Plot
In Iraq in 2010, a four-man Marine team is closing in on a firefight across an open desert area. One of the Marines takes a round to the head. The other three close in on the firefight. They apply suppressive fire and move in on the threat towards a tree line. Night has fallen as they move through the trees. One Marine shoots off a flare. The team notices several nocturnal species and observes possible hostile forces running ahead of them. They quickly pursue and one Marine throws out a grenade, rendering the hostiles injured. One hostile gets up and is quickly neutralized by a Marine. As they assess the situation, one Marine turns on a flashlight and finds an open stairwell into the ground. One pulls security and two descend. PFC J. Tratner activates a bodycam as they investigate. As they make their way to the bottom of the stairs, they notice a foul smell. They seem to have found some sort of room, and their lights as well as the bodycam go dark. Screaming ensues.
In The Bronx in 2013, veteran NYPD Special Operations Sergeant Ralph Sarchie and his partner Butler patrol the 46th Precinct. A domestic disturbance call comes in over the radio. Sarchie finds out that the male at the address is a former Marine.
At the site of the complaint, Sarchie and Butler encounter the former Marine, Jimmy Tratner, whose wife has been badly beaten. They also notice deep scratches on the floor. Tratner flees. Sarchie catches up and makes the arrest. The officers assume that Jimmy is mentally ill or high on drugs.
Sarchie and Butler are called to the Bronx Zoo after a woman has thrown her toddler into the moat surrounding the lion enclosure. They find the woman in the lemur pen. She is furiously scraping at the ground and rapidly recites the lyrics to "Break On Through (To the Other Side)". Sarchie notices a commercial painter inside the lion enclosure. He enters to interrogate the man, but is attacked by the lions and barely escapes.
When the deranged woman, Jane Crenna, is transferred to a mental health facility, a Jesuit priest, Mendoza, arrives at the family's request. Another domestic disturbance call comes in; a family of three has been staying in the living room after a series of strange disturbances. There is one area of the house where light bulbs instantly burn out and candles will not remain lit. The family explains that there were two painters working in the basement, where most of the disturbances occurred. In the basement, Sarchie discovers the decomposing body of one of the painters, David Griggs. At Griggs's decayed apartment, they find business cards for Alphonsus Painting company as well as a picture of Griggs with Jane Crenna and the child that she threw at the zoo. In another picture, Griggs is pictured in his Marine uniform with Jimmy and a third Marine, Mick Santino. They realize Santino must have been the painter at the zoo.
Mendoza believes that Jane is possessed by demons. He explains that there is secondary evil created by humans and primary evil which comes from demons. Sarchie is skeptical, but when he reviews the surveillance footage, he hears strange noises and sees things that Butler does not. Sarchie returns to Jimmy Tratner's house and finds a wall that was being painted. He scrapes away the paint to find a pictograph of an owl. At Sarchie's home, his daughter is awakened by strange scratching noises and runs from her room. Sarchie scrapes off the paint to find a bizarre mix of Latin and ancient pictographs. He hears noises and when investigating is attacked by Jimmy, who escapes by diving through a glass window. He finds hard drives with footage from Tratner's deployments and watches the footage from the palm grove in Diyala. In a cave, the soldiers found a carving of the same message that is on the wall in Tratner's home. Sarchie revisits the basement where he found Griggs's body, scrapes off the paint, and finds the message again. He reviews the zoo surveillance footage and sees the same message being painted over by Santino in the lion enclosure. With Mendoza, he visits Jane Crenna in the hospital but she savagely bites his already-injured forearm. She says the name Marvin and Sarchie is visibly shaken.
Mendoza decodes the message as a kind of bridge between Christian and pagan theology which would allow demons a door to the human world. He explains that certain people are more susceptible to such messages than others. He suggests that the voices and images Sarchie is seeing could be a result of his intuitive "radar," which means that he is also susceptible to the archaic message. Mendoza goes with Sarchie and Butler to an apartment building where they are attacked by Santino and Jimmy Tratner. Tratner almost kills Sarchie but is subdued by Mendoza's cross. Santino and Butler get into a fight, but Santino ends up killing Butler. Mendoza explains that to be effective in fighting this evil, Sarchie has to humble himself before God and confess his sins. Sarchie confesses that he killed a child predator named Marvin when he saw him come back to the scene of a recent child murder, and he has felt a darkness growing in him since. Mendoza absolves him of his sins and he begins driving home.
At Sarchie's home, his daughter sees her stuffed owl advance toward her bed. As she runs screaming, she sees Santino in the hallway. As Sarchie is driving home, he gets a call from Jen but finds that it's Santino instead. He calls for backup and races home. When he arrives Santino warns that he has abducted Sarchie's wife and daughter, and then attacks Sarchie. Backup arrives and Santino is subdued and taken to the precinct where Mendoza and Sarchie perform an exorcism on him. During the exorcism, Sarchie begins hearing whispers telling him the name of the demon, Jungler. Mendoza is able to use the name of the demon during the exorcism to finally release Santino. Santino is then able to tell them Sarchie's wife and daughter are located in an Alphonsus Painting van at a storage facility. Seven months later, they are in the living room at the baptism of the Sarchies' second child, Daniella Anne Sarchie. Sarchie proudly renounces Satan during the baptism and a placard at the end says he retired from the police force and continued to work with Father Mendoza.
