The film opens in New York. People start to get confused in Central Park, repeating their words, standing still and sometimes walking backwards. We hear a few screams. A woman reading on a bench takes her silver chopstick-style hair pin out of her hair and stabs herself in the neck with it.
In the next shot, we see a science teacher named Elliot Moore (Mark Wahlberg), talking about the event science can not explain about thousands of disappearing bees, no bodies left, no trace. A student offers the opinion that this is a natural event that we will never fully understand. While speculating on the phenomenon that is the disapearing bees, Elliot is suddenly called out of class to a staff meeting warning about an appearent “terrorist attack” in New York in which terrorist have appearently realeased some kind of gas in Central Park, and advising that school is canceled. As they leave Elliot confesses to his friend Julian (John Leguizamo), a maths teacher, that he and his wife are having some problems.
Eventually the movie moves on to show Rittenhouse Park where a cop on the road shoots himself in the head. A driver gets out of his car, takes the gun, and also shoots himself in the head. We see a pair of high heels walk over and a hand starts to pick up the gun, then a shot.
Meanwhile on a building site, workers on the ground are chatting when all of a sudden a body falls. Panicked, thinking the worker just fell off the roof by mistake, they rush over to his boken body (yes, this whole movie is very graphic and this scene shows his legs and arms with bones snapped from the fall into inpossible, bloody-ed positions). While over the body, another thud, another worker. They look at him confused, one is possible, two is unlikely, and when the third falls, it seems impossible. Then yet another and another, crashing to earth. When they look up they see many running off the edge, appearently by their own will, looking completely calm, and sure of their actions.
Elliot and his wife Alma (Zooey Deschanel) flee Philadelphia on a train, with Julian, and his daughter Jess. On the train people start to get reports by cellphone that the attacks have been reported at their destination, and in many other places. Alma is getting repeated and insistant calls on her phone from someone called Joey, and she lies to Elliot about it.
The train ends up leaving them in a small rural town, as the conductors have lost radio contact with everyone else. At a diner they see a newscast that suggests the suicides are not caused by a terrorist attack, but by a natural phenomena. Julian, who has lost contact with his wife, starts to panic as some lady shows Elliot a youtube type video she was sent on her iphone showing a man walk into a lion’s den at a zoo, and taunting the lions with his hands to try to get them to attack him (there’s a graphic shot of him staggering with both his arms eaten off). Julian leaves Jess with Elliot and Alma to go and look for his wife in Princeton, when he is offered a ride by people heading that way. (When he gets there it is infected, and, after the driver of the car he is in crashes deliberately into a tree Julian slashes his wrists with broken windscreen glass and dies.)
Elliot and Alma decide, along with everybody else, to flee for the state line, as the attacks seem only to be affecting the northeast US. A nice couple who run a plant nursery offer to take them in their car. The man suggests to Elliot and Alma that the toxin is produced by plants. He explains the way plants can communicate with other plants, and the way they can release chemicals to get rid of specific pests.
While trying to reach the state line they see bodies ahead in the road. Turning back they meet many other cars, all converging on a country road junction; all report bodies back the way they have come. Organised by an army private they abandon the cars and strike out on foot, heading for a small remote housing development one man (a realtor) knows about. It’s new, and small and not on any maps except local ones, so they hope it will be safe from the terrorists since it appears they are focusing on large cities and roads.
From the junction one group leaves immediately, but most take a minute to get things from their cars, so walking across the fields they are in two groups. The smaller group (10-12 people), with Elliot, Alma and Jess is in front. The larger (20-25 people), including a soldier and the plant couple, is behind them by 3 or 4 minutes. This larger group gets affected, and the soldier become delusional (shouting something about how he is a soldier and his gun is his friend, and he will not leave it). Then Elliot’s group hears the gunshots as one by one they (presumably) use the soldier’s gun to kill themselves. Elliot starts to believe that it is indeed the plants, and that the toxin is triggered by large groups of people. He yells at everyone to split up to smaller groups, and the group peels off into three smaller groups, all running away in different directions.
Alma tells Elliot that if they are going to die, she wants to tell him something. One night when she told Elliot she was working late she went out for tiramisu with Joey from work, but that’s all that happened.
Elliot, Alma, Jess and two teenagers find a showhome for a new development. There is some comic relief as Elliot talks to a plant he sees blowing inside, and introduces himself, saying he is giving good vibes so it won’t harm him. It turns out the plant is plastic, but he keeps talking for a little just in case - feeling like an idiot. As they leave they look back, and see two small groups of people arrive at the showhome, forming one larger group (12-15 people approx). That many people trigger the toxin, and they stand around confused, except for one man who starts up a large commercial lawnmower, then lays in the grass in front of it as it rips him apart. (We assumed the camera would cut away, but it doesn’t! As previously started, this movie is extremely graphic!)
Our five people all end up on the front porch of a boarded-up house, asking for food, while Jess plays on a rope swing suspended from a tree branch (the swing and the tree seemed very chilling and climactic, but nothing actually happened). The inhabitants of the house refuse to offer food or shelter, and the two teenagers start to get very aggressive, kicking at the door and shouting at the people inside. The inhabitants shoot the two teenagers dead: one through the chest and the second through the head. Elliot is horrified.
Elliot, Alma and Jess move on till they find an old house with no power, which they think is abandoned. A spooky old lady lives there, who chooses to remain out of contact with the whole world. She doesn’t want to know about the event in the outside world, however she gives them supper and a bed for the night.
We see a newscast discussing the toxin (our protagonists don’t, as the house has no TV). A scientist is suggesting that judging from the severity and number of the attacks, and assuming some similarities to other kinds of natural toxins like ocean algae, the attacks will peak at 9am the next day, and very quickly fall away to nothing following that (there’s a graph that shows a drastic tail-off of toxin activity).
In the morning when Elliot wakes up the old lady tells him that he, Alma and Jess have to leave (she seems completely bonkers). She then goes outside into the garden, pauses, and starts walking backwards; the toxin has affected her. As Elliott cowers inside the house the old lady walks around the porch and headbutts the window, leaving glass splinters in her face and eye, and also letting in the wind (and the toxin).
Elliot runs through the house trying to find Alma and Jess. They are outside in a spring house (a remnant from the pre-Civil War Underground Railway), he is stuck in the main house; however he can talk to them through a speaking tube. He explains that the toxin now seems to be set off by even one person alone.
Elliot decides that if he is going to die he doesn’t want to die alone. They all leave their safe hiding places and walk into the middle of the garden and hold hands. The wind blows. Nothing happens. IT had ended.
Three months later and they are all living back in Philly. Jess is off to school by bus. Alma is doing a pregnancy test; it’s positive. On the TV is a scientist warning that the event was like a red tide; the first sign that the planet is rejecting humans as pests. The host says that if that were true it would be happening in other places.
Cut to the gardens at the Palace of Versailles. Two guys are walking discussing plans for after work that evening. Cue distant scream; one guy starts to repeat his words about a bike, everyone stands still; other guy says (in French) “Oh my God”.
End credits.
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