Plot summary

Poindexter "Fool" Williams is a resident of a Los Angeles ghetto. It is his 13th birthday and he is having a tarot reading by Ruby. His mom is sick and crying. Leroy is outside his mom's bedroom and tells Fool that his family are being evicted from their apartment, forced out midnight tomorrow, by their landlords, the Robesons.Fool's mother has cancer, but cannot afford treatment. Leroy convinces Fool to help him commit burglary to pay for her surgery. He says the couple is known to have gold coins.The Robesons, who are believed to be a married couple, call themselves Mommy and Daddy. They have a daughter named Alice, to whom they are extremely abusive. Alice tried to hide a fork but when Mommy notices, Alice pretends she dropped it to avoid punishment. She reaches around on the ground and a grey arm pops out of the vent on the wall, handing her back the fork. Daddy gets ready to hit Alice with his belt.Fool knocks on Mommy and Daddy's door dressed as a boy scout, while holding a large brown paper bag. No answer. He goes to the side of the house and tossed rocks into the pond, drawing Alice to look out the window. Suddenly Mommy appears and turns down Fool's cookies he's selling for cerebral palsy. She turns him down again when he asks to use the restroom. As he leaves, he notes metal screens with padlocks on the windows.Leroy, his associate Spenser, and Fool break into the Robesons' house by using Spenser to pose as a municipal worker to check the inside meter.Mommy and Daddy leave the home shortly but Spenser does not return. Leroy Fool and Leroy break into the house to look for Spenser. Fool finds a doll in a mousetrap. They see a broken tombstone. Prince attacks Leroy, Fool taunts the dog, does a pull up at the door post so that Primce goes under him, and they run into the next room and block the door.The new room, a kitchen, has cabinets with locks on all of them. One live and tons of dead flies gather in a spot. Leroy heads upstairs to find Spenser. Fool follows a noise going along the floor from the basement. He unlocks the basement door, and finds a Spenser's fake meter man folder and his red lighter on the stairs. As he goes down, a string is tricked and it shuts the door above. Noises are coming from in the basement. Fool uses the lighter to walk around. He sees a TV's glow from an area, facing away, mentioning Sibil died in a sailing accident. Fool reaches the TV and looks in the wall vent it was facing. He finds Spenser's dead body, with a hold coin in hand, and a large group of strange, pale children in a locked pen inside a dungeon-like basement. Fool finds Spenser's bloody hand with his skull ring. Fool tries to run up the stairs but the change to a flat ramp halfway up but he makes it up the 2nd time. The door is locked but Alice opens it and runs away.The Robesons return and finds Leroy. He tells him about Spenser. They try to run to the back door they barred, but the couple is there. The front door knob shocks them then they touch it. Leroy hits the window with his crowbar but he does brake. The couple breaks the bottom of the door and let's the dog in. Fool, then Leroy, who is being bit by the dog touch the doorbell and shock it. They run upstairs but the locks on the windows won't open and the glass also won't break.A flip is switched by Daddy and all the lights go out and many doors automatically lock. Leroy is shot to death by Daddy. They turn the lights back on.Fool runs into another section of the house where he meets Alice. She tells him that the people under the stairs were children who broke the "see/hear/speak no evil" rules of the Robeson household. The children have degenerated into cannibalism to survive and Alice has avoided this fate by obeying the rules without question. A boy named Roach whose tongue was removed as punishment for having called out for help to escape also evades the Robesons by hiding in the walls.Since Daddy saw Fool climbing into the vent, he thinks Fool is Roach. Daddy starts hunting him by shooting the walls with a shotgun while in a full body leather BDSM suit. Roach makes laughs crazily while in the wall.Mommy gives Prince Spencer's the bloody hand and she hears police approach. She uses an intercom by the house power switch that turned off the lights and locked the doors. Fool tries to get the cops attention but can't be heard through the plastic window.The cops are inquire about Spenser's van, with an open door in back, parked in their driveway. Mommy says it was there when they returned from shopping but she saw a black and white man walking away. The cops notice the back door lock is jimmied and offer to look through the house. The van was used in a liquor store robbery last night. After the cops leave, Mommy notices the Bear Scouts uniform Fool was wearing earlier in the van. Fool, running from Prince, hides in the bathroom and hits Daddy on the head with the back of the toilet. Still, he shotguns in. Before Fool can be shot, roach reaches through a vent, grabs Fool, and pulls him into the way. Prince is sent in the walls to hunt them. They pass Fool's hiding spot, with rainbow Christmas lights. As it nears, it bites the Spenser doll Alice gave Fool earlier. Roach activates a trap slide, sending him into the kitchen below. The couple sees and find Alice's doll. Roach and Fool go to Alice's room. She made a doll of Leroy too. She makes one of all the people that come and are killed.Fool is discovered by Daddy and is thrown to the cannibalistic children to die.Mommy calls Alice a Jezebel for being her room with the boys. She is forced to clean all the blood throughout the house. She gets blood on her white dress and is thrown into a scalding bath.Roach helps Fool escape into the furnace but is wounded from one of the shots earlier. As Daddy sends Prince down