Eli (2019)

Eli (2019)

Full Plot Summary/Recap Of 'Eli (2019)'

It’s a lovely day outside, and eleven-year-old Eli decides to go out to play. However, he suddenly has to stop running when a coughing fit takes over his body. He falls to the floor as his skin begins getting red, painfully burning and making Eli scream for help, but nobody hears. At that moment, Eli wakes up, and it’s revealed he lives in a sterile bubble inside the house. He suffers from a rare autoimmune disease that manifested only a couple of years ago and makes him extremely vulnerable to the outside world, basically making him allergic to everything.

Eli is still incredibly loved by his mother, Rose, who always tries to share her affection through the plastic of the bubble so Eli won’t feel alone. Everything Eli uses every day must be sterilized first and put in a bag before washing; his clothes come in airtight bags, and he has to wash himself with wet wipes. If Eli needs to go outside, he wears a hazmat suit, sealing any crevices with tape. One day, Eli leaves home with Rose and his dad, Paul, because they’ve received news of a treatment that could help Eli. It’s quite a long ride though, so they stay a night at a motel.

The next morning, while the family leaves, a group of rednecks make fun of Eli for his hazmat suit and throw a firecracker at him, making him fall. Eli immediately panics and has trouble breathing, his skin quickly getting red because the suit has torn on the knee where he fell. Paul rushes to seal the hole with tape while Rose guides Eli through his breathing exercises until he calms down. Once the family is in the car, Paul makes sure to run over the rednecks’ tables and chairs for revenge. Hours later, the family makes it to their destination, and Eli notices a girl named Haley sitting nearby watching them.

The treatment center turns out to be an old mansion that has been converted into a sterile facility, and the front doors are made of steel. First, Eli must enter alone so he can go through decontamination, and once he’s safe, his parents go through the same process. Then, the family meets Doctor Horn, who has been using this new treatment for years now on various kids. Eli asks if she saved any of them, but Horn ignores the question and promises she’ll make him better. Horn tells Eli he can take the suit off inside because the house is sealed, but he still doesn’t feel safe yet.

Afterward, Horn shows them around, blaming the weird windy noises they hear on the old pipes. At the end of a corridor, there’s a transparent door, and Eli can see a girl behind it that quickly disappears, so he blames it on his imagination. Horn tells Eli he isn’t allowed to go in that area because it isn’t clean, but the seal will keep him safe. Next, they go to Eli’s new room. Horn shows them there’s a bathroom here with filtered water, and Eli gets so excited that he finally takes off his suit. Nothing bad happens, and now Eli can finally hug his parents after years of isolation.

Sometime later, Eli takes a shower, crying in happiness at the fact he can do so at all. Then he goes to bed, but he can’t fall asleep because of the weird noises that echo around the house. He gets up and moves to the window, where he notices a weird bug flying around and fog appearing on the glass as if someone was breathing on it. Suddenly, a handprint is marked on the fog, startling Eli to the point he runs to sleep with his parents. The next morning, Eli tells Horn what he saw, and the doctor explains nightmares are a side effect of his medicine. Afterward, Eli is taken to an operating room to start with phase one of the treatment.

They get his weight and a picture of his face, but when Eli wonders what that’s for, the nurse tells him not to ask questions. Then, Eli is tied to the table, and a special contraption is used to hold his head down, which makes him nervous. Horn explains what the science behind this medicine is like, making an incision and injecting him with strange substances, but Eli is too distracted by the creepy reflection he sees on the back of a chair showing something terrifying is in the room. A very scared Eli falls unconscious, and when he wakes later, he finds himself having an allergic reaction while tied to the table, his skin burning painfully while the nurses watch without doing anything.

Suddenly, Eli wakes up again and realizes it was a nightmare; he had been brought directly to his room after the procedure was over. At that moment, he hears another noise and discovers Haley is throwing stones at his window. Excited to make a friend his age, Eli rushes downstairs and looks for a tall glass window that he can use to talk to Haley directly. The two of them bond over their love for magic. Eli is kinda awkward with his card trick, but Haley impresses him by making a flame appear on her hand. Haley also reveals she knows Eli is sick and points out that none of the previous patients ever left the house.

Eli wants Haley to visit him inside, but Haley refuses, explaining she’s creeped out by both the house and Horn. After Haley leaves, Eli makes his way back, only to be shocked when he sees the mysterious girl inside an abandoned room. The power light goes out, and the girl suddenly appears at the end of the corridor, where she begins chasing Eli. A terrified Eli runs away, and when the light comes back on, he sees the ghost’s shadow and thinks he’s been cornered, but it’s just Paul, who scolds Eli for wandering alone. Eli mentions the girl, but Paul says there’s nobody else there.

