A travelling salesman unwittingly puts his young daughter's life in danger when he rescues a boy who he mistakes for the victim of a kidnapping, but is in fact a blossoming serial killer.

SYNOPSIS:

Two very different fathers are pushed to extremes in order to protect their families when one child kidnaps the other. It’s 1961, and a small rural community is left reeling from the abduction of two young children. Alex Summers is a travelling salesman who has always put work ahead of family. This leaves him divorced and estranged from his young daughter, Nancy. After Alex is asked to take care of Nancy just for one day, he reluctantly agrees. But he is forced to take Nancy with him to work.

During their time spent on the road, Alex begins to regret the years he spent absent and promises to be a better father.

When Alex and Nancy arrive at a seemingly empty farmhouse, Alex instead discovers a boy chained to a bed. Alex rescues the captive boy, Freddie, and is warned that two more children remain trapped in the house.

Alex searches the entire house and makes a grim discovery. Not only are there no other children inside, but Freddie was already home. He never was the victim. He is in fact a blossoming killer, responsible for the recent disappearances. His deeply religious parents kept him captive and attempted to “pray the evil away” in the vein hope that it would stop him hurting more children. But now Freddie is loose. And he’s taken Nancy with him into the woods. The evangelical farmer, Ed and his wife, Gwen return and Alex finds himself captive and at their mercy.

While Freddie leads Nancy to his “favourite hideout” he battles his own compulsion to kill those who reject his friendship. He wants to be good, but he is becoming dangerous.

Alex must now escape from Ed and Gwen. They wrestle with their conscience. “I’m a man of faith, but I'm also a father who would do anything to protect his son”, Ed explains. His and Gwen’s solution? Leave Alex to die. But Alex finds an unlikely ally in Freddie’s brother, Ray. Desperate for the bloodshed to end, Ray helps Alex escape and together they race to catch Freddie before Nancy unwittingly “upsets” him.

When Freddie and Nancy finally arrive at his hideout – an abandoned signal box along the railway tracks – he discovers that Nancy has been leaving a trail of candy for her father to follow. He feels betrayed.

Ed takes off in Alex’s car and arrives just as Freddie turns on Nancy. She escapes and recognises her father’s car. She believes she is saved. But Ed steps from the car and, for the first time, is forced to confront the realities of his son’s vicious nature, and his own part in nurturing it. Freddie kills Nancy.

Alex and Ray find the empty signal box and split up to search the woods. However, Ray already knows where to look. He locates his father and brother as they attempt to bury Nancy’s body. But Ray has a better idea – hiding her in the trunk of Alex’s car. Ray wants the killing to stop, but knows this comes at the expense of surrendering his brother to the force of the law. So instead, Ray’s plan is to direct the law towards Alex. Suspicion falls on Alex and the community take out their anger on the innocent salesman…by burying him alive.