The Change

Jo Levison, her husband Art, and their daughter Lucy laugh when they spot Brendon Baker struggling to clear his lawn, which has been mysteriously overrun with giant, noxious weeds. The scene prompts Jo to reflect on her tense home life; as the family’s sole breadwinner, she resents Art’s joblessness and overall lack of contribution to the household. That night, Jo experiences a severe hot flash, and while meditating, she feels that she generates a ball of fire in her hands. When she tells Art, he gently makes fun of her.

In a flashback, the narrative reveals that Jo founded Furious Fitness, a women-only gym, to provide an outlet for other women who feel rage at the injustice of the patriarchal world around them. In the present, a new client named Nessa James arrives at the gym. While helping Nessa to overcome a leg cramp, Jo uses her unnaturally hot hands to soothe the muscle, but they are interrupted when a man named Chertov barges in looking for Rosamund Harding, one of Jo’s clients. When Jo objects, he charges at her and sends her stumbling, but she soon surges forward, flips him over her back, and pins him to the floor. When the police arrive, an officer named Tony Perretta warns her to drop the matter, revealing that Chertov works for Rosamund’s powerful and vindictive husband, Spencer Harding (a prominent art dealer). Later, as Jo drives Nessa home, they pass Brendon’s completely blighted yard and discuss the town rumor that Harriett Osborne is a “witch” and has cursed him.

Now back in her house, Nessa James considers her surroundings, which have been silent since her parents’ deaths and her daughters’ departure for college. Hearing the preternatural echoes of crashing waves and a young girl’s ghostly whisper, she realizes that her supernatural ability to see and hear the dead has returned after years of dormancy. This hereditary “gift” comes from her grandmother, Dolores. A flashback reveals a childhood summer that she spent with Dolores, who taught her about their family’s inherited power to hear and tend the spirits of the dead who yearn to be found. At age 12, Nessa heard a ghostly voice and accompanied Dolores through a dangerous swamp. Together, they found a murdered woman floating face-down, and Dolores explained that the “gift” appears before a girl’s first period and goes dormant until menopause, when life grows “quiet” again. She also mentioned that other women, such as her friend Miss Ella, deliver the punishment for those who have wronged the women she finds.

In the present, driven by an unexplainable impulse, Nessa walks to Harriett Osborne’s home late one night and finds the woman gardening in the nude. Harriett gives her a tour of the garden, which is filled with both medicinal species and highly poisonous plants. Nessa explains her gift and tells Harriett that a dead girl is calling to her. She says that she was also led to another woman with protective energy (Jo) and then asks Harriett to be the “punisher” for the girl’s killer. Harriett agrees to help.

A lengthy flashback details Jo’s “thirty-year war” against her own body and the systemic misogyny that has fueled her rage. The conflict began in high school, when she was humiliated by getting her first period in class. This shame followed her through college and through her career in hotel management, where she constantly fought to manage her period and fend off sexual harassment. After having her daughter, she was promoted to staff manager and discovered that the hotel was covering up a pattern of sexual assaults that their high-end male guests committed against female employees. She implemented new safety policies to help keep her staff safe from harm.

Soon, she began experiencing debilitatingly heavy periods and intense hot flashes. A doctor’s flippant suggestion to “try exercise” led her to a gym, where running became an outlet for her anger and helped her to build immense physical strength. The flashback culminates when a VIP guest assaults a young employee. When corporate management tries to cover up this crime, Jo’s rage erupts into a supernatural force. Upon confronting the guest, who exposes himself to her and remains unapologetic, she grabs his throat and slams him into the wall, punching a hole into the drywall right next to his face. Her grip leaves a second-degree burn around his neck. After she is fired, she has an epiphany and suddenly realizes that her body was never the enemy. She then leaks the hotel’s HR files to the New York Times, exposing the scandal and bringing the company to its knees.

In the present, Nessa and Harriett pick up Jo, who agrees to join their search for the dead girl. After they drop off Jo’s daughter, Lucy, at school, they drive to Danskammer Beach, a desolate road where Nessa feels the spirit’s call growing stronger. They follow a hidden path into a thicket. Nessa sees the ghost of a young girl in a pale blue dress, who leads them to a black trash bag containing a rotting corpse.

Nessa opens the bag to bear witness so the spirit can find peace. However, the ghost remains, pointing them toward the ocean. On the beach, Nessa sees the ghosts of two more young women standing in the waves. Realizing that a serial killer is at work, she collapses in despair.

