The plot follows college student Chynna Shepherd who is forced to fight for her life when targeted by serial killer Edgler Vess, with chapters alternating between each character's perspective.

This comes to a violent end when serial killer Edgler Vess breaks into the house in the night and methodically kills all of the occupants except Laura and Chyna.

Chyna secretly watches Vess boast to the gas station clerks that he is holding a young girl, Ariel, prisoner in his basement, before he kills them and drives away.

Obsessed with the "intensity" of any particular experience, sensory and existential, Vess styles himself as a "homicidal adventurer" and has killed continually since childhood.

Dressed in Vess's dog-training clothing, Chyna sprays ammonia on the dogs and makes it to the motor home with Ariel.

Soon after, Chyna sees a police car on the road and pulls over to signal it, only to discover that the driver is Vess, the local sheriff.

In the ensuing showdown, Chyna rams his police car, but he rolls clear and uses a shotgun to disable the motor home, causing it to tip over.

[5] On his website, Koontz stated that he was aware of the comparison but would not sue "because he found the film so puerile, so disgusting, and so intellectually bankrupt that he didn’t want the association with it that would inevitably come if he pursued an action against the filmmaker.