Berlin techno DJ and producer Martin Karow (nicknamed Ickarus) is touring the techno clubs of the world with his girlfriend Mathilde while working on a new studio album that he plans to release soon. In order to be able to work and party day and night, Ickarus takes all kinds of drugs, mainly supplied by his friend Erbse at the clubs in Berlin. After consuming a PMA-containing ecstasy tablet, Ickarus goes into a drug-induced psychosis, eventually finding himself naked in a Berlin hotel where his antics attract the attention of the hotel staff. He is taken to a psychiatric hospital in Berlin, which puts his album and upcoming live performances in danger.
Nick Cavanaugh (Julian Sands) is a lonely Atlanta surgeon obsessed with a woman named Helena (Sherilyn Fenn). After she suffers a high grade tibial fracture in a hit-and-run motor vehicle accident in front of his home, he kidnaps and treats her in his house surreptitiously, amputating both of her legs above the knee.
Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) is a low-level government employee who has frequent daydreams of saving a damsel in distress. One day he is assigned the task of trying to rectify an error caused by a fly getting jammed in a printer, misprinting a file it was copying, resulting in the incarceration and accidental death during interrogation of cobbler Archibald Buttle, instead of the suspected terrorist, freelance heating engineer Archibald Tuttle.
Having just served five years in prison for a crime he did not commit, Billy Brown (Vincent Gallo) kidnaps a young tap dancer named Layla (Christina Ricci) and forces her to pretend to be his wife. Layla allows herself to be kidnapped and it is clear she is romantically attracted to Billy from the start, but Billy all the while is compelled to deal with his own demons, his loneliness and his depression.
A respected neurologist, Dr. Mark Steele (Lon Chaney, Jr.) treats his patients successfully with hypnosis, but has troubles of his own from a marriage falling apart, that he cannot treat himself in the same way. His wife Maria (Ramsay Ames) is cheating on him on a regular basis, which is something Mark is well aware of. When Maria returns home one night in the early morning hours after a rendez-vous with her lover, Mark finally tells her that he has had enough and that he wants a divorce. Maria, who is leading a very comfortable life as a doctor's wife, refuses her consent to a divorce, and laughs at him as she does so. That night Mark has a dream about strangling his wife to death.
Finishing school student Marcia Bradburn (Donna Reed) has good news for her boyfriend, Roy Todwell (Phil Brown). Her father has given his permission for their engagement. However, when she refuses to elope with him immediately, Roy inexplicably picks up a flagstone and kills his dog with it, then drives off.
At the end of her career the sculptor Camille Claudel seems to suffer with mental issues. She destroys more than once her own statues and utters repeatedly that her former lover Auguste Rodin intended to make her life miserable. Consequently her younger brother Paul sends her to an asylum in the outskirts of Avignon. Claudel tries to convince her doctor she is perfectly sane, while living among patients who obviously are not. She is desperate to see her brother again, hoping he might eventually support her plea.
A young man is being tortured. Two tubes are inserted into his nose, and truck battery acid is pumped in through one pipe, causing blood to pour out through the other. The man's captor then kills him with a large hammer.
Carrie White (Sissy Spacek), a shy and friendless 17-year-old girl, is the scapegoat and outcast of her school in North Carolina. At home, she is abused by her mentally unstable mother Margaret (Piper Laurie), who is a Christian fundamentalist.
Isabelle est divorcée. Elle vit avec son petit garçon comme en couple. Depuis un an déjà, mais très discrètement, elle voit un homme : Antoine. Lui aimerait vivre leur histoire au grand jour. Elle lui demande de patienter pour ne pas heurter Achille. Un matin, de très bonne heure, tandis qu'Isabelle pousse Antoine dehors pour qu'Achille ne le voit pas à son réveil, l'enfant surprend les deux amants. Serait-ce l'occasion d'être clair sur la situation ? Achille ne dit rien, Isabelle non plus. L'anecdote est classée.
Fifty people suddenly wake up in a darkened room, arranged in two concentric circles around a strange device. Noises sound when they attempt to move or touch the others. When someone ignores the warning and leaves formation, a beam from the device kills him. As the others panic, a man attempts to calm them. In mid-sentence, he is killed by the device. Thereafter, every two minutes, a sound signals that another person will be killed. After several people die, they realize they can vote for who dies. When nobody votes, one is selected randomly.
A young, naive boy named Billy Forrester (Luke Benward) has a weak stomach and vomits easily. He and his parents, Mitch (Tom Cavanagh), Helen (Kimberly Williams-Paisley), and his little brother, Woody (Ty Panitz), have just moved to a new town. Billy tells his mother that he doesn't want to go to school because he will be "the new kid". She assures him that he will make friends and everything will be okay. At school, however, he becomes the target of the school bully, Joe Guire (Adam Hicks), his two "toaders" named Plug (Blake Garrett) and Bradley (Philip Daniel Bolden), and the rest of his gang: Benjy (Ryan Malgarini), Techno-Mouth (Andrew Gillingham), Twitch (Alexander Gould), and Donny (Alexander Agate). They rudely stare at him and call him "Billy F." (which is how his name is written on his lunch box). Plug and Bradley steal his lunch box. He sits behind Erykka Tansy (Hallie Eisenberg), an unusually tall girl whom people make fun of (calling her "Erk").
L'écrivain Whitley Strieber part passer quelques jours dans une maison en forêt avec sa famille et ses amis Alex et Sara. Une nuit, il est réveillé par une forte lueur et sort voir ce qu'il en est. Le lendemain, il a tout oublié de ce qui s'est passé mais commence peu après à avoir des hallucinations. Il consulte la psychiatre Janet Duffy qui utilise la régression hypnotique afin de découvrir ce qui s'est passé cette nuit.