The film starts with a short sequence in which David (Chase Williamson) appears beheading an undead
skinhead
with an axe, and poses the question about whether an axe that had its
handle and head replaced over time, is still the same axe.
It then cuts to a Chinese restaurant, where due to the side effects
of some "sauce", David describes having had wild hallucinations, but
also seeming able to count the grains in a plate of rice, and know
details about the rice's origin. At the restaurant, David meets reporter
Arnie Blondestone (Paul Giamatti), who supposedly is to help David
publish his experiences. The film then follows David's stories as told
to Arnie.
First, Arnie cynically asks David whether he would describe himself
as an exorcist. David tells him that the previous night he and his
friend John (Rob Mayes) had attended a late night call from Shelley
Morris' (Allison Weissmann), who asked them for help, saying she was
being harassed by her dead boyfriend. David and John had gone to the
girl's house, but while they were talking, they realized they each were
seeing different versions of her, which let them know she was an
imaginary character. When they confronted her with this, she crumbled
into snakes, which ended up forming a monster from various meat products
from a nearby freezer. The monster said it seeked to battle its
nemesis, TV show psychic Albert Marconi (Clancy Brown). The boys put the
monster on the phone with Marconi, who promptly destroyed the monster
over the phone.
Back at the restaurant, David, annoyed by Arnie's cynism, attempts to
convince him of his abilities by describing the contents of Arnie's
pockets, and predicting the outcome of ten throws of a coin. Arnie
remains skeptical until David describes in full detail a twisted dream
Arnie had the night before.
The tale then goes to the night when it all began, a rock gig two
years previous, where John is playing with his band. There, David meets
his friend Fred Chu (Jimmy Wong), and they witness Amy Sullivan
(Fabianne Therese) being teased by wannabe-gangsta Justin White (Johnny
Weston) by taking her prosthetic hand away from her. David gives Amy her
hand back, and she tells him that her dog bit some Jamaican guy and it
has now gone missing. When the gig ends, David meets said Jamaican guy,
who goes by the name
Robert Marley,
and despite David's skepticism, Marley appears to not only able to do
strange tricks, but also knows about David's past and possible future.
When David goes back to his truck, he finds Amy's missing dog waiting
for him near it, which starts following David everywhere from that point
on.
That night, David gets another late call by John, desperately asking
David to come over to his apartment. Upon getting there, David finds
John severely delusional, so he decides to take him to a hospital.
Before leaving, David takes a syringe with a black liquid, assuming it
is what John has been taking, and tucks it into his pocket. John then
tells David that he seems to be losing touch with reality, and remembers
calling David repeatedly, despite David saying he only got one call.
Seeing as John refuses to go to the hospital, they go to a diner, where
John explains that the liquid in the black syringe is called "soy
sauce", that he got it from the Jamaican guy, and that using it has
given him the ability to see the future and other dimensions. David is
in total disbelief, but during the conversation, David's phone rings,
and inexplicably it is John calling. Overwhelmed, David begins to leave
and John apologizes for everything that is going to happen.
They drive off, and John soon falls unconscious. Shortly afterwards,
the syringe in David's pocket accidentally gets stuck into his leg,
which causes him to begin having severe hallucinations. After putting
himself back together, David drives on, and a character named Robert
North (Doug Jones) appears in the back of his truck. North appears to be
from another dimension, and says he has been studying humanity and
David. North tries to get some kind of giant
leech
on David. David struggles, and when he manages to get rid of the leech,
North inexplicably disappears. A detective named Appleton (Glynn
Turman) then walks up to David's truck, and takes him and an unconscious
John to the police station, where he questions David about what
happened earlier that night. During the interrogation, David begins to
notice he knows beforehand what Appleton is going to say. Appleton is
then called out of the room and when he comes back, he tells David that
John has died.
Back at the restaurant, Arnie goes back to being skeptical and
advises David to publish David's story as journalism. David takes Arnie
to his truck and shows him an initially empty cage. Instructed to look
at the cage from the back of his eye, Arnie sees some monster resembling
a raging
japanese spider crab, which appears to convince Arnie that David is talking the truth.
Cut back to the police station; Appleton leaves again, and David gets
a call from John, who guides him into escaping the police station.
Eventually, David goes to his own house, where he meets Justin White,
who appears possessed by a demon called "Shitload". White tells David he
must come with him to a mall, and after David resists, White ends up
throwing him in the back of a van, where David rejoins with Fred, Amy
and her dog, and the still unconscious John. The dog licks John's hand,
which magically causes John to regain consciousness. Once at the mall,
White reveals a "ghost door" and explains that Amy is the only one who
can open it. Appleton then arrives, kills White, and intends to take the
four remaining people away, but as they are leaving, his head explodes,
releasing the spirit of Shitload, which then goes into Fred. David
shoots Fred and burns him with Appleton's car. They go back into the
mall, and Amy opens the magic ghost door with her
ghost hand.
After David, John and the dog go through it, the door collapses shut.
There, they meet North again, who reveals to have allied with Marconi.
Marconi gives David and John a bomb they are to use to destroy an entity
from another dimension named Korrok, which is the cause of all the
anomalies they have been experiencing. When David and John enter the
portal, they are told their coming was prophesized, that they are in a
parallel universe in which Korrok —a machine turned sentient— apparently
revolutionized their society, at the expense of its detractors being
slaughtered. They are taken to Korrok, and explained that since David
and John appear to know how to cross planes, they are supposed to give
that knowledge to Korrok by sacrificing themselves to it, so that
Korrok's people can cross to their plane and continue to spread Korrok's
greatness. After John fails to activate the bomb, it's the dog who ends
up reactivating it and jumping into Korrok with it. Upon escaping,
David and John meet Marconi, who explains to them that they were only
recruited as escorts to the dog, and they were chosen because they would
not be seen as a threat.
The scene cuts back to David and Arnie at the restaurant. David
explains that the dog had become mentally connected with Marconi and
North when it bit the Jamaican guy, and that Korrok was probably not
destroyed. Arnie agrees to publish David's story, but during their talk
David notices that Arnie's self-image does not match what Dave is
seeing, to which David concludes that Arnie is a product of his mind.
They go to Arnie's car and find Arnie's dead body in the trunk. They
then assume that Arnie was killed shortly after he contacted David, to
avoid David's experiences being published. Arnie gets really upset about
being just a product of David's imagination, so David pops him out of
existence.
During the end credits, David and John are seen playing basketball in
a court, and a portal appears. They cross and they find themselves in a
similar court in another strange dimension where two men flying in
metallic cones attempt to recruit them to save their universe too.
