The film recounts a long, hot summer as seen through the eyes and overactive imagination of nine-year-old Celia in mid-1950s Australia, where dread of communism is rife and the country's farmlands are overrun by a plague of rabbits. The loss of Celia's cherished grandmother leaves her adrift between the brutal games and rituals of childhood and the unfathomable world of adults. With terrifying creatures invading her dreams at night, her imagined terrors blend with the banal harshness of the adult world during the day, resulting in sad and surprising outcomes.