Three friends, 12-year-old boys Dug, Mel, and Fatt, go camping in the desert with Dug's older brother Wyatt and his girlfriend Mary. When the group stops at a gas station, the owner Duana tells them about The Night Child, a creature she claims lives in the desert and took her younger brother twenty-five years ago. They quickly dismiss the story as an old urban legend, but once they arrive in the desert and set up camp, things get weird.