Ellen, a deeply closeted lesbian spends all her time in solitude, restoring films at a failing archive in 1980s New York City.

When a group of German academics present her with a print of an infamous exploitation film believed to have been destroyed during the Holocaust, Ellen finds herself forced to confront her own repressed sexuality. And the more she works on the restoration, the more obsessed she becomes with its depictions of occult practices and queer debauchery.

She's soon convinced that the depraved acts portrayed in the film are not fiction, but reality.

And that they're happening to her.