Cassie, a 13 year old Gothic girl, is trying to fit in at her new school. To entertain herself, she plays a series of pranks on the popular kids and her younger brother, Max. When she goes to a Halloween store looking for new tricks, she finds a little book called “The Evil Thing”

A Los Angeles District Attorney (Gene Hackman) is attempting to take an unwilling murder witness (Anne Archer) back to the United States from Canada to testify against a top-level mob boss. Frantically attempting to escape two deadly hit men sent to silence her, they board a Vancouver-bound train only to find the killers are on board with them. For the next 20 hours, as the train hurls through the beautiful but isolated Canadian wilderness, a deadly game of cat and mouse ensues in which their ability to tell friend from foe is a matter of life and death.