A wave of suicides is rolling through the small town of Salimov. The dead were young people working at the same plant. This was not the only thing that united them - they all drank heavily. Shortly before their death, those around them began to notice that the behavior of young drunkards was changing: they often fell silent mid-sentence, looking with horror somewhere behind the backs of their interlocutors, and sometimes, when left alone, they began to squabble with someone invisible... Ivan Shcheglov, chief power engineer of the plant , wants to figure out what's going on here. Finally, rumors reach him that all the suicides have recently watched some strange film...