Having just relocated to a comfortable new home in suburbia, the Kobayashi family -- Katsuhiko (Katsuya Kobayashi) ; his wife, Saeko (Mitsuko Baishô) ; and their two children, Masaki (Yoshiki Arizono) and Erika (Yûki Kudô) -- appear to be the picture of middle-class success. But the family's comfortable bourgeois veneer begins disintegrating when white ants infest their home, eating away at the woodwork. As the Kobayashis' house begins to crumble, so does the sanity of its inhabitants.