Crazy Eights
Jennifer Jones (Dina Meyer) is giving a lecture to a college psychology class on the subject of human emotion. After the class ends and the students leave, the projector remains on and begins performing oddly, flashing images that disturb and confuse Jennifer. Meanwhile, other strange phenomena presents itself to Father Lyle Dey (George Newbern), who experiences nightmares of a ghostly unknown presence. At the same time, Beth Patterson (Gabrielle Anwar) is haunted by nightmares of a girl she does not recognize. She has become obsessed with this unknown girl, sculpting her face into clay and repeatedly asking the sculpture to tell her who she is. While sculpting, Beth ignores a call from her therapist, who leaves a message expressing concern over Beth's nightmares and the added stress of the recent suicide of a childhood friend. As the message is playing, Beth becomes more and more stressed, eventually ripping the jaw off of the clay face.
Soon thereafter, Jennifer, Lyle, and Beth gather at the funeral of their mutual childhood friend, along with three other old friends: Brent Sykes (Frank Whaley), Gina Conte (Traci Lords), and Wayne Morrison (Dan DeLuca). After the funeral, the six leave the graveyard and go to their friend's home. Following instructions in their friend's will, they look for and find a box containing a letter and a map. The map marks the location of a time capsule that the group buried together many years ago. The letter apologizes for the friend's suicide but asks that the remaining friends face the past and the things forgotten together. The letter ends by reminding them that they will always be together. The only other item in the box is an old photograph of eight children standing in front of a baseball field. Brent comments that their group must not have been very bright since a baseball team requires at least nine players, not eight, but Lyle chides him by saying that Crazy Eights was simply a name.
The six travel to their childhood hometown and use the map to find an old, dilapidated barn, where the time capsule has been placed in the upper level. The group opens the box to find various items that they owned in their youth, including Beth's paint brushes, a journal (which once belonged to the deceased friend), a slingshot, and a few other items. They decide to move the box outside by using a pulley to carry it out of a nearby window. While Jennifer, Lyle and Brent are attempting to lift the box out, Beth and Wayne talk outside. Beth notices a new scar on Wayne's forehead; when she asks him about it, he confesses that he does not know how he got it, and that the cut appeared right after a disturbing nightmare he had. Suddenly, the box drops behind them and smashes, having slipped from the pulley.
When the group goes to the box again, they find that the bottom has split open, revealing a secret compartment which contains the skeleton of a tiny girl. The group is unsure of what to do, debating whether to simply leave or to involve the authorities. Brent angrily leaves the group, refusing to accept any responsibility or consequences for the unknown skeleton.
Upon realizing that Brent still has the keys to the van, the others quickly catch up to him, although they are still undecided as to what to do about the box and its grisly contents. As the group attempts to drive away, they find themselves lost and continually returning to a large white house no matter which direction they travel in. Brent notices a figure standing near a few trees surrounding the house, and quickly leads the group to her location. The girl disappears once the group heads towards her, so they decide to enter the home to search for her. The group agrees to split up into two groups, in the hopes of finding the girl faster.
Wayne and Gina walk around outside and find the entrance to the basement. Upon entering, Wayne just makes out the shadow of a person, but falls down the stairs and breaks his leg. Gina turns the basement's lights on as Wayne begs her not to leave him alone in the dark, and sets out for help. Meanwhile, the group inside sees that the house does not look as though anyone has lived there for a long time; Brent soon discovers a "Condemned" notice, stating that all trespassers will be shot without warning. Gina finds the others and notifies the rest of the group of Wayne's injury, and the group descends into the basement to aid Wayne, with Brent bringing anything from the van that might help them.
Once all members of the group are in the basement, the door strangely shuts and locks. The group, now looking for any way out of the house, leave with Wayne in tow and travel down a tunnel which they hope will lead them to another exit. The tunnel opens out into an abandoned underground hospital, complete with an empty nurse's station and rooms with hospital beds. The group decides to split up again to search for an exit or anything that might help them. The group leaves Wayne in Beth's care, but she soon abandons Wayne to explore the halls and rooms. She stares into a mirror hanging off a wall at the nurse's station, and is startled to see her younger self staring back at her.
Meanwhile, the abandoned Wayne hears a noise behind him and crawls over to a nearby window to investigate, the window inexplicably opened even though the outside is covered by bars. Behind him, a ghostly figure passes by and the window is suddenly closed, killing Wayne. The group soon returns to find Wayne's body, and upon managing to get him out, temporarily transfer it to the attic. Lyle and Gina take an obviously disturbed Beth to a room serving as a bedroom for multiple children in order to calm her down.