The police arrive. The investigation is led by Detective Franklin Rees, a former colleague of Nessa’s late husband. Franklin treats the women with respect, though he initially suggests that the death is likely a drug overdose involving a sex worker. (The police department will later seize upon this simplistic explanation.) Harriett tells Franklin that blowfly larvae had stopped feeding and houseflies had arrived, giving an estimated time of death that he receives with respect. Later, in the car, Harriett tells Nessa that Franklin is attracted to her and encourages her to have sex with him, sparking a lighthearted argument.

A flashback reveals the events leading to Harriett’s firing from her advertising agency. After her husband left her for a younger woman, she took a three-week vacation and spent this time naked in her garden. She then returned to work feeling transformed and powerful. At a meeting, the new creative director, Chris Whitman, mistook her for an administrative assistant and presented a deeply sexist ad campaign concept.

Harriett calmly and methodically dismantled the ad’s offensive premise, infuriating Chris and unnerving her colleague, Andrew Howard. Later, the agency’s CEO, Max, summoned Harriett and ordered her to back down, condescendingly telling her that she was too old to understand modern humor. Harriett refused, realizing that Max felt threatened by her talent. She confronted his fear and sexism, tossing his creative awards at him one by one. In a fury, he hurled each one at the wall while she asserted that his success had been due to her work. After he called her a “cunt,” security escorted her out. She walked home barefoot in the rain, feeling utterly free for the first time.

Shaken after finding the body, Nessa calls her twin daughters, Breanna and Jordan, who are in college. When she tells them that the body was at Danskammer Beach, Jordan immediately asks if the victim was redheaded. She reminds Nessa of Mandy Welsh, a high school classmate who disappeared two years earlier and was last seen on that same beach. The police had dismissed Mandy as a runaway. Nessa realizes that one of the ghosts she saw in the ocean matched Mandy’s description.

Her daughters urge her to call the police. Nessa phones Franklin Rees, who informs her that the girl in the trash bag died from a fentanyl overdose. Rejecting the police’s theory that the victim was a sex worker, Nessa insists that the girl was drugged. Because Franklin witnessed her precognition firsthand when she intuited the death of her husband years ago, he takes her seriously when she says she saw the victim in a dream. This small lie is her way to keep from telling him the truth: that she sees ghosts in front of her, in real time. Nonetheless, she gives him an accurate description of the girl’s clothing and handbag. Franklin confirms that a matching bag—labelled “Ofelia,” a Caribbean retail chain—was found underneath the body. Nessa tells him that she also saw Mandy Welsh in her “dream”; she asks him to investigate the cold case, and he promises that he will.

Jo returns home and finds a moment of comfort with her husband, Art, before heading out again. On her way to her gym, she sees a drunk woman throwing plants at the Mattauk police station, screaming that the police did nothing when her “baby” was killed. Jo intervenes and prevents the officers from arresting the woman, who turns out to be Amber Welsh, the mother of the missing Mandy.

Amber passes out, so Jo takes her to Harriett’s house, where one of Harriett’s casual lovers, Eric, helps to carry Amber inside. Harriett mixes an herbal concoction that instantly sobers Amber up. Amber explains that the police dismissed Mandy’s disappearance two years ago because of her family’s poverty and her ex-husband’s criminal record. She believes Mandy was walking to the exclusive Culling Pointe community for a job interview when she vanished. Jo and Harriett promise to help find Mandy’s body and bring her killer to justice. Jo arranges to pick Amber up from work the next day so that Amber can speak with Nessa.

A flashback to Amber’s teenage years explains her history with the Mattauk police. A star softball player, she was groomed and then sexually assaulted by her coach, a respected police officer named John Rocca. A former player warned Amber not to go out on Rocca’s boat, but he manipulated her parents into giving permission. Once at sea, Rocca assaulted her, letting her “keep her virginity” for another trip. Because going to the police was not an option and quitting the team would sacrifice her future, Amber felt trapped. She stole into the marina that night and set his boat on fire, but she was caught, convicted of arson, and sent to a juvenile detention facility. The event derailed her life. Her father died by suicide, and her mother lost their home and developed a drug addiction.

The narrative returns to the present. The next morning, Jo goes for a run along Danskammer Beach Road and is disgusted to find the area crowded with morbid tourists taking selfies at the crime scene. She is approached by Josh Gibbon, the host of a popular true-crime podcast, “They Walk Among Us.” He wants an interview, but Jo rebuffs him, angered by his sensationalism and his inability to name the victims of a serial killer whom his show supposedly helped catch.

She continues her run to the gates of Culling Pointe, the heavily secured billionaire enclave at the end of the road. As she talks to a guard, a black SUV arrives. Inside, Jo catches a glimpse of her gym client, Rosamund Harding, who looks dazed and unresponsive. The guard refuses to provide any information about Rosamund, and a worried Jo turns back toward town.