Protests erupt when a halfway house for ex-cons opens in a middle-class neighborhood. As neighborhood protests intensify outside the house, the heat and tension escalate inside until they explode.

Although notorious New Orleans gangster J.D. Walker is shot and killed in the 1940s, his spirit remains restless for three decades, until a hypnotist's supernatural nightclub act allows him to take over the body of a mild-mannered law student and seek revenge on those who got him killed.