Deeply in debt to his dead fiancée's father, rare-films dealer Kirby Sweetman has less than a month to produce $200,000 to save his struggling theater. An old
cinephile and film collector, Mr. Bellinger, hires him to find the sole print of a rare 30-year-old film titled
La Fin Absolue du Monde (). The film notoriously sparked a homicidal riot during its premiere at the 1971
Sitges Film Festival, after which
it was destroyed. Bellinger leads Sweetman to a hidden room in his mansion, which contains an
emaciated, unnaturally pale man (the Willowy Being) in chains; Bellinger introduces him as "one of the stars" of
La Fin Absolue. The unhealed wounds on the man's shoulders appear to be the source of a pair of angelic wings, which Sweetman has seen mounted on a wall. The chained man explains that his existence is bound to the film's. Bellinger offers Sweetman
$100,000 to find the film, which Sweetman negotiates up to $200,000. Sweetman's first lead is reclusive New York
critic A.K. Meyers, who wrote a review of the film. Meyers, who has become obsessed with the film to the point of madness (he is still writing his review 30 years later), gives Sweetman an audiotape of an interview with the film's director, Hans Backovic. Sweetman listens to the tape and
hallucinates his fiancée's suicide: a junkie, Annie had slit her wrists in their bathtub. The following day, in Paris, Sweetman meets with film
archivist Henri Cotillard, who tells him that he was the
projectionist at a
secret screening of the film. He was spared death and insanity because he turned away as the film played. When he heard the audience screaming and smelled blood, he tried to stop the projector, but blacked out, waking later to find his left hand burned beyond use. He sends Sweetman to a contact, a filmmaker named Dalibor, who might know where the film is. Sweetman is seized, injected with an
anesthetic, and blacks out, waking up tied to a chair. The woman who drove Sweetman there in her cab is also tied up and sitting across from him. The filmmaker explains to Sweetman (while
decapitating the woman) that an angel was sacrificed in the film, and the evil of that horror affects all who view the film. Sweetman experiences another vision, and, when he comes to, he finds himself holding a machete. The filmmaker's throat is slashed. Before Dalibor dies, he directs Sweetman to Katja Backovic, the director's widow. Sweetman tracks down and speaks with Katja in
Vancouver. She gives Sweetman the only remaining copy of the film. When he asks how the director died, Katja reveals that he died in an attempted
murder-suicide that she survived. Sweetman brings the film to Bellinger and collects his payment. Bellinger settles comfortably in his private theater, pours champagne, and watches the film. Sweetman returns to his cinema only to learn that Annie's father, Mr. Matthews, has chained it shut, even though he said Kirby had two weeks to pay off his debt. Not realizing that Matthews is watching him from a parked car, Kirby takes a call from distraught Bellinger and returns to the mansion. There, Sweetman sees Bellinger's butler, Fung, gouge his own eyes out after watching the film. Inside the projection room, Bellinger is concealed behind the movie equipment, gasping in apparent pain. He speaks deliriously, telling Kirby that he recommends the film, but that it is not a movie, only a
trailer for what is to come. He gasps out that he has been inspired to create his own film. Kirby watches in horror as Bellinger loads his own intestines into the reels of another projector. Matthews follows Sweetman to the mansion and is already being affected by the movie when Kirby re-enters the theater. Matthews, with crazed rants and giggles, pulls a gun and threatens to kill him. As they struggle, they hallucinate a burning cigarette
cue mark, which envelops the screen. Sweetman awakens to find he and Matthews, both bloodied, are watching the movie. The butler blindly frees the chained Willowy Being. The ghost of Annie steps out of the movie and bites her father's neck, which turns out to be a hallucination. Sweetman decides that he and Mr. Matthews both have to die because neither can truly let Annie go as long as they are alive. Sweetman brutally kills Matthews, shoves the wad of owed cash into his mouth with a curse, and commits suicide. The Willowy Being takes the two film reels, walks into the theater, looks down at Sweetman's bloody corpse, and says, "Thank you for this", indicating the film reels, before leaving. ==Cast==