In the middle of the city, Eleanor writes about how sad her life is on sheets of paper because she can't tell anyone about her secret: she is actually a 200-year-old vampire. After writing, she always throws the papers away, and one day one of these crumbled paper balls falls out of the window. An old man picks it up and reads it, learning of Eleanor’s real nature.
He isn’t scared though, instead he comes to her and asks for a favor. After bringing her to his home and showing her some old memories of his youth, the man tells Eleanor he’s tired of living and that he is ready. Eleanor proceeds to feed on him, killing him.
Meanwhile Eleanor's mother Clara, who is also a vampire, is working at a bar as a naughty dancer. The man she’s dancing for tries to get a bit handsy, so Clara hits him, earning her the fury of her boss. She refuses to leave without getting paid and tries to get money from the register, but at that moment, a man named Werner appears looking for her.
Clara recognizes him and gets afraid, so she breaks a bottle on his head and starts running away. Werner chases after her, so Clara enters a mall and throws some things to the floor as obstacles before escaping through the back door. After lots of running they make it to a roof and Clara finds herself cornered, so she jumps through the skylight and lands on a bouncy castle, scaring off all the children.
This allows Werner to finally catch up to her and start asking about Eleanor, so Clara takes him to her apartment. While Werner complains about Eleanor being an abomination, Clara pretends to clean his wound and uses the chance to use a garrote to kill him. When Eleanor arrives home, she freaks out when she sees the body and gets angry with her mother because they have to leave again.
Clara reminds her she’s doing this to keep Eleanor safe, so after washing and packing, Clara lights the apartment on fire and they leave. They stop by the road to hitchhike and after a truck picks them up, Clara comforts Eleanor with a song. The truck takes the women out of the city and leaves them in the middle of the countryside.
After lots of walking and nights sleeping on the grass, they finally make it to a new town by the coast, where Eleanor sees a bunch of girls walking by and thinks they’ve been here before. However Clara denies it and leaves Eleanor at the amusement park, telling her to have fun while she goes to make some money. Instead of staying in the park, Eleanor enters a restaurant with a piano and starts playing it with admirable skill.
The waiter Frank compliments her playing and tries to chat with her, but Eleanor barely says a word and leaves. Moments later when Frank’s shift is over, he finds Eleanor sitting nearby and tries to chat with her again. This time Eleanor does say a few words but turns down Frank’s number before leaving.
Meanwhile at the amusement park, Clara hides inside a game to change into more provocative clothes. When she goes out, she immediately gets the attention of Noel and brings him inside the game for some paid naughty time. However Noel suddenly has a breakdown and can’t perform, it turns out he recently lost his mother.
Clara offers him comfort in a friendly way and learns that Noel’s mother left behind a guesthouse, so she convinces him to take her there. On their way out, they come across Eleanor, and Clara tells her she’s finally found their knight in shining armor. Noel takes them to the abandoned hotel and allows them to live there for now, giving Eleanor her own room and showing sympathy for a woman that is doing what she can to survive and provide for her little sister, which is the cover story Clara gave him.
Eleanor falls asleep and dreams of the day Clara took her to a mysterious cave on an island. There, Eleanor found another version of herself that bit her, and that’s how she became a vampire. When Eleanor wakes up, she can hear Clara and Noel getting frisky in the next room.
Meanwhile two mysterious cops start investigating the burnt apartment and the body makes it to the news. Eleanor worries but Clara promises it’s fine and that they can stay here for a while. Later while watching the sea, Eleanor remembers a bad moment she went through before becoming a vampire.
Captain Ruthven, who was very sick, had taken Clara out of the orphanage and confessed that her mother wasn’t actually dead. Then Ruthven proceeded to take advantage of her. Back to the present, Noel comes to check on her and Eleanor tries to tell him the truth, but Clara quickly stops her and takes her away, reminding her that keeping up their cover story is important for their survival.
Sometime later, Eleanor hears Clara convince Noel they could make much more money using the rooms as a bawdy house instead of a guesthouse. Tired of this, Eleanor goes out for a walk and finds a young girl going on a high trip near the beach. Since the girl is dying, Eleanor takes the chance to share a story.
When Clara was a young girl, she met Captain Ruthven and Midshipman Darvell of the Royal Navi. Darvell tried to warn her about Ruthven, but she ignored him and left with the captain anyway. Unfortunately the warning had been right: Ruthven took Clara to a bawdy house and after taking advantage of her, left her there as a new worker.
Eventually Clara got pregnant and gave birth to Eleanor, but since children weren’t allowed in the bawdy house, Clara left her at a private orphanage. The next morning, Eleanor is writing down the story again and throws the papers into the sea. At that moment, she sees the same girls from the other day and starts following them, realizing they all came from the same orphanage as she did.
This coastal town is the same one her mother grew up in. Eleanor is so distracted that she accidentally bumps into Frank, who falls and hurts his hand. Feeling incredibly guilty, Eleanor gives Frank a handkerchief and helps him get home while watching the hand bleeding more than it should.