During dinner, Eli tells his parents about the things he saw, but neither of them believes him. Later, while he’s in bed, Eli is reading a book about magic tricks to understand Haley’s fire trick when suddenly he hears the noises again. There’s a strange shape behind his curtains that doesn’t have feet, so Eli slowly and carefully comes closer to look behind them, only to find nothing. Next, he breathes on the glass to fog it up and writes his name with his finger, but a strange force erases the letter E and adds it at the end to form the word “lie.” Truly terrified now, Eli walks away and accidentally bumps into the mirror in his wardrobe, which allows him to see the ghost girl in the reflection.

The ghost little by little comes closer until she appears behind the mirror, and when Eli tries to escape, he falls, and a hand grabs him by his ankles. It turns out it’s his parents trying to calm him down, followed by Horn, who comes with a sedative to put Eli to sleep. Rose expresses her worries, but the doctor just tells her it’s more nightmares caused by the treatment and that it needs to get worse before it gets better. The next day, Eli is put through the second phase of the treatment. Once again, he’s tied down, and his head is held by even more gadgets now. 

Today’s injection makes his skin rash react quite badly, and while Eli wiggles in pain, they make a hole in his skull with a drill. At that moment, Eli passes out from the pain. Afterward, Horn tells the parents Eli is having a reaction to the treatment and that he may reject it, like it sometimes happens with transplants. Later over dinner, Eli tells his parents he feels the doctor is making him sicker and that he wants to leave the mansion. A furious Paul accepts but also points out Eli will stay sick forever and won’t have a real life, making Eli change his mind. In the evening, Eli hears noises in the bathroom.

He slowly approaches the tub and notices a shadow on the curtains, but when he pushes them aside, there’s nothing there. The door closes by itself, and the mirror gets foggy as Eli’s nose begins bleeding. Another ghost suddenly appears on the mirror and then on the tub, trying to catch Eli. The boy tries to run away, only to find the door locked, so instead, he hides inside the wardrobe. The ghost then breaks the mirror and begins shaking the wardrobe, but since Eli won’t come out, the ghost pushes the wardrobe to the floor before disappearing.

Eli comes out and discovers the ghost wrote a word all over the wood, forming the words “Eli” and “lie” at the same time. At that moment, his parents and the doctor arrive and think Eli destroyed the wardrobe. They sit him down to ask what’s wrong, but when Eli tries to explain, nobody believes him. In the evening, Eli meets with Haley again, and the girl shares the story of Perry, the previous patient before Eli. Perry had also thought the house was haunted, and she never saw him again after his treatment reached phase three. Haley wants Eli to escape before he reaches that stage too, but Eli refuses to leave without his parents and his suit.

Suddenly, the lights start flickering in the corridor, and Eli goes to investigate. As soon as he steps in, he’s pushed to the floor by a strange force. It’s the ghosts of the three previous patients, who begin dragging him away. As he screams, Eli can see the ghosts' reflections on nearby surfaces until the ghosts push him into the space between steel doors. The ghosts also open the main door, contaminating the entrance and causing Eli’s body to immediately have a bad reaction. Thankfully, his parents and Horn show up to rescue him, but Eli calls the doctor out for being evil and killing Perry with her treatment. 

Horn doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and as Eli tries to walk away from her, he accidentally hits the fire alarm box, wounding his hand and passing out at the sight of the blood. Later, Horn tells the parents that Eli isn’t responding to the treatment and there isn’t much else she can do. For now, he should keep taking his medicine, so Rose volunteers to do it. Then, she visits Eli to comfort him and give him hope before asking him to take the medicine. Eli does it, and Rose hugs him for it, so Eli uses this distraction to realize the carving on the wardrobe isn’t a word; it’s a number.

After Rose leaves, it’s revealed Eli hid the medicine, and he now spits it out. Meanwhile, Horn burns down Eli’s suit to prevent his escape. Later, Haley visits Eli again and hears about the ghosts. Eli also breathes on the glass and writes his name to show her it becomes the number 317, which the ghost must’ve left as a message. Haley believes it’s a code from a door and wonders if she’s a ghost too, but Eli says she isn’t. In the evening, Eli is awake thanks to having spit the pill and sneaks out of his room to use the code on the keypad that opens the door to the forbidden corridor.

After confirming Horn is sleeping in her room, Eli breaks into the lab and searches for the files of the previous patients. Meanwhile, Rose and Paul are having an argument on how to proceed, and Paul confesses Horn told him Eli will die soon. Rose refuses to lose her child and announces they’re leaving, but when she’s about to reach the car, Horn calms her down and convinces her to stay, explaining there’s still hope for a cure. Back to Eli, he checks all the files, including Perry’s, and discovers every patient went through the same pattern during the treatment: phase one was fine, phase two made them sicker, and phase three killed them in gruesome ways.

