Ten years after the Civil War has ended, the Governor of Texas asks Leander McNelly to form a company of Rangers to help uphold the law along the Mexican border. With a few veterans of the war, most of the recruits are young men who have little or no experience with guns or policing crime.
Mary is a horror-movie junkie whose obsession is out of control, leading her over-protective father to ban her from seeing scary flicks. But when she and her friends sneak out to see a film called The Wisher, its creepy antagonist seems to escape into her life and make her darkest desires come true.
A serial murderer of teenage girls is loose, and working the case are a possibly corrupt detective Lou Miles a probably corrupt chief inspector Brodsky and his "favorite snitch." Dark personal histories and current politics mix to get the ambitious DA and her investigator involved.
Based on the short story by Nikolai Gogol written in 1842. A lowly office worker's new overcoat transforms his bleak and invisible existence. Unfortunately, this new lease of life is short-lived.