*The film is broken up into three stories, with most of the actors playing multiple roles.
1. The Death of R.M.F.
A man known only by his initials, R.M.F. (Yorgos Stefanakos), arrives at a mansion. He is greeted by a woman named Vivian (Margaret Qualley), who describes R.M.F. to her employer. Later, another man, Robert Fletcher (Jesse Plemons), drives his van into R.M.F.’s car. They both survive the accident, and Robert is discharged with minor cuts.
Robert is married to Sarah (Hong Chau) but works for a man named Raymond (Willem Dafoe), who dominates nearly every aspect of Robert’s life, especially his marriage to Sarah. When Robert goes into Raymond’s office, he tells Robert to cause another car accident with R.M.F., as Robert did that under Raymond’s orders, and R.M.F. is also in on the plan himself so that he may deliberately get killed. Robert is uncomfortable with the request and refuses, which angers Raymond.
Robert goes home and confesses to Sarah how Raymond has been controlling him, including the fact that he did not want them to have kids. Every time Sarah got pregnant, doctors paid by Raymond would abort her babies and make her think she suffered miscarriages. Sarah slaps Robert, and she later leaves him. When Robert tries to go to her job, her coworker Will (Mamoudou Athie) tells Robert that Sarah just quit and is nowhere to be found.
Robert tries to get back into Raymond’s good graces by pathetically groveling, but it doesn’t work. He then observes that Raymond is spending time with a woman, Rita Fanning (Emma Stone), who is also now being controlled by Raymond. Robert smashes his toe as an excuse to meet Rita and pretend to need her help.
Rita was also tasked with killing R.M.F. She does the car accident, landing both of them in the hospital. Robert makes his way inside and steals a nurse’s scrubs, as well as Rita’s keys to her van. He then takes R.M.F. from his room and dumps him on the street, where Robert proceeds to run him over twice.
Robert then returns to Raymond’s house, where he is embraced by both him and Vivian. Vivian then goes up to sing the men a song.
2. R.M.F. is Flying
An officer named Daniel (Plemons) is still reeling from the disappearance of his wife Liz (Stone), a marine biologist. He is comforted by his friends, a couple named Neil (Athie) and Martha (Qualley), over dinner. Daniel wants to watch a video involving both couples, but Neil and Martha aren’t comfortable with it until Daniel starts crying. They agree to watch the video, which is of both couples engaging in an orgy.
Daniel later gets a call from someone saying that Liz has been rescued. Meanwhile, another friend of Daniel and Liz, Sharon (Chau), has her husband Jonathan (Ja’Quan Monroe-Henderson) returned to her from the same trip, but he appears to have some kind of brain damage. Daniel is happy to see Liz again, but he senses something is off about her. She tells him of her time spent on the island where she was stranded, claiming to have eaten fruit when it is shown in a brief flashback that Liz most likely cannibalized the other people.
Liz tries to get Daniel to engage in aggressive sexual acts, involving her hitting him with his baton. They have dinner with Neil and Martha, where Liz attempts to get them into bed again. The stress of Liz’s actions starts getting to Daniel. During a traffic stop, he accidentally shoots a passenger (Joe Alwyn) through the hand, and then begins inexplicably licking the blood off his hand.
Liz tells her father George (Dafoe) about a dream where she was taken care of by dogs on the island, which gave her an epiphany during her time stranded.
Daniel starts to starve himself before going to request that Liz sever her thumb and cook it for him. She does so after fainting first, but Daniel gives the thumb to his cat. He then tells Sharon about this. Daniel later requests that Liz cook him her liver. He later finds her dead after she cut her liver out. A knock at the door is heard, and a woman Daniel believes to be the “real” Liz appears. Daniel embraces her while the other Liz lies bloody and dead in the living room.
3. R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich
Two cult members, Emily (Stone) and Andrew (Plemons), meet with a young woman, Anna (Hunter Schaefer). They bring her the body of R.M.F. in an attempt to revive him with her touch. After it doesn’t work, Emily and Andrew conclude she is not the woman they are looking for.
Emily speaks with Andrew on the woman that they are looking for. She recounts a time when she got her hair caught at the bottom of a pool, just two synchronized swimmers were practicing a routine. One of the women (Qualley) rescued Emily, and she thinks this is the woman they are looking for. The two then go to their cult, which is run by Omi (Dafoe) and his wife Aka (Chau), which is a sex cult that has people sweat out their toxins, and Aka licks the sweat off them to determine if they are cleansed.
While out at a restaurant, a waitress named Rebecca approaches Emily and Andrew after overhearing their conversation regarding the woman they are looking for. Rebecca claims that the woman is her twin sister Ruth, but Andrew dismisses this, as one of the requirements for finding their new cult leader is that one of the twins must be deceased.
Emily also visits her husband Joseph (Alwyn) and their daughter (Merah Benoit) from time to time. Joseph invites Emily for some private time together, but he ends up drugging her drink and raping her. When she returns to the cult, she tells Aka about what happened, and she suggests that her time in the sauna might expel her toxins. After the body-licking process, Aka says that Emily is still contaminated and must be kicked out of the cult, all while she pitifully begs to stay.
Hoping to get back into the cult, Emily tries to find a way to contact Ruth. She is called by Rebecca, who invites her to her home and decides to fulfill one of the requirements by jumping headfirst into an empty pool, killing herself.
Emily is then led to Ruth’s job at a clinic. Emily drugs her unconscious and brings her back to the morgue to R.M.F.’s body. After Emily has Ruth touch the body, R.M.F. comes back to life. Emily does a victory dance outside before heading back to the cult to bring them Ruth. Emily then gets distracted while driving and crashes her car, causing Ruth to fly through the windshield and die.
During the credits, R.M.F. really does eat a sandwich.
