Finney Shaw is a shy but clever 13-year-old boy who's being held in a soundproof basement by a sadistic, masked killer. When a disconnected phone on the wall starts to ring, he soon discovers that he can hear the voices of the murderer's previous victims, and they are dead set on making sure that what happened to them doesn't happen to Finney.

Ten years ago, true crime writer Ellison Oswald made his reputation with a best-selling account of a notorious murder. Now, desperate to replicate the success of his first book, he moves his family into a home where the previous occupants were brutally executed and a child disappeared, hoping to find inspiration in the crime scene. In the home, Ellison discovers a cache of terrifying home movies, unwittingly opening the door into a nightmarish mystery....