Summary
Highlights
The movie opens with a dystopian Philadelphia in 2024, then rewinds to 1988. Three seemingly unrelated individuals (a pianist, a bus driver, and a chef) mysteriously die with blood gushing from their faces, and three puncture marks on their necks. Police officer Thomas, whose wife is pregnant, begins investigating these bizarre deaths. His brother-in-law, Detective Holt, initially dismisses Thomas's observations. Later, a doctor reveals the marks are deep injections of an unknown unstable isotope. A woman wearing a blue hoodie is identified as the suspect after a stripper is attacked and then dies in a similar manner. The suspect, with an injured left hand, evades capture after a high-speed chase and a confrontation in the subway, where she mysteriously knows Thomas's name and personal details. She is killed by an oncoming train.
Nine years pass; Thomas's wife died giving birth to their daughter, Amy. Public opinion is divided on the 1988 incident. On Amy's ninth birthday, similar killings resume. The perpetrator on security footage looks identical to the woman from 1988, now presumed to be a copycat. Thomas finds a mysterious key with the original suspect's belongings, belonging to a plane manufactured years after her supposed death. Dr. Naveen Rao approaches Thomas, theorizing that supermoons create a bridge for the killer every nine years. Thomas and Maddox track the suspect to an airfield, where she again reveals she knows Thomas, takes him hostage, shoots Maddox, and escapes in a plane, leaving Thomas to crash into the sea. Thomas tells Holt the woman is from the future, but Holt is skeptical.
In 2006, an older Thomas, no longer a cop due to his obsession, exhumes a skeleton with a puncture wound in its neck. He discovers the victim, Harold Nowak, was a leader of a radical white supremacist group called the Real American Movement, which spread hate through American history books. Other victims of the killer are also linked to this movement. On Amy's 18th birthday, Thomas confronts Holt with his time-travel theory, explaining the killer didn't 'return' in 1997 but simply hadn't died yet. Thomas steals Holt's badge to get the address of Harold's ex-wife, Heather Russell. He finds Heather dead from the same method as the other victims and again encounters the killer, injuring her left hand before she escapes in a time-traveling device in the sewer. Thomas is arrested by a furious Holt.
Nine years later, in 2015, Dr. Naveen Rao, now working on an isotope device, kidnaps Thomas to prevent him from killing the woman. Naveen reveals he supports her cause, claiming she is a savior preventing something worse. Thomas escapes and heads to the beach, where the mysterious woman, Rya, reappears in her time machine. Rya reveals she is Thomas's granddaughter, given a bracelet by her mother (Amy) – the same bracelet Thomas gave to Amy years ago. She explains she is traveling back in time in reverse chronological order to kill specific people connected to a radical group founded by Harold Nowak, aiming to prevent a civil war that will devastate Philadelphia in 2024. Rya’s mission dictates she always dies at the end of her each journey in the past, and asks Thomas to go home and take care of Amy, before disappearing. Thomas collapses in tears. The movie concludes in 2015, with Thomas holding his newborn granddaughter, Rya, in the hospital, finally achieving peace, knowing the future has been set right and the civil war averted.