Synopsis:
"I'll call him the Devil if I want."
Army Sergeant Amira Delaguarda, 27, spares no mercy when it comes to Dennis
Meachem, 52, the mesmeric preacher who raised her. Amira thought she would
escape him by enlisting and serving halfway around the world, but he still
leads his Family in its bizarre practices -- and her daughter Cora, 13, is
still in his grasp.
When Amira comes home from war in Iraq as a wounded veteran, she is forced
to return to Dennis's South Texas compound where he lives with her sister
Mariflor, 24.
More important than her own recovery, though, Amira wants to know that Cora
is ‘doing okay’ as she passes her fourteenth birthday in Mariflor’s care,
unaware of her real parentage. Amira the Warrior was never the motherly
type, much as she wanted to be.
But the situation has changed. Mariflor has married Dennis, the man the two
sisters once called “Daddy”, and will soon deliver a baby of her own.
Mariflor and Cora have also taken on the beliefs Dennis uses to control his
followers, along with his talks with God and the fear he coerces through
raising and handling snakes.
Amira learns that Dennis plans to marry Cora off to ‘breed’ very soon, per
the cult’s guiding Principle: “Bleed the Beast,” meaning strap the living
expenses of large, interbred families inside the compound onto the welfare
state. She must get Cora away -- but will she go?
Dennis’s dabbling in snake-handling becomes an obsession. He dares his
followers to test their faith with venomous reptiles, and another man dies.
Except for a few toadying favorites, the boys of the cult are reviled as
"weak" and expelled at age 16.
Even after the teenage boys are sent away to live in town, Dennis still
dominates them as a prophet - a spiritual terrorist who tallies their weekly
Sin Reports to see if they agree with the ones he gets direct from God.
Dennis is both their torment and their deluded hope for everlasting life.
Amira tries to conform to Family ways until Mariflor’s baby comes, buying
time to convince a reluctant, brainwashed Cora to escape. But she catches
Dennis's mother performing an ‘exorcism’ over Cora, whose repressed
sexuality and teenage resentment explode along with Amira's outrage.
Amira’s discovery that the Lost Boys fantasize about – perhaps plan -- an
uprising against the Family pushes her to expose the truth to the world
outside. She tries to give Cora a way to protect herself while she gathers
evidence, teaching her the fundamentals of firearms "just in case", but she
can only slow the overheated situation. News that a boy has been murdered
the day Dennis expelled him is the final spark. The Lost Boys riot just as
Amira gets proof that Dennis is a fraud. Amira and Cora are caught in the
crossfire.
Amira falls into the cave where Dennis gets his snakes while he holds Cora
hostage outside, demanding that Amira surrender the evidence of his fraud.
Caught between a nest of rattlers and a power-hungry pedophile, Amira
returns to a battlefield mindset -- the part of herself she fears above
all -- to save her daughter’s innocence and redeem her own lost soul.