Beth demands to be left alone, and Lyle and Gina reluctantly comply. When left alone, Beth begins sucking her thumb, and lies on a bed. Soon, a horrible creature visits, promising to remove her guilt if she " reaches down, and pulls it out." Beth screams in response, and when the other five reenter the room, they find Beth's bloody body lying crumpled against a wall with her jaw torn off. This is eerily similar to the fate of Beth's sculpture she had crafted at the beginning of the story.
Brent panics and flees the room, running away from the remaining members of the group. He enters a series of adjoined, lighted rooms, before discovering that again, the series of rooms loop in circles, with no exit. Brent yells and curses at whoever is tormenting him, and promises that when he escapes the building, he will burn it to the ground.
Brent eventually returns to the other four. Gina, Lyle and Brent return to the room where they saw her reflection and break the mirror, discovering that it was a two-way mirror used to watch the previous occupants of the home. Brent somehow finds an exit, which leads to a room filled with a plethora of toys, and a large painting on the wall. Brent explains that "compassion is the difference between a man and a beast." The remainder of the group walks along the length of the hall exposed by the broken mirror, eventually arriving at a room containing records. The records document the progress of "subjects," among which were a savant and an autistic individual.
Lyle comes to the conclusion that they were trying to teach these unfortunate subjects guilt. However, Jennifer rampages through the room and exposes a large butterfly graffiti made by the group when they were children. They discover a picture frame containing pictures of all of them as children, including the man who each child believed was his or her own father.
Brent, meanwhile, drops to his knees and reads several quotes from a book in the time capsule, talking about how they cannot run. He comes to some sort of realization but a figure emerges from a pile of toys behind him and kills him before he can express it. Lyle suddenly recollects old, repressed memories hidden by pain and horror, about how the group of eight children escaped this home, where they had been experimented on.
He recounts how they were forced to leave one of the members of the group, a fragile young girl named Karen, in a chest containing meaningful objects, promising to return and rescue her. He realizes that the time capsule is the chest, and that they had come back for the girl long ago, only to find her dead from suffocation. Gina, horrified by this realization, runs into a bathroom, vomiting in the toilet. The bathroom is filled with multiple bathtubs, and she leans against one, moaning. Suddenly, the horrible creature who took the lives of Wayne, Beth, and Brent emerges behind her and blinds her by gouging her eyes out. She begins to scream as Lyle and Jennifer race towards the bathroom, but the door is locked.
Lyle and Jennifer manage to batter their way into the room, and quickly bind Gina's bleeding eyes with strips of cloth. They take her to the storage room, and leave her there, promising to return soon. Lyle convinces Jennifer that they must find and destroy all objects linking them to the dead girl, and implores her to split up to find the objects in a reduced amount of time. Gina reminds Lyle that Brent left a slingshot under a grate, near a truncated tunnel. Lyle finds the area, and reaches down to acquire the slingshot, when a hand grabs his. He quickly struggles and stumbles back, severely wounding his neck on a pike.
Meanwhile, Jennifer finds a paintbrush under a filthy bed, and begins to walk back to the room where Gina is. The blinded Gina, unaware of her surroundings and left with a metal bar to defend herself, inadvertently kills Lyle when he enters the room. In Lyle's last breaths, he tells Gina that yet another object is in the tunnel. Gina runs back to the entrance of the basement, where a horrible creature behind her clasps its hand over Gina's mouth, suffocating her. Jennifer returns to the room, finding Lyle dead. She pleads for the resurrection of the dead man, before gathering the courage to burn the slingshot and the paintbrush in a garbage can.
While burning the objects, the horrible creature (who is revealed to be Karen, the dead girl's spirit) who led the other group members to their deaths, taunts Jennifer, reminding her of how she left her in the chest. Jennifer asks, with a raising temper in her voice, what objects are left to burn.
When she does not receive an answer, she deduces that she herself is the only thing left connected to Karen. While Jennifer prepares to plunge a shard of glass into her stomach to kill herself, a flashback is shown where a man talks to Karen about the "project" is shown, and the movie abruptly ends with the words, "Do you know the meaning of guilt? Do you know the meaning of redemption? Choose."
violence, flashback