Plot
A woman drops a baby off a waterfall before walking to a church to confess her crime. The film cuts to night, slowly tilting up the body of the now decapitated woman sitting in a chair, her head in a cage behind her. The body is missing some toes and fingers and, as we watch, an unseen person cuts off one of the dead woman's remaining fingers with a knife, wrapping it in a cloth.
The next day, Agnes and Wolf are wed and they move into a house Wolf has purchased for them.
That night, Agnes sees a drunk Wolf tell his best friend Lenz that he is handsome, with Lenz replying that he likes him, too. Agnes's brother gives her a gift: the severed finger of the dead woman from the beginning of the film. Back at her house, Agnes kisses the finger and places it under her mattress hoping it will help her conceive a child. However, when a drunk Wolf returns later, he tells her to turn around, masturbates, and goes to sleep.
Agnes wakes alone in bed. After searching the house and stables, she quickly dresses and sets off to find Wolf. She meets a woman and two children and asks them to lead her to the pond where Wolf works as a fisherman. They agree, and start leading her through the woods, but run off and hide, leaving Agnes lost. She stumbles across a drawing posted on a tree, detailing the woman throwing her child down the waterfall and her subsequent execution. A few feet away, she discovers the corpse of the woman, sitting upright in a chair on a small altar.
That night, Agnes once again tries to initiate sex with a now sober Wolf, but she is rebuffed and Wolf goes to sleep. The next day at church, a somewhat despondent Agnes prays to a wax doll of baby Jesus for a child.
Agnes wakes early and makes it to a pond where Wolf works as a fisherman before everyone else, hoping to prove her worth by catching some fish, but gets stuck in the mud. When Wolf and the other workers arrive, he admonishes her for being so reckless and tells her she could have drowned. That night, someone pounds on their door and tells Wolf that Lenz has hanged himself. After rushing to the scene he and his friends take the body away while Lenz's mother begs them to let her bury him.
The next day, the priest gives a sermon to the town and explains that Lenz cannot be buried because suicide is a sin and what he did is worse than murder. He goes on to say that the woman who threw her baby down the waterfall was at least saved because she received confession before her execution, so she was forgiven. While walking home, Agnes harms herself by cutting her tongue, then lies down near the headless corpse of the waterfall woman. She returns home late again and overhears Wolf's mother complaining to him about Agnes, calling her a burden for not getting pregnant. Agnes grows more depressed and instead of going inside, returns to the altar and sings to the head of the dead woman all night.
The next morning, Agnes's brother finds her asleep in his barn. She begs her brother to let her stay, but he tells Wolf, who tries to get her to come home. When she tries to run away, he overpowers her and carries her back. A despondent Agnes refuses to get up or do her chores. Food rots and the goats become sick and infected, having to be put down. Agnes is sent to a barber, where he sews a piece of horse hair through the back of her neck and tells her she needs to repeatedly shift it from side to side so that the wound festers and the "poison" in her head leeches out. On her way home, she finds an unattended baby in the woods and brings it home with her. She tells Wolf and his mother that it's a miracle, but they are horrified and force her to return it.
As her depression worsens, Agnes decides to kill herself by eating rat poison. Wracked with pain and vomiting, she begs Wolf to get her a priest. He leaves, but returns alone, telling her the priest was not home, but that they can go together and see him the next day. Distraught that she might die without confessing, she admits that she's eaten rat poison and he forces her to vomit it up. In the morning, he and his mother dress Agnes and Wolf carries her back to her mother and brother's farm, telling them that she's in the Devil's bath and tried to kill herself.
The next morning, Agnes awakens early, dresses, and walks back toward the town. Along the way, she finds a group of children collecting wood by a pond and asks a young boy to lead her to a small shrine in the woods. She promises him payment if he'll say a small prayer with her, but when he finishes, she stabs him in the neck. He survives the initial cut and begins screaming for help. She tells him that now he'll never sin and will be an angel before God as she slits his throat and he dies in her arms. She then goes to the church and tells them she's committed a crime.
Agnes is locked in a cell and gives confession to the priest, admitting that she no longer wishes to live in this world, but wanted absolution before she died. She murdered the boy knowing she'd be able to give her final confession before being executed because she couldn't see another way out. The priest absolves her of her sins and she begins to laugh and weep uncontrollably.
A now catatonic Agnes is wrapped, sewn into an animal skin, and dragged through town to the altar where she will be executed. As a hood is placed over her head by the executioner, she begins to sing quietly. A young girl in the crowd recognizes the song and sings along with her. The song ends abruptly as the executioner beheads Agnes with a sword. While Wolf weeps, the crowd surges forward and musicians begin playing a jaunty tune. The blood spurting from Agnes's neck is collected in a bucket and the townspeople pay to dip in their cups and bowls, believing that drinking the blood of executed prisoners wards against melancholy.
