Middle-aged Ezra Cobb helps operate a farm in the rural Midwestern United States with his elderly mother, Amanda, a religious fanatic who has indoctrinated him since childhood to abhor women. Amanda dies following a protracted illness, and Ezra withdraws. Nearly a year after her death, he experiences auditory hallucinations that compel him to exhume his mother. He arrives at her grave one night and digs up her decomposed body, returning it to his home where he cobbles it together using discarded fish skin and wax.