A Gulf War Veteran struggling to make ends meet discovers a connection between a deadly beast in his neighborhood and an old pharmaceutical facility across the river.

SYNOPSIS:

Curtis, an arrogant and resentful Gulf War Veteran struggling to keep it together, is plagued with financial issues, a failing marriage, and a police record, and now he is at the risk of losing his home to eminent domain. His stress and anxiety come to a head after he returns home from work to deal with his estranged wife, panic-stricken over the inexplicable death of their neighbor, Frank, who was mutilated the night before by a mysterious creature.

Curtis is a seasoned telecommunications electronics technician—a trade he learned while serving in the military. Lately, however, the only work he has been able to find is third shift and out of state due to being on probation for involuntary manslaughter during a DUI five years earlier. The guilt of his actions eats away at him, driving him to become an insomniac living on a diet of coffee and cigarettes. His wife, Amy, equally unhappy, self-medicates with wine to cope with her miserable teaching job, estranged relationship with Curtis, and their autistic son’s medical bills. Amy is conflicted, dealing with resentment and devotion.

Through the course of his journey, Curtis suffers a series of horrific hallucinations. The first is of a dead woman’s face on the night he returns home, which worries him that the PTSD he suffered years ago is be returning. To make matters worse, a category three hurricane hits the shoreline and decimates the east coast. As the basement of their house floods from torrential rain, an abominable creature invades it, terrorizing Amy and her son trapped below. Curtis goes to battle with the monster. During the fight, he is injured, but he and his family manage to make their escape.

Consciousness of time and reality gives way to his stress and insomnia. During his mental decline, Curtis devises a plan to capture the creature, to which he succeeds but is torn with the decision to destroy it or let it live as he begins to empathize with it. While contemplating his decision, he watches old family videos, bringing back happy memories of a time he longs to return. It is a wake-up call and his motivation for change, as he fears he will lose his mind and his family if he continues life down this dead-end path.

Curtis blacks out and we get a flashback to the gulf war where soldiers are deteriorating from a rapidly spreading virus. This is the turning point for Curtis, which sets him on his eventual road to ruin. He wakes, and to his surprise, he sees the creature has escaped. He decides to hunt and destroy the creature after realizing that it’s responsible for his neighbors’ death. The pursuit of it leads him to the gated, desolate ruins of Laurel Hill Drive. The decrepit street appears haunting at first glance but reveals a place of mystical enchantment, as he is greeted by hundreds of felines that inhabit the land.

An underground tunnel at the end of Laurel Hill leads Curtis to the seemingly abandoned pharmaceutical company, to which the creature retreats. He reluctantly enters and uncovers an entire colony of hybrid creatures that he decides to unleash from isolation to expose the facility. Security soon catches up with him and brings him in to meet the CEO, British scientist, Aldrich Douglas.

Douglas is a brilliant but deranged man who’s accepted his role as a government pawn, forced to work at the pharmaceutical facility for decades. Curtis learns that the virus which killed soldiers in Iraq was designed at the facility and knowingly deployed by his government. Douglas tries to manipulate the emotionally distraught Curtis to think that his life is meaningless and that the government is corrupt, offering Curtis a place at the facility as a test subject for a new project as an alternative to his discontented life.

Meanwhile, the creatures that Curtis releases have begun wreaking havoc on the facility. As security tries to defend the infrastructure, a battle ensues, with the rampaging creatures. Curtis manages to get away and searches for an exit through a maze of escaped wildlife and destruction. He finds the tunnel back to Laurel Hill where the final confrontation takes place with Douglas, the beast, and the feline inhabitants.

Three years later, life for Curtis and his family is progressively improving. They live in Amy’s parents’ beach house on the shoreline, and Amy has a better teaching job at the local school. Since the release of his probation, Curtis works as a telecommunications manager at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. He is finally able to make peace with his past through therapy and learns that, although the world can be seen as a terrible place, there is enough beauty left in it, and once one is open to it, that beauty can be seen every day.

The story ends with Curtis reminiscing on his encounter with the felines of Laurel Hill. He dreams he returns one last time to visit and takes comfort in seeing that the land is flourishing and the inhabitants are enjoying their concealed existence. There is the possibility that Laurel Hill no longer exists due to the cats arriving at various animal shelters. I leave this decision to the reader to either make the assumption or rather believe in the perpetual existence of the cats and the mystical neighborhood that is the street between the pines.