As soon as they see him, Frank’s parents go crazy and take him to the hospital in their car. However Eleanor is frozen at the door because Frank dropped the handkerchief, which is soaked in blood and Eleanor is allured by it. Once the family leaves, Eleanor picks up the handkerchief and drinks Frank’s blood.
Meanwhile the same two cops find the body of the dead old man. The next day, Clara sees the same girl Eleanor encountered crying because a man chose a different girl over her. Clara approaches the man and kisses him before taking him to the beach to get naughty with him, but while he’s distracted, Clara feeds on him and kills him.
Afterward, Clara goes back to the girl and offers her a deal. Meanwhile Eleanor goes to the hospital to visit Frank, who looks very weak. There’s a tube connected to his body pumping in blood and Eleanor is tempted by it, but luckily Frank’s mother arrives before things can escalate.
The mother explains that Frank has leukemia and takes anticoagulants, that’s why he bled so much. She thanks Eleanor for her help, but Eleanor asks her not to tell Frank she came and then she leaves. On her way out, she sees a woman in her hospital bed suffering through the last moments of her life.
When she sees Eleanor, she calls her an angel, and Eleanor feeds on her to release her from her pain. Later when Eleanor gets home, she discovers Clara has already brought two working girls and is making money with them. Eleanor complains about this but Clara reminds her someone must bring the money.
Sometime later, Eleanor decides to go to the same classes Frank attends. The teacher Kevin makes them do an exercise to get creativity out of their personal experiences. Eleanor thinks back to the night she was in the orphanage and Clara came back to take her away for good, so she describes the feelings of reuniting with a lost mother to the teacher.
Frank shares the story of an imaginary friend he had as a child, saying he believes it was a ghost. When the class is over, Kevin gives them an assignment: they must write an essay titled “I am” and everything on it must be true. After class, Eleanor and Frank hang out, and Frank confesses he knows Eleanor visited him at the hospital, saying that his mom thinks Eleanor is his girlfriend.
Frank asks Eleanor to date him for real and tries to kiss her, but Eleanor can’t live lying to him and runs away. Afterward, Eleanor sits by the beach to write the story again. By the time Eleanor was six, Clara was sick with tuberculosis, but she kept it hidden to keep working and send money to the orphanage.
One evening, Ruthven hired Eleanor to satisfy all his friends in the room. In the morning, Darvell came by saying he’d changed a lot, and Ruthven was shocked to see him alive. Darvell announced he had big news and that he’d bring them later at night.
After Darvell left, Ruthven took out his anger on Clara, abusing her as he always did when he was in town. Once Eleanor has finished writing the story, instead of throwing it away this time she takes it to Frank so he can finally know the truth about her. The flashback picks up right after Ruthven was done with Clara, and he told her how Darvell had been severely sick and became obsessed with searching for a solution at the library.
There he was suddenly approached by Savella and was given a little box with a map to an island containing a shrine with healing powers. Davell said it was his dying wish to go there, so Ruthven took him on his boat. The place was very creepy and there were rumors that it was haunted, but Davell entered the cave anyway.
Outside, Ruthvell suddenly saw a bunch of animals flying away and the water from the falls becoming red, so he checked inside the cave and found Davell dead. Terrified, Ruthvell ran away and took all of Davell’s property as his own. After finishing reading the story, Frank goes to the hotel to see Eleanor, but it’s Clara who opens the door and sends him away to protect her daughter.
Meanwhile Noel tells Eleanor that he’s not happy with Clara’s choice of business and Eleanor tries to tell him the truth again, but they’re interrupted by Clara, who informs them about Frank’s visit. Eleanor promises his mother that Frank is just a classmate working with her on an assignment then goes looking for him. Frank praises Eleanor’s writing but reminds her the assignment was about the truth, and when Eleanor says she wrote it for him to know her better, Frank assumes Eleanor is describing some trauma she went through by disguising it as a fictional story.
Hurt by his lack of belief, Eleanor leaves while Clara watches from the roof. Afterward, Eleanor goes to the restaurant and finds a blind woman playing the piano, so she helps her get home and feeds on her. The next morning, the body Clara left on the beach is found by the mysterious cops, who turn out to be Darvell and Savella, who are both vampires.
Eleanor goes to school and Frank avoids her, but he also decides to give Kevin her story. After reading it, Kevin takes it to counselor Morag, pointing out that the prose is beautiful but also that the way it's written may indicate that Eleanor is hiding some real trauma and crimes in the story. Morag is amazed by the fact the whole thing was written by hand and begins reading, revealing another flashback.
When Ruthven and Clara met Darvell again, Ruthven gave him back his keys, and Darvell shared his story. After entering the cave, he encountered another version of himself that killed him. Moments later when Darvell woke up, he was a vampire.
