Jack is straight off the plane. He has few friends and no money. In desperation, he accepts an apartment formerly housed by the main suspect in a serial murder case - John Ellroy. Plagued by insomnia, Jack broods in the apartment and wanders the inner-city streets of Melbourne. His loneliness leads him into a friendship with a teenage addict Janie, and into a bizarre obsession with Ellroy. Jack struggles to retain his sanity as his world spirals into madness and violence.

In a bid to extend his adolescence, Gordon convinces his reluctant fiancée to allow his best-friend Jez and himself to live in the house they have just bought in a bachelor pad situation for the year before they get married.