The film opens up in a dream as we see Catherine Deane walking through the desert in a white feathery gown. In the middle of this landscape are a group of dead trees surrounding a young boy. She tries to get him to talk about a toy boat she has picked up but it is broken. Suddenly he turns into a devil like creature and she wakes up. Catherine is a child therapist enlisted to help with a neurological study project. This project lets her enter the mind of another person. In this case, the small kid is in a coma and she is trying to communicate with him during his dreamlike state. He had been in a boating accident much earlier and has been in a coma ever since. She is trying to convince him, while in his mind to come out of the coma.
At the same time this is going on, a psychologically disturbed killer named Carl is kidnapping young women, trapping them in a special cell he has built that traumatizes his victims then drowns them in a forty hour time period. Carl then performs sadistic acts with their dead bodies.
After his latest victim has been kidnapped, the FBI led by Agent Novak finally track him down from a hair off of Carl's albino husky. As they are breaking down his door, Carl is in the middle of a seizure that leaves him in a coma. The latest girl can't be found and the only answer to her whereabouts are in Carl's mind. They have less than forty hours to find her.
Catherine agrees to enter Carl's mind to see what he's up to. Once inside his mind, she finds a young Carl, probably about 12 years old. She learns that young Carl had been abused by his father and started hearing voices from a beast during his baptism.
This beast is from the very evil dark side of Carl's schizophrenic mind. The beast is so powerful that it captures Catherine and actually makes her believe that it is all real. She can't get out of the dream.
Luckily, the institute has two devices that can enter one persons brain at