Description
In 1961, in Paterson, New Jersey, divorced mother Catherine Spages visits Father Tom with her two daughters, nine-year-old Karen and twelve-year-old Alice, who both attend St. Michael's Parish Girls' School. Karen is preparing for her First Communion, and Father Tom gives her his mother's crucifix as a gift. A jealous Alice puts on a translucent mask, frightening Father Tom's housekeeper, Mrs. Tredoni. Later, Alice steals Karen's porcelain doll and lures her into an abandoned building. She scares Karen before locking her in a room, and threatens her if she tells anyone. On the day of her First Communion, Karen is strangled to death in the church transept by a person wearing a translucent mask and a yellow raincoat. Her body is stuffed into a bench compartment near the confessionals, which is set on fire with a candle, but not before her crucifix is ripped from her neck. Meanwhile, Alice enters the church, carrying Karen's veil; she kneels in place to receive communion. Simultaneously, a nun who has noticed smoke coming from the transept locates Karen's body. She screams in horror, disrupting the communion ceremony which descends into a frenzied panic.
After Karen's funeral, Catherine's ex-husband Dominick begins independently investigating her murder, while Detective Spina formally handles the case. Catherine's sister Annie moves in to help her through her grief, though Alice and Annie despise each other. Catherine sends Alice to deliver a rent check to their landlord, Mr. Alphonso, and he attempts to fondle and molest her. Shortly after, while descending the stairs to go shopping, Annie is attacked by a masked figure in a raincoat. At the hospital, Annie claims that Alice tried to kill her. Alice is sent to a psychiatric institution for evaluation.
Later, Dominick receives a hysterical phone call from someone claiming to be Annie's daughter Angela, saying that she has Karen's crucifix. Dominick agrees to meet her at an abandoned building. There, he spots the raincoated figure, and follows it into the building. On a staircase landing, the figure stabs him before beating him with a brick and binding him with rope. Dominick regains consciousness and sees that the killer is in fact Mrs. Tredoni, who chastises Dominick and Catherine as sinners over their premarital sex and eventual divorce. After Dominick bites Karen's crucifix off her neck, Mrs. Tredoni beats him with her shoe and pushes him out a window to his death. Catherine goes to visit Father Tom, thinking that Dom is there talking with him. He is not home, and neither is Dom, but Mrs. Tredoni invites Catherine in albeit begrudgingly. While preparing the night's dinner for Father Tom and the Monsignor, Mrs. Tredoni explains to Catherine that when her own daughter died on the day of her First Communion, she realized children are punished for the sins of their parents. In her grief and madness, she devotes herself to the church. Father Tom arrives during the conversation, and tells Catherine that Dom has died. She begins crying hysterically. During Dominick's autopsy, the pathologist finds Karen's crucifix in his mouth, and Alice is formally eliminated as a suspect. Father Tom and Catherine then go get Alice from the institution.
Later that day, Mrs. Tredoni sneaks into Catherine and Alice's apartment building, unaware they have left for church. Simultaneously, Mr. Alphonso wakes up screaming, as Alice had mischievously placed a jar of cockroaches on him while he slept. Mr. Alphonso encounters Mrs. Tredoni in the staircase and mistakes her for Alice. When he shoves her against a wall, she stabs him to death and flees. However, Detective Spina witnesses her running out of the back entrance without a mask on. Mrs. Tredoni rushes to the church, where the police are stationed outside. At the same time, Det. Spina runs in the apartment upon hearing Mr. Alphonso's screams, arriving too late to save him. At the mass, Father Tom denies Mrs. Tredoni communion. She points at Catherine, screams that he gave communion to a whore, and stabs the priest in the throat as the police rush in. While Father Tom bleeds to death in Mrs. Tredoni's arms, Alice walks out of the church with Mrs. Tredoni's shopping bag, and places the bloodstained butcher knife into it.
