Circles and Realms

A crop circle is discovered in the corn field on the farm of Jerry and Helen Allison outside the small Illinois of Lakeville. Helen sees this as a disruption of a planned family reunion, but Jerry sees this as possible help to explain the new circle as Helen's brothers know more about such phenomenon. Helen's holder brother, Cale, is a college professor, and her younger brother, Paul, is an astute businessman. Also coming to the reunion are her younger sister Wendy with her husband, their father who owns the small non-operational movie theatre in town, and their mother who has been remarried and is bringing her husband.

Paul discovers that the theatre is being used to channel illegal immigrants. Behind this scheme are prominent figures such as the county sheriff and Elliot Weiss, high school friend of Cale's. Elliot's wife, Virginia, also a former friend of Cale's, discovers what is going on and finally reports this to Cale at his sister's farm. Paul is the first to learn that Elliot, who owns a local electronics store, has also been shooting nude films on video.

We also meet the sheriff's step-daughter and daughter, Melanie and Jane, former employees at the theatre, along with Butch. Paul starts investigating in earnest when he finds a DVD in the manager's office. This DVD causes problems for Butch as he is later beat-up on a country road because of this and because he has been dating Jane. He ends up in the local hospital.

The town is soon subject to unusual occurrences, such as shadowy figures who turn out to be aliens as they are only seen in this dimension, and duplicates of deceased or absent loved ones. Paul returns to tell his knowledge of the future, and this includes the death of their mother. This information is obviously kept from their mother.

Since a high school play, Cale has seen a Latino-looking woman watching him. She later shows up as a beach girl in San Diego after Cale has been released from the Navy. She shows up two other times in his life until Cale has his own vision of the future after viewing an extraterrestrial-made film shown in the theatre and disappearing into the crop circle. He sees his life in Atlanta which he shares with a neighbor named Gaby, who resembles the strange woman he has seen before.
He also learns of the future death of their mother, along with the death of Helen's husband and son, and Elliot Weiss. He is badly injured after being blinded by a brilliant light. This light is later sorted out to be a vision of himself imprisoned inside of an immense globe in the vacuum of space, held aloft by a gigantic version of Gaby whom he later believes to be one of the Anunnaki gods (or aliens) from ancient Sumer.

Many town members also see the film at the theatre that catapulted him into an alien-generated version of his future. They are shown a series of images of different crop circles, but each person sees, instead of the crop circles, scenes from his/her own life at humiliating moments. This causes an uproar, particularly from Pamela Horne, wife of a local policeman and the sheriff's mistress. Each person does not realize that other people cannot see their own personal (somehow recorded) moments. Eventually, cell phones and computers cease to work, and this drives the local citizens ballistic. Some fell threatened and consider closing their businesses around the town square.

While investigating all of this, Cale reveals his resentment toward his parents since childhood and uneasiness at being in Lakeville because he fears that they might remember something that he did while in high school. Both Virginia, who is becoming closer to him, and Helen try to convince him to let go of the past. Also counseling him is Gaby who knows what will happen to him in his actual future