

Lee Geum-hwa and her twin sister are born in 1999. Geum-hwa's sister fed on her leg in utero and Geum-hwa is born with a deformed leg. The sister, who is severely deformed and referred to as "the thing", was not expected to survive, and her birth is not registered. Their mother dies shortly after and their father commits suicide soon after that. In the present day, Geum-hwa now lives in a remote village with her grandparents, who had recently moved there and raise dogs for a living. The sister, who has survived, is kept hidden from the public eye, locked up in a shed in the backyard. Some of the locals with the help of a mudang investigate the farm because the local livestock had been acting up. When they investigate the shed at night, snakes crawl out of it and bite them.