Synopsis

It’s the 1970s and we’re in an American village. A young boy witnesses the mayor having sex in the woods with a girl who has a learning disorder. The girl is the daughter of a single mother living in poverty. People in the village believe she was conceived by the Devil and this is why she is different. Many adults sexually abuse her, taking advantage of her uncontrolled impulses, until she gets pregnant by the mayor and her mother has her get an abortion. (Even if being adult the girl  prefer to stay surround by children) Though an adult, the girl follows and tries to be among the children, considering them closer to her. The boy returns injured from the woods, and doesn’t speak of what happened. A sanctimonious priest, who sees sin everywhere, is secretly attracted by the girl, considering her pure and ingenuous and believing her a gift from the Lord, not a punishment from the Devil. In this way he desires her without making advances and idealizes her. She is his obsession. On some rocks in the woods, people find strange drawings and messages referring to some of the village’s secrets. A farmer finds a goat with its throat cut and blames the “worshippers of evil”. The priest starts to accuse various people, one after the other, until he instigates mass unrest. He accuses the children of the African Americans who live in the village of having beaten the boy, prompting the citizens to burn one of their houses. Later the priest accuses the new arrivals who don’t integrate with the rest of the village because they are hippies accused of worshipping evil. The village doctor, who knows what really happened, openly attacks the mayor, accusing him of shameful acts for having taken advantage of the girl. The mayor is defiant, however, and defends himself saying that everyone in the village is a sinner. The girl tells her story and speaks of how her father abandoned her and her mother because she was different. When the boy tries to tell other children what he saw in the woods, he is beaten by the mayor’s son so that people won’t believe him. The girl’s mother accuses her of ruining her life; because of the girl her husband left her. She confesses to the priest, telling him the story and that she had the village doctor perform the abortion. When the priest discovers the truth about the girl he has idealized, infuriated, he convinces himself that she really is the Devil’s daughter and that it is the evil inside her that attracted and corrupted the others. He knows that many in the village are involved in this story and carries out a massacre during a village festival, poisoning the revellers with wine.

Only the girl survives because she doesn’t drink wine.