Gemma and Will are shattered when their son dies in an accident. Gemma blames herself and starts to have panic attacks that affect her eyesight - and the audience's point of view. Will, tormented, believes he is hearing his son's voice calling out to him. To escape their grief, Gemma suggests they take up Paul's offer to stay at his Lake District country getaway. Gemma's, helped by ex-pharmacist Paul, tries to stop her panic attacks with medication. Will, unable to hear to his son in his bedroom back home, antagonizes Paul and suddenly goes home. Gemma is now reliant on Paul who appears to be developing genuine feelings for her welfare. Love, grief, and the frailty of the human condition are all brought to the fore as Gemma Will and Paul are caught up in a descent into violence, both psychological and ultimately physical.

When a crime-ridden city's mayor and his re-election opponent are both assassinated in quick succession...  »

Angela maintains a coastal lighthouse in Italy, where she awaits the return of her brothers from the war. She learns they are casualties and takes solace in the arms of an American sailor washed ashore. However, the sailor turns out to be a German spy, and she is torn between her love for him and her realization that he is part of the enemy force that has destroyed her family.

Guy Maddin reluctantly returns to his childhood home, an abandoned Canadian island, where his parents ran an orphanage. As Guy fulfills his dying mother's request to paint the lighthouse which served as the orphanage, memories of strange events there overpower him. An undercover investigation by child author/detective Wendy & a revolt by the repressed children, blew open a cover-up by Guy's parents. Wendy disguised herself as her brother Chance and discovered that Maddin's inventor father performed outré scientific experiments on the orphans.

A lowly BBC employee pulls a prank at the studio and finds himself transferred to an isolated island where he is to set up a weather station at a lighthouse. As if in a fantasy, a ship carrying a bevy of beautiful models is shipwrecked off the coast and the models wind up on the island. However, when the models begin disappearing, the "back-room boy" investigates and finds a sinister scheme involving spies and Nazi battleships.

In New England in the early 20th century, Pete is a nine-year-old orphan escaping from his brutal adoptive parents, the Gogans, with his only friend, a cartoon dragon named Elliott. Pete and Elliott successfully escape to Passamaquoddy, Maine, and live with Nora, a lighthouse keeper, and her father, Lampie. Elliott is sought for medicinal purposes by the corrupt Doctor Terminus.