When the movie starts, the horror becomes real. The TV ads promised a festival of cheap and bloody fright films, all of them thinly disguised knockoffs of well-known movies with much better pedigrees. One film features a family of chainsaw maniacs, another a zombie uprising. In yet another, a cult of vampires lives in a creepy old mansion. The whole thing is hosted by the mysterious Dr. Ominous.

Entranced by the ads, a small group of adventurous horror fans head out to a failing theater in the bad part of town. As the lights dim and the movies begin, they are transported into the worlds of the films, where the screams and the blood are real, and there doesn't seem to be any way out.