身为新闻记者的萨宾娜(朱莉娅·罗伯茨 Julia Roberts 饰)和皮特(尼克·诺特 Nick Nolte 饰)是同行,两人分别效力与互为竞争对手的报社。萨宾娜初出茅庐,心中怀有着对于自己职业的自豪和梦想,而皮特尽管经验十足,但常年目睹行业内的尔虞我诈,难免心生疲倦。 一场重大的火车事故让萨宾娜和皮特站到了对立的立场之上,为了抢到一手的新闻,两人可谓是各展奇招。然而,随着调查的深入,萨宾娜和皮特发现,这场事故并没有表面上看起来的那样单纯,其背后的黑幕和猫腻深藏不露。一边是前途一边是真相,萨宾娜和皮特都毫不犹豫的选择了后者,在探寻真相的过程中少不了重重的困难和危险,在此过程中,两名记者之间亦擦出了爱情的火花。
American psychologist John Holden arrives in London to participate in a symposium aiming to expose witchcraft and devil-worship as a fraud, with attention centered on a cult run by a Julian Karswell. Debarking his plane, Holden learns that the symposium leader, Henry Harrington, has suddenly died and he is now in charge. What only the audience knows is that Harrington was clearly killed by a demon, apparently summoned by Karswell to avenge his persecution. Despite both threatening and cajoling behavior by Karswell, Holden determines to proceed, though the only cult member willing to talk about his experiences is in a prison psychiatric ward, catatonic after allegedly killing yet another cult member. However, Harrington's niece, Joanna, believes, based on her uncle's notes, that Karswell may indeed have some satanic powers derived from an ancient tome in an obscure language which he has been able to translate, and attempts to warn the skeptic Holden. Karswell's mother also attempts to warn Holden off. However, the thing which begins to most get to Holden are the occasional, but mounting, sensory and mental disturbances he begins experiencing after an encounter with Karswell, and the discovery that, during this encounter, Karswell secretly slipped a slip of parchment with a curse in runic symbols on it into Holden's belongings, a parchment identical to one Harrington recorded having had passed to him in a similar manner shortly before his death... [N.B. Holden at no point stays at the Karswell estate].