In an America wracked by crime and overcrowded prisons, the government has sanctioned an annual, 12-hour period in which any and all criminal activity-including murder-becomes legal. The police can't be called. Hospitals suspend help. It's one night when the citizenry regulates itself without thought of punishment. When an intruder breaks into James Sandin's gated community during the yearly lockdown, a sequence of events begins that threatens to tear a family apart. Now, it is up to James, his wife Mary, and their kids to make it through the night without turning into the monsters from whom they hide.