Little Monsters

Seventeen-year-old Kacey Young has recently moved to Broken Falls, Wisconsin, to live with Russ Markham, the father she never knew, after a troubled childhood with her volatile, neglectful mother in New York. Kacey's new household includes her stepmom Ashley, her stepbrother Andrew Kang, and her thirteen-year-old half-sister Lauren. She has formed a close friendship with two classmates, Bailey Hammond and Jade Becker, though Bailey is possessive and controlling, and Kacey has begun pulling away, preferring evenings at home with her new family.

One February night after midnight, Bailey and Jade insist Kacey sneak out for a plan Bailey has devised: a séance at the Leeds Barn on Sparrow Hill. The barn is all that remains of a property where, in the 1930s, a man named Hugh Leeds murdered his five children and killed himself. His wife, Josephine, was never found, spawning the local legend of the "Red Woman," a blood-covered specter said to walk the hill at night. Lauren, upset after being excluded from a classmate's party, catches Kacey leaving and insists on coming along.

At the barn, Bailey produces a pendulum with a blue crystal, which she claims belonged to her mother, and arranges tea light candles for the séance. Strange noises unsettle the group, and when Kacey and Jade investigate outside, they find no footprints. Moments later, half the barn roof collapses under the weight of snow. Lauren screams, and the girls flee.

The next day, Bailey stops by Ashley's café, where Kacey works, and seems unusually jumpy. She agrees to attend a party that night, but Kacey later discovers Bailey and Jade went without her. The following morning, Jade calls in a panic: Bailey never came home. Her mother, Cathy, has been calling around looking for her. Kacey and Jade drive to the party host's house, where a photo on his phone shows Cliff Grosso grabbing Bailey's shoulder beside her car as she left. Cliff is a former football star whose DWI, which Bailey was in the car for, cost him his scholarship to Ohio State.

Kacey and Jade drive to Cliff's cabin on Cypress Hill. They hear Bailey's phone ringing in the nearby woods and find it on the ground, its data completely erased. Nearby, blood-stained pine needles and flattened snow suggest something was dragged. They bring the phone to the sheriff's station, where Deputy Ellie Knepper dismisses their urgency, saying most missing teens return within 12 hours.

As days pass, the investigation intensifies. Knepper interviews Kacey at home, asking about Bailey's friendships and whether the three girls ever fought. Kacey tells Knepper that Bailey hated Broken Falls and wanted to leave, a remark she later regrets. Meanwhile, Kacey discovers Lauren has been posting on an online forum about the Red Woman, asking "can ghosts kill people?" Lauren's neighbor, Chloe Strauss, claims she saw a blood-covered woman running from Sparrow Hill early Sunday morning. Prompted by Chloe's account, Kacey hikes to the barn at dawn and finds a rust-colored blood smear on the wall and dried blood on the hay, resembling the scene of the Leeds massacre. She calls the police, and Sheriff Bill Moser, a K-9 unit, and state detective Steven Burke arrive.

Burke begins interviewing Kacey, noting she has appeared at two of the three key evidence locations. Police discover Bailey's car in an abandoned garage near Sparrow Hill, and security camera footage shows it turning onto Sparrow Road at 11:31 p.m. the night she vanished, heading toward Kacey's house. Burke reveals he has obtained Bailey's phone records and is working to recover the deleted messages.

Bridget Gibson, Cliff's ex-girlfriend, tells Kacey that Bailey was seen at Cliff's house the week before the party and accuses Bailey of befriending Kacey only to get close to Andrew. Jade confirms she always knew about Bailey's feelings for Andrew but was sworn to secrecy. Kacey also visits a spiritualist shop, where the owner reveals Bailey's supposedly vintage pendulum was purchased new just two weeks before the séance, proving Bailey lied about its origin.

Andrew becomes a focus of the investigation after Kacey discovers, through the family's online phone records, that he called Bailey twice at 11:15 p.m. the night she disappeared. Andrew admits he left that night to check whether Russ was truly working at the hospital, having learned Ashley had consulted a divorce attorney. No one can confirm his presence there.

The case breaks open when Burke announces at a press conference that human remains found near the Minnesota border have been confirmed as Bailey's. He shows Kacey the recovered texts: someone using Andrew's phone asked Bailey to meet at Leeds Park to discuss "Kacey." Bailey agreed and texted "I'm here" 18 minutes later. DNA found under Bailey's fingernails is a partial match to Andrew's. At home, Kacey notices a chef's knife is missing from Ashley's kitchen.

Lauren asks Kacey a quiet question: "What if the DNA came from someone else?" Kacey realizes the partial match could point to a blood relative of Andrew's: Lauren. Confronted, Lauren breaks down and confesses. She stole Andrew's phone, texted Bailey pretending to be Andrew, and lured her to Leeds Park, where she stabbed Bailey once in the neck and once in the stomach. Lauren insists "the Red Woman" told her to do it. She flees toward the road, screaming that she wants to die, and Kacey tackles her and calls 911.

The full truth emerges after Cathy discovers Bailey's hidden journal. Bailey and Jade had plotted to murder Kacey, and the séance was designed as a trap. Bailey carried a hunting knife she had purchased from Cliff, but Lauren's unexpected presence that night forced them to abort. Shaken, Bailey decided to abandon the plot entirely and asked her mother for a therapist. Jade, furious, turned her attention to Lauren. Exploiting Lauren's fear that Bailey's rumors about Kacey and Andrew having a romantic relationship would destroy the family and send Kacey back to New York, Jade convinced Lauren that killing Bailey was the only way to protect her sister. Lauren, in the grip of a psychotic break, carried out the stabbing with a stolen kitchen knife.

Jade's involvement extended beyond manipulation. After the killing, she drove Bailey's car to the Minnesota border to dump the body, created the blood smear in the barn to misdirect searchers, planted Bailey's wiped phone at Cliff's property to frame him, and ditched the bloody clothes. Jade was the blood-covered figure Chloe Strauss saw running from Sparrow Hill. A gas station camera near the border captured Jade driving Bailey's car, leading to her arrest.

Forensic psychiatrists determine Lauren did not understand right from wrong at the time of the killing. She receives eight years in a psychiatric facility. Jade accepts a plea deal totaling a potential 60 years. The Markham family sells the house on Sparrow Road and relocates near Madison to be close to Lauren's facility. Andrew accepts a full scholarship to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Kacey returns to New York to spend the summer with her mother before starting community college. Lauren's final whispered words in the hospital haunt Kacey: Bailey "was going to ruin everything," and Kacey "was going to have to leave us." That is why Lauren killed her.