The people of New York have been burying their unknown dead on Hart Island since 1869. Now real estate tycoon Rupert King wants to build what he calls "Hope City", supposedly to help the poor and homeless of the city "get a leg up", on this same island, with no thought of the current million or so "residents". Accompanied by a New York cop looking for a missing girl's body and some reluctant employees of the Department of Corrections, King makes his way to the island for the ground-breaking ceremony. But when his personal assistant goes missing, and night falls on the island, dark secrets are revealed, not only about the island itself, but King's "noble" plans for it as well. And the island's residents, with their souls in the form of countless and lethal flies, have no intention of being ignored.