The film is set against the landscape of two potentially related murders: that of an engaged woman in the inner-western Melbourne suburb of Sunshine, and that of seven passengers on a Melbourne train. From there, the film deals primarily with the experiences of Lavinia Smart, a young woman who boarded the train shortly after the murders, and police Constable Graham McGahan, who is afflicted with increasingly severe tinnitus. When he requests light duty on account of his tinnitus, Constable McGahan is assigned the night shift of a police information van in Sunshine, where he encounters the traumatized members of the local community, including Lucky Phil, a mentally handicapped man, and Dean Stouritis, the dead woman's fiancé.