In a small nook of heat-drenched coastal Australia, a traveling knife salesman, Tom, visits upon Mary, a frustrated housewife. As blades grind on stone, tensions build as Mary’s two boisterous children observe the couple playing out their all too familiar roles.
Callan is twenty and is overcome with impulses that he finds it increasingly difficult to control. In order to protect others from his strange behavior, Malcolm, his father, tries to channel his son's attention by every means possible.
When Jack loses his wife in a car accident his world falls apart. Unable to deal with the grief, he sinks into a dark obsession with the nature of death. Intrigued by a string of local murders, this bleak spiral leads him into obscure and forbidden realms of society that lie, barely concealed, beneath its surface. When he meets a woman who shares a similar pain, Jack is faced with the true nature of his obsession.
