The story is of Carol White (Julianne Moore) and her husband Greg (Xander Berkeley) living with their son in the San Fernando Valley. She is seemingly perfect, but she begins to get strangely sick, reacting to various things in her surroundings and attempts changing her diet and habits. Her doctor can't find anything medically amiss and she consults with a psychiatric physician. She collapses while she is driving her car back home one day and she and a doctor figure out she has a mild allergy. She begins to seek answers to her growing illness, but no doctor or psychologist can find the source of her ailing: it may be on her mind, because further tests show that she is not allergic to anything. She does a strong diet, advised by her friend Nell (Mary Carver). However, she starts blaming chemical products in food, cleaning products, clothes, pollutants ... She freaks out during a party in honour of another female friend, heavily pregnant.Investigating further, she finds a retreat called Wrenwood, eventually relocating there, where the other members are treated by a smooth-talking doctor who entreats them to look inside themselves for the cure to their varying illnesses. Meanwhile, all the inmates' clothes are made of cotton, all food and drink is organic and cars are forbidden, which she is shouted at the first time she arrives to the place. A married couple who have relocated there, because of his health, have built themselves a kind of bunker/igloo with controlled air and water, however, he will die anyway.Carol discovers that there is a highway nearby the compound, so she asks to be relocated within Wrenwood. Once, when Greg and their child visit her, they have very cold conversations, without any physical contact. It looks like Carol's illness is a great inconvenience to her family, and no close friends visit her ever.Carol leaves her family and takes up residence in the isolated igloo, where she can confront herself and her inner feelings. The film ends with Carol looking at herself in a mirror, saying: "I love you", with a sad barren face.