The plot concerns a New York City police officer and a homeless shelter manager who team up to investigate a series of disappearances, and discover that the missing people have been killed by humanoid monsters that live in the sewers.

II: Bud the C.H.U.D.. A woman, Flora Bosch, is walking her dog down an empty, darkened city street.

George Cooper, a once-prominent fashion photographer, has since forgone fame and fortune and is living with his girlfriend Lauren.

Bosch's superiors know more than they are letting on and seem to be taking their cues from Wilson, who works for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).

It turns out that monsters are lurking beneath the streets: beings that were once human, but have been mutated by radioactive, chemical toxic waste into hideous, flesh-eating creatures that prey on the homeless who live in the underground.

Given the recent drop in the underground transient population, the creatures have resorted to coming to the surface through sewer manholes to feed.

To protect this secret, Wilson plans to seal the sewers, open up some gas lines and asphyxiate the C.H.U.D.s and any witnesses of their existence, despite the inherent danger to the city.

Later that evening at a diner, two police officers and the waitress are killed and carried off by the mutants, finally drawing the public's attention to the disappearances.

recover a camera set left behind by an NRC crew slain by the mutants during a previous clean-up attempt and use it to report their findings to Bosch.

It is meant to be light commercial entertainment, and in the category of horror films it stands as a praiseworthy effort".

"[11] Patrick Naugle of DVD Verdict called it a fun film that focuses more on entertainment than deeper issues.

was negatively received during its initial release, it attracted a cult following over the years, inspired the name of a film website[16] (which changed the acronym's meaning to Cinematic Happenings Under Development) and a political epithet,[17] and references to it have appeared in The Simpsons,[18] The CW's The Flash, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Clerks II, Castle, Archer, Futurama, Pushing Daisies, Outer Banks, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and Rick and Morty.

[25] The found footage horror film Dwellers has been publicly referenced by its writer and director Drew Fortier as being heavily influenced by C.H.U.D.

: A Tribute Anthology, edited by Joe Mynhardt, was released in 2018 and featured an introduction by David Drake, an interview with the late C.H.U.D.

Contributors included Robert E. Waters, Nick Cato, Ryan C. Thomas, David Robbins, Christopher Fulbright, Angeline Hawkes, Greg Mitchell, Alex Laybourne, Michael H. Hanson, Ben Fisher, Tim Waggoner, Jason White, Mort Castle, David Bernstein, Martin Powell, Chad Lutzke, J.G.