The plot centers around the Johnson family (consisting of Chris (Rob Hartz) and Ellen (Kathleen Cameron) Johnson, and their son Casey (Hy Rillero)) of Los Angeles, California, one of a small number of families to survive a global pandemic that, according to the opening of the film, occurs "sometime in the future..." The disease began as a particularly virulent flu strain in Southeast Asia. Efforts made to contain the virus in that portion of the world are ineffective as global transportation networks carry infected individuals all around the world. Hospitals become overloaded, and the public works infrastructure begins to shut down. Eventually, the main characters leave L.A., encountering many hardships along the way. They make it to a friendly small town, where life begins again.

A teenage girl is abducted and held in a forest in an underground bunker by a sexual predator.

May 1977. 22-year-old Colleen Stan is hitching from Oregon to California to visit friends. With a little over 40 miles of her journey left, she accepts a lift from a young couple, Cameron and Janice Hooker. It's a fateful decision. Kidnapped at knifepoint, Colleen spends the next seven years imprisoned for up to 23 hours a day in a coffin-sized box hidden beneath her captors' bed. When not incarcerated, she is employed as the Hooker's slave and child-minder, and is gradually drawn into a bizarre and complex world of extreme obsession and fantasy... Based on a true story, GIRL IN THE BOX is a dark psychological drama told through the eyes of one of the crime's perpetrators, Janice Hooker.