
and what happens next is unknown.
The next scene shows AJ Gillbride, a
successful Hollywood actor, who suddenly receives a phone call from his colleagues. They tell him
he’s been fired from his most recent show, because of an alleged sexual misconduct against a co-star.
With his career threatened, he flies off to Detroit to liquidate an asset of his,
so that he could afford a lawyer for his ongoing lawsuit. AJ travels to a rental property he owns
in Detroit, and just so happens, the asset is the very house in Brightmoor.
Upon his arrival, he can see that Tess’ car is still in front of the house,
and her belongings along with Keith’s are scattered around the house. This infuriates AJ,
who immediately thinks someone’s been squatting at his place. He tries calling up his house manager,
but she claims that there hasn’t been any new AirBnB bookings in the past two weeks.
Ignoring this for now, he goes out to meet up with a friend in town,
and here we learn that AJ really did rape his co-star, but refuses to admit that it was rape.
On the next morning, he starts digging around Keith and Tess’s things, as he is
curious about their identities. He then finds Tess’ laptop and sees her username, and later
finds her car keys on the small dining table.
This leaves one last place to look for the squatters: the basement.
He gets dressed and arms himself with a small knife, and a flashlight.
When he enters the basement, he suddenly hears a loud thump coming from one side of
the wall. He also discovers the sticking out rope, and opens the hidden door.
But because AJ is not the brightest, he doesn’t find the room with the bed and camera alarming;
he instead sees this as an opportunity to increase his property value,
because more space means more money.
He takes a measuring tape, and starts
measuring the size of the dark hall and the sketchy room. He gets even more ecstatic when
he discovers the other hidden door leading further underground, and starts measuring as he descends.
AJ doesn’t even get scared at the sight of the cages; instead, he keeps going until he finds some
light shining from further down the tunnel. Upon walking up to it, he discovers a
foul-smelling room with a small TV playing an old tutorial on how to nurse a baby.
And then suddenly, he feels a tug on his measuring tape, and decides to let it go.
Hearing a scary noise makes him run deeper down the tunnel in fear.
It is at this point that the creature appears in front of his face.
Terrified, AJ keeps running until he falls down a hole,
right when he finds Tess is in there with him.
The next scene takes us to sometime in the 80’s,
where the house's original owner, Frank, is leaving his home. When he climbs into his car,
we can see that the street is still full of residents. He heads to the grocery store,
and tells the employee he’s looking for baby needs because he’s expecting a new born.
But when he returns to his car, we can tell that there’s something wrong with Frank, as he starts following
a lady’s car, and watches her when she gets home. Up next, he disguises himself as a city
electrician coming in to check for potential power outages.
But when he gets inside her house, he proceeds to unlock her bathroom window before heading home.
His neighbor approaches him as he pulls up, announcing that a lot of people are selling
their properties as the city’s expecting an economic crash, but Frank confidently
says he’s not moving anywhere.
When he gets back inside the
house and opens the basement door, a lady’s agonizing scream can be heard.
We now return to the present, with Tess warning AJ to stay calm to not upset the creature.
As if on cue, the creature appears, and reaches down through the metal bar,
handing them a baby bottle to drink. Tess obediently drinks the shitty milk,
and tells AJ to do the same, because the creature just wants them to be her baby, but he refuses.
Sensing something’s wrong, the creature steps into the hole with them, and lovingly cradles Tess.
The creature comes up to AJ and starts to baby talk him in a scary voice.
She then pulls AJ by the legs and takes him away, leaving Tess alone in the hole.
The Mother takes AJ to the TV room, and begins to force him to nurse. Meanwhile, Tess uses this
opportunity to climb out of the hole and escape.
Unfortunately, she makes a noise when she steps
over the measuring tape, causing the creature to chase after her.
Even worse, the basement door is locked, resorting her to start crawling out of the tiny window,
helped by a homeless person, just before The Mother gets to her.
As it turns out, the homeless people around the neighborhood already knew
about the creature in the house, and he was the guy from the earlier scene.
According to the homeless man, the creature comes out at night, and will look for Tess,
so she must run away now. Plus, the creature is not alone in that basement.
Meanwhile, AJ is now venturing down the tunnels, when he discovers a bell and a power line so he
decides to follow it. He discovers a room with a very old man inside, who is none other than Frank.
Back on the surface, Tess has made it all the way to a nearby gas station,
and borrowed the shopkeeper’s phone to call 911. But when the police arrive, they look down on her,
and think she’s a drug addict, so she convinces them to come to the house to save AJ.
But upon arriving, the officers are skeptical about Tess’s claims, and thinks she’s just another
delirious homeless person, so they drive away.
While this is going on, Frank gestures for AJ to
fetch him his bedside drawer, so AJ does. Afterwards, AJ discovers a series of tape
recordings labeled with various women’s names, so he decides to play one. As it turns out,
it contains a recording of a woman getting raped. Infuriated, AJ starts yelling at Frank,
until Frank pulls out a gun from the drawer, and suddenly shoots himself.
Meanwhile upstairs, Tess breaks the house’s window, and goes inside to fetch her car keys.
But when she manages to get inside the car and starts the engine, The Mother steps out,
prompting her to drive towards it, ramming her into the wall until she seemingly passes out.
Afterwards, she heads downstairs to fetch AJ, while at the same time,
AJ takes Frank’s gun to arm himself, and starts venturing back out in the tunnels.
Unfortunately, AJ mistakenly shoots Tess on the waist. He then helps her get up,
and they frantically exit the house. But to their surprise,
the creature is no longer stuck to the car. As Tess’s car is done for, while AJ’s car
keys are somewhere in the tunnels, Tess leads them to where the homeless man lives to find shelter.
Here the homeless man explains to them that the original house owner, AKA Frank,
was a serial rapist who would hold women hostage, and rape them until they make babies.
He then would get the babies to procreate with one another, and after generations of incest,
The Mother is the final product, who’s been in the house for over 40 years.
The man also convinces them that they’re safe, as the creature never steps this far out of the house.
But he may have spoken to soon, because the mother suddenly appears,
and tears the homeless man’s limbs apart.
This prompts the scared AJ and Tess to run
up a water tower nearby, but of course Tess struggles because she’s injured.
Only once they reach the top that AJ remembers he has a gun, but he stupidly fumbles with it,
and lets it slip out of his hands. With nowhere to go, he shows how much of an asshole he is,
by throwing Tess down the tower, because he knows the creature would try to save "her baby."
And as expected, she does.
Thinking the mother’s dead,
AJ comes downstairs to check on Tess. We can see that The Mother shielded her from the fall,
and it turns out that Tess survives. He then says that he doesn’t know what happened,
and all he remembers is Tess started to slip.
To AJ's surprise, the creature gets up and grabs him.
She gouges AJ’s eyes out with her thumbs, before cracking his head in two.
The mother then comes up to Tess, and tenderly tries to lift her, but Tess is in way too much pain.
She softly tries to speak to Tess and tries taking her down the tunnels again,
while Tess takes AJ’s gun. She then aims it at the mother,
with a slight look of remorse on her face, before pulling the trigger.
Tess then gets up and walks out of the area to get medical attention. And this is where the movie ends.