Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: Initiation

Kim Levitt is an aspiring journalist working for the Los Angeles Eye newspaper as a classified ads editor. Her boss, Eli, seems to give all of the men in her office the breaks, including her boyfriend Hank. When a woman is discovered dead on the sidewalk, half-burned into ashes in an apparent case of the spontaneous human combustion, Kim decides to pursue the story on her own without Eli's approval. While investigating, she crosses paths with Fima, a used bookstore proprietor whose shop is in the building the woman jumped from. As a gift, Fima offers Kim a book on feminism and the occult. Kim has dinner with Hank at his family's house, where Hank's father makes snide remarks about Kim being Jewish. Later at her apartment, Kim begins reading the book Fima gave to her, and finds a chapter on "The Fire of Lilith" depicting a woman engulfed in flames. The next day, Kim arrives at a picnic Fima invited her to, where she meets Katherine Harrison, a self-described old crone, and the young Jane Yanana. They tell her about Lilith, Adam's first wife and the "spirit of all that crawls." At the office, Eli, instead of being angry about Kim missing work, lets her officially have the spontaneous combustion story. That afternoon, Kim decides to visit Fima's apartment to ask her more questions. Fima serves her a cup of tea, which makes Kim nauseated. Fima tells Kim of her daughter Lilith. Fima offers her a date and demands that Kim eat it. She does, even though it looks like a roach in her hand. Soon after, Kim loses consciousness. She wakes up surrounded by Jane, Fima, Katherine, and Li. They perform a ritual on Kim: Ricky and Fima slice open a live rat over her, and insert a giant larva into Kim's vagina. It emerges from her mouth as a full-grown, giant, multi-segmented roach; she vomits the creature out. Ricky slices the creature in half and drips its innards onto Kim's face. Kim wakes up later fully dressed, still in Fima's apartment. She rushes home, terrified, and finds Hank, who is able to calm her. Ricky then enters the apartment and stabs Hank to death. Kim manages to answer her ringing phone during the fight and screams for her co-worker Janice to help her. Ricky captures Kim and binds her. Janice arrives, but doesn't help Kim. Instead, she admonishes Ricky for the mess and tells him to take Kim straight to Fima. Ricky locks Kim in the meat locker at a meat shop next-door to Fima's bookstore where she loses consciousness again. When she awakens, she is surrounded by the entire cult. Ricky, wearing a phallic mask, rapes Kim. She reawakens alone in the meat locker; her fingers bind themselves together in a knot. She then experiences incredible pain as her legs bind together into an insect-like tail before losing consciousness. She awakens in the meat locker as Jo opens the door. He frees her legs from a brittle cocoon-like substance and covers her as best as he can. Jo tells her that she has been initiated and that she should leave. Kim brings a policeman, Detective Burt, to her apartment. There, everything is spotless and there is no trace of Hank's body, leading Kim to question her sanity. At the newspaper's Christmas party, Kim confronts Eli about Hank's whereabouts, and he claims that Hank is away on an assignment. Janice is there, and welcomes her "to the family." Furious and confused, Kim storms out of the office. On the sidewalk, she notices Ricky following her and ducks into a motel room. Her feet begin to get painfully hot. She jumps into the shower, but they still burst into tiny flames. Ricky enters the room and, in pain, Kim agrees to kidnap Hank's teenaged brother Lonnie to complete the initiation. On Christmas Eve, Kim lures Lonnie out of his house, and Ricky murders Hank's parents by strangling them with Christmas lights, then setting the house on fire. On the building roof, Kim is asked to stab Lonnie; instead, she stabs Fima. In anger, Fima pulls the knife from her stomach and stabs Ricky who tried to block her from stabbing Kim. A giant larva feeds on Ricky, as Kim's legs begin to get hot. Kim's hands knot themselves together once again, then they start to burst into flame. Kim then stabs her fused hands into Fima's wound. This transfers the curse of Lilith to Fima, and Fima dives off the roof just as her daughter had.