the get them, Roach and Fool hide in the furnace. As he dies, he gives Fool a small bag of gold coins and a written plea to save Alice.Fool reunites with Alice and punches Daddy in the groin and hits him with a lamps so the two escape can into the passageways between the walls. Daddy lights the furnace to burn Roach's body, causing the vents to get hotter and smokier. As the get to the first floor, the crawl space is booby trapped with spikes in one hall.Prince gets into the walls to kill them. Fool tricks Daddy into stabbing Prince and Fool moans to let Daddy think he killed him. Daddy opens the wall and sees he killed Prince by accident.Fool and Alice reach the attic where they find an open window above a pond. Alice is too afraid to jump and Fool is forced to escape without her, but he promises to return for her.Fool learns that he has enough gold to pay for both his rent (his grandfather Booker says he has enough coins to pay his rent until the year 2000) and for his mother's surgery. Booker says Mommy and Daddy are actually brother and sister, coming from a long line of disturbed, inbred family members. They started out as a family that ran a funeral home, selling cheap coffins for expensive prices before entering the real estate business, leading them to become greedier and more unhinged. Fool vows to help right the wrong. He reports the Robesons to child welfare and police investigate the house, finding nothing (kids in basement drugged with horse tranquilizers), and believing Alice's room is from their departed child. The cops leave.Fool sneaks back in, grabs a fire poker, and sneak upstairs. He thinks he is getting to the room where Mommy and Daddy are praying, but it was a tape playing. Daddy, back in his leather full body BDSM suit jumps out. Fool thumbs his eyeballs and hits them both with the fire poker. Daddy gets his shit gun but Mommy and Daddy think Fool escaped. He is actually hiding in the first floor wall, after releasing the basement door.Alice's hands are tied above her to a bolt on the chimney. Fool loosens and she makes it to the window to let him in. He tells her that she is not their daughter as she was stolen from her birth parents, as were all the other children in the basement. They can't escape by falling to the pond this time. Daddy drained it, put broken glass and rocks in it after Fool escaped before. Alice shows Fool sticks of TNT rigged to parts of the house. They go to the roof and drop a rock down the chimney to Mommy and Daddy's room. Daddy starts shooting up the chimney, soot everywhere, and drops a brick on Daddy's head. They slide down the chimney, causing Mommy to drop the shotgun. Alice goes to escape while Fool goes for the shotgun to finish things.Mommy won't let Daddy kill Alice. Mommy finds Alice but she stomps her foot. She finds out that Alice knows the truth and believes that Fool has turned her against them, so she attempts to kill Alice. Alice hides above the stove in the vent hood. Fool goes to the basement. Daddy hears, goes to the door, and is almost shot by Fool, but Daddy makes the steps turn into a ramp. Daddy grabs the rifle, mom with a gun at the top of the stairs, when the door knocks. Ruby appears at the door stating she represents the association of people who have been unjustly evicted, exploited and generally fucked over. She accused them of being slumlords of over 50 buildings, that attempt to evict so they can flip properties to become office buildings. Mommy slams the door. Right as Daddy is about to shoot Fool, the cannibals all shine their flashlights at Daddy to temporarily blind him. Fool runs away while being shot at. "Police" then knock at the door but it really Booker telling her to listen. Ruby says she is 10x worse for stealing children from the community, as neighbors appear behind them. Mommy points the gun at Ruby as Alice breaks through the ceiling onto her, smashing Mommy's head on the floor. Everyone is shocked by the girl.The cannibal children grab of through the wooden slots on the wall and drag him further to Daddy's view. However, they drop him before the shot, causing the door's lock to be hit, freeing them. They pull Fool in, Daddy following until he hears Booker and Alice at the steps. They slam the door in his face and he falls back down. Fool explains he is trying to help them escape. He thinks they can go out the cellar door to "the sun, the birds and the women." A cannibal shows him a hidden room with loose and bags full of case, plus gold coins, covering the entire floor.Ruby and Alice call down the stairs for Fool and don't notice Mommy escape and shuts the front door. Ruby steps out to see if anyone saw her get away and the door is locked behind her. Alice tries to use the control panel with automatic locking door and booby strap switches but there is a system override. Mommy talks over the intercom. Alice approaches her in the kitchen. She turns around with knife and chases Alice until she falls on the stairs. She is almost stabbed but the cannibal reach through the stairs. Another comes from a vent, some through the walls. The cannibals charge at Mommy, causing her to flee and run into a knife held by Alice. The children seize her and throw her into the basement, where she lands dead at Daddy's feet.Daddy hears Fool at the vault and thinks he sees him counting the coins. Upon closer look, Fool stuck coins in the candles of a candelabra, which are falling at different speeds while they burn. Fool sets off explosives, demolishing the house and causing the money to blow up through the crematorium chimney and into the crowd of people outside. Daddy is killed in the explosion and Alice and Fool reunite in the basement. Meanwhile, the people outside claim the money distributed by the blast, and the freed children venture into the night.