In the middle of the desert, a very young child wanders around while sucking on a human finger. Meanwhile Wyndham arrives at the desert on his car. He also wanders around and even goes as high as he’s capable to find the perfect spot to take pictures of the oncoming eclipse.
After a few hours of waiting, he manages to take some incredible photographs and gets ready to leave. On his way back to the car, he’s shocked to see a kid crying under the small shadow of a tree. Wyndham asks him a few questions to learn the boy is lost and he lost his parents.
He volunteers to help him find them and when he helps the boy up, he notices his hand getting extremely dirty. The boy starts walking further into the desert, ignoring Wyndham when he says they should go the opposite way to his car. Wyndham decides to follow him as he keeps asking questions, but the boy won’t answer any of them.
After a few hours of walking, the boy asks for soda and Wyndham shares his water bottle. He notices there’s no phone service in this area and puts his arm around the boy to make him go back, but the kid snaps and pushes him off before running away. When he’s far enough, he smirks at Wyndham then continues to run.
After noticing all his water has been spilled on the ground, Wyndham goes back to look for his car. However he’s truly lost and can’t get his phone to work. When night falls, Wyndham tries to find shelter against some rocks but he can’t sleep because he hears a weird noise.
He decides to follow it and finds a bunch of bottles hanging on branches plus a woman singing at the bottom of a canyon. Wyndham takes a closer look and is surprised to discover there’s a whole house down there. There’s a ladder nearby so he goes down, moving carefully to avoid falling.
Eventually he makes it to the house and knocks, although nobody answers. Wyndham goes inside anyway and finds Alina cooking. When he asks for a phone he can use or some directions, Alina explains she doesn’t have a phone and shares some food.
No matter what he asks, Wyndham doesn’t get any more answers from her. He isn’t hungry and only drinks some water, so Alina eats his serving as well. After dinner Alina invites Wyndham to stay for the night, and he can’t help staring at her while she changes.
The next morning Wyndham wakes up first, so he silently gets out and relieves himself while looking at a strange painting on the canyon. Then he tries to finally leave, only to discover the ladder is gone. Since Alina is still sleeping, he decides to grab his camera and take a bunch of pictures, finding more weird paintings as he looks around.
There’s also a cage and a peculiar animal skull. Suddenly he hears a noise and finds Alina fixing the roof. He helps her while asking about the ladder, but Alina says she doesn’t know where it is because people take it sometimes.
It could be back later or on a few days. Wyndham demands to know how to leave, however Alina explains the ladder is the only way out. Afterward Wyndham tries to climb out of the canyon, but it’s impossible without the right equipment.
Yelling for help doesn’t do anything either. He comes down covered in dirt, and Alina convinces him to let her wash his clothes. Later that night, Wyndham comes out when he thinks he hears some noises similar to voices, but he doesn’t see anything.
The next day Wyndham searches the house until he finds bandages for his hands and a hammer, which he uses to trying climbing again. As he goes up, he continues to hear the strange noises and confirms they’re boys’ voices. Suddenly someone throws down a pig head, causing him to slip and fall.
Wyndham wakes up in the evening feeling unbearable pain because the hammer is stuck in his leg. Alina soon comes to remove the hammer and takes him into the house. For the next few days Wyndham stays in bed having hallucinations because of the pain.
Sometimes he thinks there’s a boy in the house with them. Meanwhile Alina is going through her monthly bleeding and uses it to add a mark on the wall. When Wyndham is finally feeling better he discovers he has a limp and can’t climb anymore, so he goes outside to yell for help.
The kids won’t answer and Wyndham goes on a rant about his need to return to normal life while asking Alina to do something. She doesn’t answer any of his questions and only says she can take care of him, but he asks her to leave him alone. At that moment a few boys finally appear on top of the canyon and Wyndham begs for help.
They agree to lend him a hand but first they want to know his favorite color, so Wyndham answers red. The boys then leave for a few hours and Wyndham hides in the shadows from the melting sun, looking at the things in his wallet while missing his old life. When the boys come back, they throw some rope for Wyndham, who ties it up around his body but doesn’t hear a boy say he should’ve chosen blue.
With Alina watching from the window, the boys start pulling Wyndham up, but they stop mid-way. Starting to lose his mind, Wyndham yells at them and tries to climb the rope, but it makes his wound hurt more. The boys leave him hanging for a few hours and Wyndham’s skin is becoming red because of the sun.
Suddenly a boy starts peeing on him while the others move the rope from side to side and chant in a mysterious language. A terrified Wyndham begs Alina for help, so she comes out and scolds the boys in the strange language, causing them to lose control of the rope. Wyndham hits his head against the canyon and passes out.
In the evening, Wyndham wakes up in bed. He immediately tries to run away, but he barely takes a few steps before collapsing. When Alina comes to check on him, she explains the boys are strays that the desert brings together.
She also says Wyndham belongs there now, so he should behave and stay silent to survive. The boys then appear on top of the canyon again and start spiting at him while Alina has her dinner inside, ignoring the screaming. From then on Wyndham has no choice but to accept his new life with Alina.
Noticing his clothes have been ruined, Alina offers him new ones from a trunk, and Wyndham is surprised to see she has many men's garments. Later he helps with the farming and plants some seeds because somehow the ground is fertile on a very specific section of the canyon. He’s interrupted by one of the boys sending down a box of things, which Alina quickly takes inside.
When Wyndham asks where they found it, she says it doesn’t matter and lets him keep the bottle of whiskey. As days pass, Wyndham grows frustrated because Alina only talks when necessary and doesn’t engage in actual conversation. When he complains about it, she announces he’s drunk enough and stops him from grabbing the bottle again.
