Lynn Holt (Kathleen Quinlan), Senior Partner of the Los Angeles law firm Holt and Associates, is suddenly called to a police station by an old family friend, Roy Hutchins (Ron Perlman).

 

Puzzled and not a little concerned, she finds Roy awaiting the release of his fifteen-year-old daughter Jenny from custody. Roy is no stranger to police stations, being an officer himself, and he has called in a favour from his sergeant and had Jenny released without charge.

It soon becomes patently clear that Jenny is a troubled youngster. Roy, still trying to deal with the death of his wife, is struggling to raise his daughter on his own - but Jenny is aggressive, angry and clearly disturbed. It transpires that her escapade - breaking windshields with her friends - is the latest in a long line of incidents, from 'bunking off' school to staying away from home for days on end.

After trying all avenues available to him, including therapy, a distressed Roy is clearly at the end of his tether, and shows Lynn Jenny's 'List' - containing the names of people she wants to see dead. Roy has decided to take a drastic step - he asks Lynn to help him have Jenny committed to a mental institution.

Despite misgivings as to the efficacy of such a move, Lynn agrees to help, and her viewpoint is changed when Jenny later confronts her in the car park, her aggressive behaviour frightening the normally self-controlled lawyer. Roy has Jenny committed to psychiatric care for seventy-two hours, convinced she is a danger not only to herself but others.

Lynn asks her associate Rex Weller (Christopher MacDonald) to look into a series of violent occurrences at Jenny's school, one of which was the shooting of a boy who was a good friend of Jenny's. After a series of twists and turns, it transpires that Jenny shot the boy by mistake, her intent being to shoot the girl with him - a girl on Jenny's 'List' for having stolen her boyfriend.

When Lynn confronts Roy with the information, he admits he knew about the shooting - and has disposed of the weapon. If Jenny was prosecuted for the shooting and convicted, she would be jailed, and then, Roy is convinced, Jenny would be lost to him.

Roy then shows Lynn Jenny's bedroom. The walls are covered with crude paintings of black, terrifying images, visions of a dark and damaged mind. But amidst all of this horror, Roy hangs on to the one vestige of his daughter's humanity and innocence - a pin-board full of pictures of Jenny and her parents. This is the Jenny he believes is still hidden deep within, the Jenny he once took fishing, the Jenny that won a prize for Math at school. His little girl. And so he refuses to testify against her, hoping that psychiatric evidence will be enough to get her the help she obviously needs.

In court, Roy stoically listens to his daughter accuse him of over-reaction, his eyes filling with tears as she insists he is a domineering martinet who has simply decided to keep a tight hold on a rebellious teenager. Lynn Holt attempts to illustrate Jenny's aggressive and uncontrolled behaviour by questioning her about the encounter in the car park. But without Roy's testimony as to Jenny's violent nature, her case is limited against the girl. The judge releases her into her father's custody on condition that they both attend therapy sessions, and Roy hopes against hope that things will improve.

That evening Lynn Holt receives a telephone call from the police, and she rushes to Roy's house - only to find a gravely wounded Roy being removed to hospital. He manages to tell her what happened - he awoke to find someone stabbing him, he says, he didn't know who it was.

"I didn't know it was her…" he says.

Lynn asks him where Jenny is.

Roy answers in a voice broken with pain and anguish.

"I shot her …"