Then Savella, who turned out to be the leader of the Vampire Brotherhood, gave him a person to feed on. Now Darvell wanted to give the same gift to Ruthven and handed him the box with the map. Moments later, Kevin goes to the hotel looking for Eleanor’s guardian, only to find Noel in an undressed state and all the naughty workers running around, which makes him worry about Eleanor even more.
Kevin leaves a letter for Clara and says they must have a meeting soon or he’ll call social services and the police. Meanwhile Morag calls Eleanor to her office to discuss the story, which includes another flashback. When she had the chance, Clara shot Ruthven in the leg and stole the map before escaping on a horse.
That’s where the story ends because that’s all Clara ever told her. Morag starts questioning the story and wonders why Eleanor doesn’t kill her now. Eleanor explains she only kills people that are ready to die, which is usually the elderly.
Afterward, Eleanor goes to the school’s music room to play the piano and Frank finds her to ask her some questions about how vampirism works. Eleanor explains she only kills people that want it, and after Frank calls her pathetic, he invites her to his birthday party, which she accepts. Later in the afternoon, Eleanor grabs the box with the map and takes it with her to Frank’s house.
She’s the only guest, so Frank takes her to his room and offers his blood to her, but she can’t do that to him. Meanwhile Clara goes to see Kevin and as she checks Eleanor’s writing, she remembers the day she arrived at the island and became a vampire, excitedly enjoying the red water of the falls. Then she jumped into the sea and swam back to the beach, where she fed on the first man she saw.
At that moment, Darvel found her and took her to Savella and Werner, who was also a vampire from the Brotherhood. They weren’t happy about the situation because the Brotherhood only accepted men, and to make matters worse, Clara didn’t come from a good social position. After an argument, Savella allowed her to live, but she wouldn’t be part of their vampire club.
Darvell didn’t speak for her and Clara was banished, so she went looking for the only family she had: Eleanor. However when she looked through the window, she saw Ruthven taking Eleanor away to have revenge for the stolen map. By the time she found them, Ruthven had already abused her daughter, so Eleanor killed him for it.
Knowing that Ruthven probably passed his disease to Eleanor, Clara took her to the island so she would become a vampire too. In the present, Clara explains that making Eleanor a vampire was against the rules because a woman wasn’t allowed to create, that’s why the Brotherhood has been chasing them all these years. Then she proceeds to feed on Kevin and kill him.
Back to Eleanor, she and Frank are chatting on his bed and they finally kiss. The excitement causes Eleanor to accidentally hurt Frank, so she panics and runs away. Frank goes after her and explains he’ll die of leukemia anyway, so he wants to be a vampire.
Eleanor drinks a bit of blood from the wound and then tells him to wait for her. Meanwhile, Morag finds Kevin’s body at the school. Moments later, Eleanor goes to the hotel to pick up her things and finds Noel, who confesses Clara isn’t happy because he sent the workers home and he’s cleaning everything up.
Eleanor announces she’s leaving and suddenly Clara storms in, yelling at Eleanor for putting them in danger with her story. Eleanor says Clara didn’t protect her but isolated her, then she pushes her as she tells her that she hates her before running away. Clara runs after her and gets the elevator stuck with her daughter inside, and when Noel tries to stop her, he accidentally ends up falling through the shaft, instantly dying when his body hits the top of the elevator cabin.
Then Clara leaves to silence Frank. At the same time, Darvell and Savella are talking to Morag, who tells them about Kevin’s death and Eleanor’s story. At Frank’s house, he finds Clara waiting for him on the balcony and she quickly grabs him by the neck.
Meanwhile Eleanor hears Noel’s phone vibrating and she reaches into the body to grab it, then uses it to call Frank. Clara takes the phone from him and tells her it’s too late, but their argument is suddenly interrupted by the arrival of Savella, Darvell, and Morag. Savella grabs the phone and tells Clara they’re taking the girl while Darvell breaks open the elevator and drags Eleanor away, handcuffing her inside the car.
Desperate to save her daughter, Clara begins running until she finds the car and jumps on top of it, breaking the front window to warn Eleanor that they’ll kill her. Savella starts driving like crazy until Clara falls, then he moves the car back to run over her, but Clara quickly moves away. Morag is panicking at the whole deal, so Savella finally gets tired of her and kills her.
Afterward, Savella leaves the car and goes looking for Clara, who comes out of hiding and attacks him. At that moment Darvell shows up and grabs Clara to handcuff her before bringing over a blade for the execution. Clara begs Darvell for mercy, admitting she should’ve chosen him instead of Ruthven.
Savella grabs her head, but instead of killing Clara, Darvell decapitates Savella. After mother and daughter reunite, Darvell confesses he’s been following Clara for years precisely to protect her from the brotherhood. They burn Savella’s body and Clara has a talk with Eleanor, giving her some money and finally letting her go to have her own life.
Clara and Darvell leave together to start something of their own while Eleanor and Frank escape on a boat. Eventually they reach the island and Eleanor sends Frank into the cave so he can become a vampire too, dying all the waterfalls red.