Adam appears to be the quintessential American man—steady job, loving family, suburban home—but beneath the surface, his life is unraveling. Recently fired from his corporate job, he hides the truth from his wife Mira, while retreating into hidden vices. Mira discovers his proclivity for gay porn, shattering their facade. Their teenage son, James, mirrors his father’s repression, posturing for acceptance through bullying. When a mysterious new girl, Lucia, enters James' life, her presence begins to shift his worldview. She becomes his quiet guide, nudging him toward empathy and atonement. Mira begins tailing Adam in secret, and her worst suspicions arise, witnessing him spend his days at a gym with another man—an unsettling trigger from the adultery and manipulation witnessed in childhood.

James sheds his performative masculinity and defends the boy he once bullied, making him the target of his own friend’s violence. In a heated confrontation, Mira presses the question of Adam’s sexuality, and he attempts dominance, but fails, redirects the blame, and retreats—a mirror of a childhood of repression under a toxic father. Mira also flees, to the woods, where a Mother Mary-like figure offers her respite in a feral, divine feminine fantasy. Enchanted by his new perspective, James confesses love for Lucia, and is pushed to confront that what he seeks isn’t romance, but the nurturing his absent parents cannot provide. Upon this realization, Lucia disappears—or perhaps was never truly there. At the rock bottom of a porn addiction binge, Adam dreams of killing his entire family.

James, now alienated from friends and growing increasingly erratic, is followed by the apparition of his deceased paternal grandmother, Beatrice, who has replaced Lucia. When James’ school counselor raises concerns about his mental health, Adam explodes in denial—a tender trauma associating psychiatry with the loss of his mentally ill mother. Adam visits his aging father, Odo, rotting in a care facility, hoping to glean insight into his own mother's past condition. But Odo offers only filth, silence, and perversion. In a last bid to reclaim control, Adam trades alcohol and pornography for Odo’s old hunting gear, to revive a ritual that once promised order amid chaos.

With Beatrice’s guidance, James pieces together his father’s childhood, moments of abandonment and fear amidst his mother’s episodes. Mira is absent, splitting time between her off-grid fantasy and spying on Adam. Adam tries to force James into a hunting trip to reclaim “normality,” while James attempts to speak openly, erupting into another confrontation Adam overtakes with masculine posturing.

Mira finally confronts Adam at the gym, only to discover he is actually employed there. His deception isn’t adultery, it’s cowardice; but to Mira, the betrayal cuts just as deep. In a moment of regression, she recreates her mother’s coping mechanism, picking up a stranger and dragging him into her wilderness dreamscape, igniting a fire that destroys her divine feminine outpost and brings her down to reality.

In the early dawn, Adam awakens to find Mira gone and James missing. While he continues on his hunt alone, James finds Mira freezing and broken in the woods, and carries her home. Adam, impatient, buys a dressed deer from a farm and presents it to Mira as his own trophy, a desperate bid to reclaim his manhood. Instead, she recoils in horror. As gunshots crack through the suburban air, James races outside. What seems like Adam’s murderous dream coming to be, is actually Adam firing wildly at their house, the symbol of their failed American dream. In that moment, Adam recalls his mother’s last words before she was taken away: “Don’t let them turn you into a monster.”

As police arrive to arrest Adam, Mira and James break through the crowd to open the door of the cruiser. Adam has nothing left to offer except the truth he has long avoided. He looks at them broken and exposed, and finally speaks honestly: “I need help.”