Penthouse North 2013

Sara Frost is a photojournalist stationed in Afghanistan who walks into a building and quickly discovers a woman crying out for help. As she raises her camera to capture a life‑capturing moment, she realizes the baby the woman is carrying is actually a hidden explosive. The blast rips through the scene, leaving Sara permanently blind but alive, and setting a dangerous chain of consequences in motion.

Back in the United States, Sara’s live‑in partner, Ryan, longs to seal their bond with marriage. She plans a house party to celebrate life after darkness, and she heads out to pick up supplies, only to be knocked down by a cyclist on the sidewalk. When she returns to the apartment, Ryan appears to have stepped out, and Sara is unable to see his murdered body lying nearby. The fear and confusion deepen as she moves through her home and encounters the killer yet again, who uses a blade to push a towel toward her in the absence of her sight.

The grisly discovery of Ryan’s body is made when Sara slips through his blood, and the intruder reveals himself as a brutal killer who ties her to the bed and demands the diamond that Ryan had supposedly stolen. The moment of truth lands hard on Sara: Ryan wasn’t the man she believed him to be, and the killer—now known as Chad—forces her to comply with his demands. In a tense exchange, she offers him the diamond, but she seizes the opportunity to knock him unconscious and escape the apartment.

Her escape leads her to the basement, where she calls out for help and is heard by her friend Antonio. Antonio moves to intervene, but Chad’s ruthless action ends his life, leaving Sara to press on alone. On the street, she is briefly found and then drawn back into danger as she collapses into the arms of Hollander, a man who offers protection and a plan to keep her safe.

The alliance between Chad and Hollander immediately becomes clear as they reunite within Sara’s building to pursue the diamonds. They discover a canvassed photo that hides a stash of cash, a sign that Ryan had connections to the violent underworld. With Ryan exposed as a crook, Hollander and Chad intensify their search for the diamonds, convinced they are hidden somewhere in Sara’s penthouse. In a cruel moment, Hollander storms out of the room, tossing Sara’s cat aside in a display of spite, and then locks Sara away again to maintain control of the situation.

Sara refuses to be broken and latches onto any chance to outsmart her captors. She tries to reason with Chad, but her focus soon shifts to Hollander as the person who must be stopped to end the torment. The tension grows when Sara’s sister Blake arrives with her husband Danny for the long‑planned party, despite Blake’s pregnancy and the contractions she starts feeling at that moment. To keep the ruse alive, Sara urges Blake and Danny to leave, buying herself time as the danger escalates.

Hollander dispatches Chad to fix a drink while he takes Sara out to the balcony, hoping to extract the diamonds that Chad had hidden in ice cubes. The moment Chad discovers the stash proves pivotal, and he hides the diamonds away again just before a fatal confrontation unfolds. A struggle ensues, and Chad is shot by Hollander, forcing Sara to pivot her plan to put an end to Hollander’s control.

With Chad defeated, Sara uses the moment to strike—she stabs Hollander in the back with a garden tool, a desperate bid to turn the tables. The struggle continues as Chad briefly revives to attack Hollander, who grabs Chad’s blade and fatally stabs him. Hollander then hunts for Sara, who has found his gun. Her senses, sharpened by years of surviving in the field, push her to rely on her hearing to aim and fire. Yet a flurry of New Year’s Eve fireworks overwhelm her, triggering a haunting flashback to Afghanistan that momentarily hinders her.

Sara regains her focus and manages a shot, hitting Hollander in the arm. With the gun now pointed directly at him, she begins to throw the diamonds from the balcony, threatening to discard them all. Hollander’s reaction gives her the opening she needs, and she shoots him in the chest before pushing him over the balcony to his death.

In the end, the truth comes into view: Sara had kept the diamonds in her hand all along, and she re‑freezes them in the ice tray. The final image lingers on her cat calmly walking across Hollander’s corpse on the ground below, a quiet reminder of resilience and survival after a night of peril.