British director Nicholas Roeg's first film in 15 years is a supernatural drama set amidst the rolling hills of the Irish countryside. Needing to escape the city and her demanding boss Lars (Donald Sutherland), young architect Liffrey (Kelly Reilly) and boyfriend Richard (Oscar Pearce) buy a cottage in the Irish hills to restore. The Tucker family, who lived there previously and have now moved to a nearby farm, soon make the couple uneasy, especially mother-of-three daughters Mabs (Miranda Richardson), who can't hide her desire to have a son. The atmosphere takes a turn for the worse when Liffrey announces she's pregnant, mainly because Mabs's mother Molly (Rita Tushingham) has been trying, through use of the black arts, to finally have her own grandson. Isolated in her pregnancy, Liffrey is soon surrounded by a family convinced that the baby she is carrying rightly belongs to Mabs.

A young gay man, Harry (John Hannah), leaves behind the city and the unsatisfying twilight world of its gay club scene to head for the coast. While on a deserted beach he has an unusual meeting with Flint (Bernard Hill), overtly heterosexual but with a murky past. Sheltering in an abandoned cottage their mutual distrust melts away and they begin to open up to each other.