Driven to rage over the tawdry excesses of reality television, a self-appointed cultural crusader kidnaps several very famous nobodies to make his point- but his crimes only generate more tabloid frenzy.

Berkeley record store clerk Nick Brady (Jonathan Scarfe) begins to experience strange visions from an entity he calls VALIS that cause him to uproot his family and move to Los Angeles where he becomes a successful music company executive. With the help of best friend, science-fiction writer Philip K. Dick himself (Shea Whigam) and a mysterious woman named Silvia (Alanis Morissette), Nick finds himself drawn into a dangerous political-mystical conspiracy of cosmic proportions. The story is set in an alternate reality America circa 1985 under the authoritarian control of President Fremont, a Nixon-like clone (Scott Wilson).

For the past 33 years Jeremiah Hill has lived alone, with no contact with the outside world, and he intends to keep it that way. Jeremiah's mother had always warned him not to associate with the outside world, and her brutal rape and killing right before his eyes taught him a lesson he intends never to forget; and those who enter his world will pay a deadly price. As Lehman and his five friends from L.A. start their weekend camping trip they run into Tyler Trout and Floyd Fryed who represent the gateway into this distorted world that they are about to enter. These things just don't happen in sheriff Talmidge and deputy Kevin Gordon's small mountain town, and by stumbling upon this lonely cabin in the woods, they have shattered 33 years of solitude in Jeremiah's world... And unbeknownst to Lehman and his friends, soon their weekend trip of hiking and camping will become a nightmare of survival.