That night he hears the boys being loud and runs outside, ignoring Alina’s warnings. He grabs an axe for protection and searches the area until he finds one of the boys dressed as a woman while the others run nearby laughing. They distract Wyndham so the crossdresser can tackle him to the ground and lick his face, calling him the f-word.
Wyndham manages to push him off and runs back into the house, yelling as he demands an explanation. A nervous Alina only says he’s scaring her, yet Wyndham yells some more before taking back the bottle to keep drinking. When Alina tries sending him to bed, he refuses and points out he isn’t some boy that takes orders, he’s a real man.
Alina agrees he’s a man and proceeds to undress. After washing her body, she embraces Wyndham and comforts him until he does the naughty with her. She doesn’t look like she’s enjoying it, and the boys’ chanting can still be heard outside.
A few weeks pass and Wyndham is happy to see the plants are growing. While he’s farming, a boy named Lepus appears and asks about the process. Wyndham teaches him a bunch of things and offers to tell him more in the future.
Lepus thanks him by throwing him some candy, promising to find soda for next time. After the boy leaves, Wyndham keeps farming and is surprise to find a ring and some keys under the soil. In the evening Wyndham asks Alina about the old picture on the wall.
She explains that woman isn’t her mother, it’s The First Mother and she doesn’t know much about her. Alina also announces that she’s pregnant, but she doesn’t expect Wyndham to be a father. Furious, Wyndham accuses her of planning it all and refuses to let a baby grow in this environment, calling Alina an “inbred half-wit”.
Sometime later Wyndham hears some birds coming after his plants and runs outside to scare them off, but unfortunately the crops have already been destroyed. Alina comes out to help too and they work together to fix what they can. That night, Wyndham can’t sleep because Alina keeps on singing outside.
One morning Wyndham is running around the canyon to stay fit when suddenly he sees a plane fly by. However he doesn’t even bother to yell, knowing they won’t see or hear him. At that moment Lepus shows up and apologizes because he couldn’t get soda.
Wyndham is eager to teach him anyway and wonders if the boy doesn’t want to leave, but Lepus explains they aren’t allowed to leave “the palace”. Refusing to give up, Wyndham tells him that Alina is pregnant and that they could leave together to form a family, so Lepus agrees to come back to help after the other boys fall asleep. Aline overhears this and is touched by their words.
They’re interrupted by one of the guys, who takes Lepus away. In the afternoon Alina cleans Wyndham’s wound, which slowly opens to reveal an eye. However this is just a dream.
During dinner Alina surprises Wyndham with some questions about the outside world. Wyndham tells her what being free is like and has to explain what a cheeseburger is. He also admits that if he leaves, he’d miss the silence they shared.
In return he asks her about her life so Alina shares that Mother told her they live in the desert because out there lives a mirage, meaning it’s not real. To change her mind, Wyndham brings his camera and shows her the pictures of the eclipse. He accidentally plays a very short video he took in the car with music coming from the radio and since Alina never heard music before, she laughs and asks him to play it over and over.
That night Wyndham dreams of flames and the boys chanting. In the morning Alina comes out and cries out in grief when she discovers Lepus’ dead body hanging above them. She starts yelling at the boys in the strange language, but she does say in English that this is not what brothers do.
Wyndham tries to comfort her but Alina pushes him away, blaming him for the death of “her boy”. While Wyndham realizes many of the boys are her sons, Alina beats him up with a wood plank. For the next few months Wyndham is kept inside a cage and Alina only approaches him to bring him food.
Whenever he sees the boys on top of the canyon, he tries to get their attention but they ignore him. One day Wyndham is excited to see a hiker passing by and asks her to save him, so the woman leaves to find help. Unfortunately the boys find her first and quickly kill her, causing Wyndham to have a breakdown.
He keeps hitting and shaking the cage, yet Alina pays him no mind. One night all the boys descend into the canyon and one of them gives Wyndham a peach, which he eats in tears. Afterward a ritual begins.
The boys dance around a fire and Alina calls them “sons and brothers”. She also breastfeeds a boy regardless of his age. Then she covers her eyes with leaves and the boys put a bedsheet over her head before pouring blood on it.
Seeing all this Wyndham finally understands what’s going on. The boys bring innocent hikers to the canyon so Alina can manipulate them into doing the naughty and she can give birth to more boys. This is a cult started by the First Mother, and the blood marks on the wall indicate there’s been a few mothers since then.
That’s why the current group of boys is formed by either Alina’s brothers or her sons. The men are then killed and buried in the ground, explaining why that small area is fertile and Wyndham found items buried there. Later when Alina brings Wyndham a blanket, he tries to convince her he’ll behave and promises to give her as many babies as she wants, he also offers to educate them and be a real family.
He uses romantic words to try to manipulate her but she doesn’t fall for it, saying he never had a choice and he’s nothing but a seed. She’s only keeping him in the cage until the baby is born in case anything goes wrong. Sometime later Alina wakes up in unbearable pain from the contractions.
She feels something is wrong so she runs outside to release Wyndham, explaining it was never like this before. Wyndham agrees to help her but as he walks her back to the house, he sees the boys on the canyon and the ladder back in place. He immediately runs toward his salvation and drops Alina, who gives birth on the ground.
Wyndham freezes when he hears the crying and decides to meet his baby girl after all. Alina lets him hold the baby for a few minutes before taking her back, explaining this girl will become the new Mother. She thanks Wyndham for his cooperation before the boys surround him and kill him by slashing his neck.
Later Alina puts Wyndham’s things in the trunk with the other men’s. Outside, the body is being eaten by worms.
