The film starts with a girl named Lily, who decides to run away from home because
of her abusive father. Accompanied by her boyfriend, Neil, she paces through
the woods until the two stop to take a break. While they take a rest, Lily’s conviction wavers,
because she misses her parents, and is about to call them. However, Neil stops her,
and tells her that they must not turn back. They resume their journey, and later that day,
the two realize that they have run out of water.
Because the sky is getting dark, the two decide,
to pause their journey and set up camp. Lily puts up a tent while Neil goes to look for some water.
After she safely finds shelter inside the tent, Lily realizes that Neil took her phone with him.
She waits all night for him to return but he never does.
That next morning, Lily anxiously resumes walking alone,
until she comes across a house and runs up towards it.
She is welcomed in by a man named Evan, and promptly asks to borrow his landline
to call her missing boyfriend. However, she begins to sense that something is off,
when Evan insists that she should take a shower at his house. A bit weirded out, she decides to walk
away from the house and change her mind.
However, Evan refuses to let her go,
and manages to bring her back inside. He apologizes for his behavior earlier, and Lily slowly
begins to sense that he is indeed unhinged. She tries to leave anyway, and Evan starts
yelling at her, before dragging her into a room.
After being forcibly dragged and locked inside a room,
Lily finds newspaper clippings of missing persons all over the walls.
Fear overtakes her,
and she begins looking for anything that could help her defend herself against Evan. But then…
Evan who is palpably angered takes the hammer off her hands,
and changes his mind about getting her to walk out of the room. He then leaves the room again,
and proceeds to activate his home security system, which allows him to seal all exits in his house.
Afterwards, he pays Lily another visit, this time offering her food and telling her that
they'll get her a shower. Lily who is now confused and scared, begs him to let her go.
Evan drags her away to a room with a treadmill, and tells her that she
should use it for no apparent reason.
On the next day, Evan is seen reading the morning paper,
wherein we can see that two people who are none other than Evan and Lily are
reported missing.
He pays another visit to Lily, who yet again begs for him to let her go. Evan ignores her
and proceeds to tell her that she must train to win. To win what exactly, we’re not sure.
The day goes by, and later that night, we see Evan providing Lily with a bed.
He also gives her something to eat.
On the next day, Evan enters the room again and asks her to lie down on the mat.
But instead of doing what psycho man always did, he tells her to start doing sit-ups.
Lily initially cooperates despite her confusion, until she suddenly remembers her father's
abusive behavior, and does this:
Oddly enough, he leaves her alone.
He only returns to offer her supper, under the condition that she finishes her sit up sets.
Lily who is hungry relents and does as he says. Despite being unhinged, as it turns out Evan is
still of a man of his word, for he guides her to the dining room afterwards. At this time,
for some reason Evan refers to her with the name Catherine. Lily stays silent for now
and plays along, while she inconspicuously looks around for anything that might help her escape.
She reaches for a table knife, but then…
Evan takes the knife away from her,
and cuts the food into small pieces for her to eat. He then returns to his seat as if nothing
ever happened and brings the knife with him. Lily who is now more frustrated than ever,
begins to toss bits of her food away in annoyance, which eventually gets Evan to lose his patience.
Evan comes to see her again later that day, and tells her to put on the sportswear he brought her.
He then sets up the treadmill, and asks her to use it.
While Lily exercises, Evan’s brother pays him a visit to check up on him.
Evan excitedly tells him that Catherine has returned, and is now exercising downstairs.
The brother grows worried, and is convinced that Evan forgot to take his meds.
He tells Evan to seek therapy, and this offends Evan, who obviously thinks that he is 100% sane.
Here we learn that Evan is suffering from Delusional Disorder.
The two brothers get into an argument, until the brother walks away with dejection.
Not long after, Evan returns to the basement to check up on Lily,
and casually informs her that her uncle just paid a visit. Hearing this, Lily feels a spark of hope,
but unfortunately she is too late, because Evan’s brother had already left the premises. Lily
then decides to play into Evan’s charade and tells Evan she wanna see her uncle.
Evan then tells her to get cleaned up, and the camera pans to a picture of a younger
Evan and his daughter Catherine on the fridge. While she showers, Evan makes the bed. He is
now so deep in his delusion that he is fully convinced that Lily is his daughter, Catherine.
Lily reluctantly decides to play along, and even agrees to put on Catherine’s clothes.
Later on, Lily finds a picture of Catherine with her parents, and finds Catherine’s diary under the
bed. After taking some time to check it out, Lily exits the bedroom, and begins to try to sneak out.
Evan asks where she's going, and Lily says she just wanna see if he needs help.
Evan welcomes her to the kitchen, and Lily is forced to play along yet again.
When she thinks Evan isn’t looking, she tries to sneak out again but fails miserably. This time,
Evan tells her to go back to Catherine’s room. With nothing else to do, Lily decides to read
more of Catherine’s diary. In it she discovers that Evan was an overprotective pushover,
who’d punish her for failing at the most menial things, like getting caught in hide and seek.
He also pushed her to always practice, in order to become a champion in sports. This of course
didn’t sit well with the mom since that much exercise isn't normal for 12 year old girl,
and it led to arguments throughout their marriage.