At that moment, a nurse catches Eli red-handed, so he quickly runs away and tries to find his parents. He only finds Paul, who patiently listens to Eli’s story and hugs him for comfort, but it turns out to be a trap to inject him with a sedative. The medicine doesn’t work, but the nurses drag a protesting Eli to the operating room anyway. On the way there, Eli sees through the window that Rose’s car is on fire. Realizing it’s all a trap, Eli bites a nurse and runs to the operating room to look for the files to prove his story, but the nurses already hid everything. Desperate, Eli grabs a scalpel and keeps everyone at bay before running to hide in Horn’s room, where he’s shocked to find an old photograph revealing that Horn and her nurses are all nuns.

He also sees the weird bug again, and he follows it to discover a fake wall in the room. When he pushes it, he finds a set of creepy stairs that take him to an underground cavern containing a small Christian shrine and a pit with a lid on it. Suddenly, the door closes behind him, and Eli discovers his parents and Horn have locked him up there. Absolutely terrified, Eli tries to cover his face with his shirt, but the illness is triggered anyway. He wiggles on the floor in pain as his skin becomes increasingly red. However, after taking a few deep breaths, he calms down, and his skin goes back to normal, meaning the illness has always been a lie.

Moments later, Horn is getting everything ready for phase three of the treatment, and Rose decides to give Eli a last visit, only to find him falling to the floor unconscious. A worried Rose rushes inside to check on her son, but it turns out Eli had only been faking. He hits Rose and runs away into the room with the big glass windows, which he tries to break with a fire extinguisher in order to reach Haley. Sadly, the glass is unbreakable, and Paul catches him with the help of the nurses, who take him back to the operating room. Meanwhile, Rose wakes up and finds a cross that has a dagger inside, so she takes it away with her.

Then, she checks inside the pit and is disturbed to find all the rotten bodies of the previous patients, proving Eli’s story right. Rose runs to the operating room and threatens Horn with the dagger to stop phase three from happening, but Paul calms her down and swears he’s going to help Eli. Paul takes the dagger and hands it to Horn, who weirdly says she can at least save Eli’s soul. Realizing Paul betrayed her, Rose freaks out, but Paul holds her down while the ritual begins. Horn puts on a Christian scarf and begins chanting words that sound like an exorcism together with the nurses.

She also splashes holy water on Eli’s body, which causes his skin to go red. When Horn is about to stab him with the holy dagger, Eli suddenly gets furious and triggers telepathic powers that turn the dagger around and kill Horn instead. Then, he lights the bindings on fire with just his mind and falls to the floor, showing that his skin turning red equals him going through a full demonic transformation. Hungry for revenge, Eli uses his powers to make the nurses float around him and suddenly lights them on fire too. Paul tries to surprise Eli from behind to kill him, but Eli senses him and makes his face explode.

Then, Eli demands answers, so Rose explains she couldn’t have children no matter how much she prayed to God. Desperate to be a mother, she turned to the Devil instead, who lied to her and told her the baby would be normal. The Devil is Eli’s real father, and Rose made up the illness to protect her son from a world that wouldn’t understand him. Horn’s treatment had been made of holy water injections that tried to make him normal again. Eli believes in his mother’s love for him and decides to let her live. After spreading the fire through the mansion with a mere touch of his feet, Eli goes outside, and the fresh air helps him put the transformation away.

He also finds Haley, who explains she and all the dead patients are children of the devil too; therefore, she’s Eli’s half-sister. They want to run away together, so they ask Rose to join them so she can drive for them. Not knowing what else to do, Rose gets in the car and drives the kids away.

Video Recap Of 'Eli (2019)'

CAST OF ELI (2019)

Charlie Shotwell as Eli

Kelly Reilly as Rose

Max Martini as Paul

Lili Taylor as Dr. Horn

Sadie Sink as Haley

Deneen Tyler as Nurse Barbara

Katia Gomez as Nurse Maricela

Austin Foxx as Perry

Kailia Posey as Agnes

Parker Lovein as Lucius

Lou Beatty Jr. as Motel Owner

Jared Bankens as Gang Leader

Nathaniel Woolsey as Punk

Mitchell de Rubira as Punk

Kaleb Naquin as Punk(uncredited)

Other Info

Director: Ciarán Foy

Writers: David Chirchirillo - Ian Goldberg - Richard Naing

Movie Genre: Drama - Horror - Mystery - Thriller

Release Date: 2019

Country of Origin: United States

Filming Locations: New Orleans, Louisiana, USA

Production Companies: Paramount Pictures - Paramount Players - MTV Films - Intrepid Pictures - Bellevue Productions - Cube Vision

Estimated Budget: $14,113,729

Runtime: 1 hour 38 minutes