A sci-fi-obsessed teen spots a UFO, reads about Martian cats invading Earth, and suits up to stop the carnage — but saving the town might be harder than escaping his own imagination.

Billy is a shy, effeminate teenager with a passion for vintage sci-fi thrillers and a vivid imagination. His only friend is Cameron, a nerdy film buff who does his best to keep Billy grounded and confident. But when Billy spots what he believes to be a UFO landing near town, his mind begins to spiral — convinced that an alien invasion is underway.

At first, no one believes him. Not Cameron. Not the townspeople. But soon, bodies begin turning up: the reclusive cat lady Percis is found mutilated, her body discovered by Lester, a devout churchgoer and the emotionally distant husband of Percis’s caretaker, Carolyn. The death toll rises — a jogger, a janitor at the Carbonics Warehouse — each victim more brutally attacked than the last.

As local reporters break the news and a small-town detective and his skeptical chief scramble to make sense of the chaos, Billy becomes obsessed with an old pulp novel about Martian cats wreaking havoc on Earth. Convinced that the killings are the work of extraterrestrial feline invaders, Billy takes matters into his own hands — fashioning himself into a retro-styled sci-fi hero on a mission to save the town.

As fantasy and reality blur, and the body count grows, the line between cosmic horror and campy delusion disappears — and the only thing scarier than alien cats… might be what’s already lurking in the shadows of suburbia.