As Lily reads on, she comes across a part that
says that when Catherine got her period, Evan didn’t know how to react because he
didn’t really understand it. Learning this, Lily comes up with an idea.
She decides to summon Evan and asks him to get her some pads or tampons because she’s in her period.
Evan buys into this act. Before he leaves the house,
he asks her to go exercise in the basement again.
Lily reads some more until she hears Evan returns.
Just as Evan pulls up in his garage, Neil innocently arrives and asks him
if Evan has seen his missing girlfriend. Upon seeing a picture of Lily, Evan who is deeply
delusional begins to suspect that Neil was sent by his brother to take him to a mental hospital.
He asks Neil to leave, and even threatens to call the police.
Neil who is weirded out leaves the premises right away.
Upon returning inside, Evan asks Lily to measure her height, and for a second,
his suspension of disbelief is disrupted when he realizes that Lily is shorter than Catherine.
To maintain their charade, Lily stands on her tippy-toes to make herself seem taller.
He then asks her to skip rope. Lily who has grown tired of being told what to do
decides to beat him.
She then demands for him to hand her the keys to this room.
That night, Lily resumes studying Catherine’s diary and discovers that Evan’s wife was killed
in a car accident, which left Catherine alone with Evan. She is then interrupted
by Evan summoning her for supper, and promptly joins him in the dining room. Evan continues
to do what he always does for her, despite having been severely beaten in previously.
At this point, Lily starts to feel bad about what she did, and apologizes to Evan.
During this time, she tries saying to Evan that she needs to go to school soon, because school break is
coming to an end. Evan coldly tells her that she’s going to be homeschooled.
After dinner, he asks her to play hide and seek, a game he used to play with Catherine.
Lily plays along, and fakes an injury doing the game, which in reality is a ruse so that she could
spend more time reading Catherine’s diary. Out of nowhere, and earthquake strikes.
Evan guides her outside to safety,
and afterwards, they proceed to clean up the mess inside the house caused by the earthquake.
Lily comes across a framed picture of Evan finishing a race, and he explains to her that
all he wants is for his daughter to continue in his footsteps and become a track athlete.
On the next day, Evan and Lily is out in the backyard. He’s in the middle of making her
run laps, when she tries to escape again.
Just like last time, she fails.
However, their little scuffle results in Lily spraining her ankle.
With her injury, Lily decides to put aside
her escape plan, and promises to herself that she’s going to train herself to become
faster once she heals. In the meantime, goes about her days pretending to be Catherine.
Months go by, and Lily begins to get used to the training Evan makes her go through.
Over time, Lily and Evan oddly seem to grow closer.
At this point, it is as if Lily already thinks of him as a father.
Evan is so proud of Lily when she beats Catherine’s old training records.
We come across a scene Evan announces that he has signed her up for a track competition,
and they have seven weeks to train. Hearing this, Lily seems genuinely excited to prepare for it.
One night, when Lily is asleep, Evan comes up to her, and starts apologizing to her for
the accident that killed Catherine’s mother. Here we can conclude that the
reason why Catherine left was because she blamed Evan for the death of her mother.
That next morning, Lily tries to sneak away again, until Evan stops her and obliviously tells her to
rest for the day. He proceeds to hand her a gift, proclaiming that today is Catherine’s birthday.
Lily unwraps the gift in Catherine’s room, wherein she finds a new smartphone. Lily
proceeds to type in her boyfriend’s number, and saves it in her new phone.
Evan then announces that he’s going to go buy her a birthday cake.
After he drives away, Lily uses this opportunity to finally step outside, and runs to freedom.
On the way back, Evan comes across a car pulling up at his house.
As the driver steps out, he finds that it is none other than his actual daughter, Catherine.
He proceeds to hand her the things he just bought, and they step inside the house.
Catherine seems perplexed, because she expected more excitement from him upon her sudden return.
Evan immediately tells her to go inside her room, while he prepares a birthday surprise. Though
confused, Catherine listens and sits down on her desk, where she finds her old diary. Upon going
through the pages, she discovers new notes in certain pages that are clearly not written by her.
As it turns out, Lily isn’t running away, and she finally comes to face with Catherine.
Catherine is obviously rendered confused as Lily who now also seems a little unhinged,
begins to explain that she is a younger version of Catherine, who dresses,
eats, lives, and breathes as her, and that she manages to surpass Catherine’s track record.
Lily also voices how happy she is living her new life, which only freaks Catherine out.
Lily then proceeds to blame Catherine for leaving Evan behind, which messed up his mental health
and made him kidnap her. She tells Catherine that Catherine should have supported her father after
the car accident, instead of leaving him. Apparently, Lily also feels more affection
towards Evan than her own father, and Catherine has no idea how it feels to have a monster type
of father. With Evan, she feels loved and taken care of. In short, Lily refuses to stop pretending
to be Catherine, and takes a knife and moves to stab Catherine with it, which ends up killing her.
Like a certified psycho, Lily proceeds to celebrate Catherine’s birthday with Evan,
and asks him if they could drive around town together.
Just before they leave, Lily decides to erase her boyfriend’s number from her phone,
and move forward with her life with her new, loving father. And this is where the movie ends.