In a world where humanity gave up dreaming in exchange for longevity, a woman tracks down a monstrous "Deliriant" who hides inside movies to continue dreaming. Inside a
silent film, she finds him eating poppies at an
opium den to desperately fuel his dreams, which are killing him. She cannot understand his compulsion, but, finding a
movie projector inside the Deliriant, loads it with film to let him replay his past life in dreams before dying. In the first dream, in a bombed-out city, the Deliriant is Qiu, the young companion of a musician hunted by authorities. The musician, infatuated with Qiu's voice, stabbed himself in both ears and sought to die together on train tracks, forcing Qiu to kill him. The Commander captures Qiu and decodes the musician's secret orders to transport a "suitcase", coded in
Bach's "
Come, Sweet Death" by
music cipher, even as he is pressured to extradite Qiu and spare himself from the musician's madness. Tortured to give up the "suitcase", Qiu leads the Commander into a disorienting mirror shop as a trap, baiting him with a case containing only a
theremin. Revealing himself as the true "suitcase", Qiu stabs the Commander in one ear and flees by train. The Commander stabs himself in the other ear, then catches up to the train, where he plays the Bach piece on theremin while deafened. He stabs Qiu, releasing blinding light and flame. In the second dream, the Deliriant is a former monk who guides looters to an abandoned monastery, only to get left behind overnight. He finds an unfamiliar Buddha statue; it crumbles at the touch, but then speaks in a dream, explaining how to knock out his aching tooth. Doing so releases the "Spirit of Bitterness", who takes the form of the monk's father. Heeding the Buddha's prophecy that it would reach Enlightenment on this day by discovering the bitterest thing of all, the Spirit offers to absolve the monk's sins if he helps. After seeing the Spirit snoring as his father, the monk regrets having mercy-killed his real father, who contracted rabies. The next morning, a lone dog leaves the monastery. In the third dream, the Deliriant is Jia, a con artist who schemes to win prize money offered by mob boss "the Old Man" in his search for a genuine
psychic. Jia recruits a riddle-loving orphan girl as accomplice in a
card trick to fake identifying playing cards by smell, and, in return, promises to help solve a profound riddle left written on a banknote when the girl's father left her. Posing as Jia's daughter, the girl outwits the Old Man's trials while blindfolded, identifying, by deduction, an ace of spades burned to ashes. Jia splits their prize and skips town, breaking his promise, but finds the riddle's answer written on a banknote, revealing it to be a juvenile joke. Fellow con men rob him at knifepoint, but he guards this one banknote with his life. The Old Man summons the girl for the true purpose of his search: having abandoned his own daughter long ago, he longs to read a burned letter found after she died in a fire. Smelling the ashes, the girl speaks out a letter to an absent father. In the last dream, in a port city on New Year's Eve, 1999, the Deliriant is "Apollo", a reckless young hoodlum who has never been kissed. He falls for a free-spirited girl, "Tai Zhaomei", and they aimlessly wander through back alleys and abandoned buildings until mob boss Mr. Luo comes for her. Luo and Tai are both undead vampires; Tai feeds on blood supplied by Luo rather than bite victims, and cannot leave his employ because Luo has the soil from her grave. Apollo barges into Luo's karaoke bar to fight for Tai; hopelessly outnumbered, he is beaten, shot and left for dead, leaving Tai bewildered by his devotion. The scene
time-lapses to predawn, when Apollo and Tai run breathlessly to steal a docked boat. Unsurprised by her true nature, he lets her drink his blood. They kiss passionately in the moments before sunrise. The woman enters the final dream, costuming Apollo as the Deliriant, and interring him in a vault filled with liquid. She finally understands why he dreams, and speaks to him through a silent film title card. In a movie theater made of wax, silhouettes of light fill the seats, then disappear as the film ends and the theater melts. ==Cast==