Plot
Kalan Varkey is a butcher in a small, rural village in Kerala, who meets with his assistant Antony before dawn each day to slaughter a buffalo and prepare its meat for sale in the market. One morning a buffalo slips its bindings before Varkey can kill it, escaping into the hilly forest. Soon after, a large haystack is set ablaze, and the entire village wakes up to put out the fire. The men of the village, hearing of the buffalo's escape and believing that it was responsible, begin an urgent hunt for the animal.
As the day progresses, the villagers repeatedly try but fail to corner the buffalo and kill it. Crops at the rubber plantation are trampled, a drinks vendor's cart is smashed, and the village's bank and convenience store are both destroyed. The villagers begin to turn on Varkey, blaming him for the destruction. Meanwhile, the police refuse to help, as killing cattle is illegal - instead, they focus on merely warning people to stay inside until the buffalo is caught.
The frustrated villagers call on Kuttachan, a renowned local poacher with his own hunting rifle, for help. Antony is unhappy to see Kuttachan back in the village; in a flashback it is revealed that, before Antony married his wife Sophie, the two men had been rivals over her. Antony had won by informing the police that Kuttachan was stealing sandalwood from the local church, leading to his arrest. As Kuttachan prepares for the hunt by chopping up a metal bucket handle into pieces of buckshot, they start a mass argument among the villagers over which man deserves to land the killing blow on the buffalo.
Elsewhere in the village, the disruption - both from the buffalo's rampage and the hunt - spreads further, causing other personal and social issues to come to the surface. Law and order begins to break down, with some of the men setting off fireworks and committing random acts of vandalism. Kuriachan, a wealthy man who had been planning an elaborate feast of buffalo dishes for his daughter's wedding party, ventures out to try and find some chicken instead, but is seized by a group of workers who strip him naked and bring him to the hunt as a trophy. Meanwhile, Kuriachan's daughter tries to avoid the arranged marriage by running away, but a neighbour catches and punishes her. Several of the men, enraged and frustrated, beat their wives or drink heavily, while other women find men openly leering at them through windows as they sleep.
After night falls, the buffalo is found lying at the bottom of a well. Antony immediately takes credit, insisting that chasing the buffalo down into the well had been his plan all along. Kuttachan wants to shoot the buffalo there and then, but Antony demands that they bring it back to the surface first so he and Varkey can still butcher it properly and sell the meat. By contrast, Varkey is indifferent, and he takes a nap under a nearby tree as the other men argue and plan. The men construct a scaffold and lower Antony down so he can attach ropes around the buffalo's legs and neck. However, it begins raining heavily. The ropes slip off as soon as the buffalo reaches the top, and as it thrashes around one of the villagers is thrown down the well and killed. The buffalo escapes again into the forest. Kuttachan and the other villagers blame Antony for the man's death. Meanwhile, another group of men, furious that a cop is still refusing to help, set his patrol car on fire.
By this point the villagers are desperate and frantic. In-fighting leads to them splintering into smaller groups, each with its own plan - and with each man desperate to be the one to finally claim the kill. As the men string up ropes, chains, and nets around the perimeter of the village, forcing the buffalo into a smaller and smaller area, night falls and the situation becomes increasingly chaotic and confused. Antony and Kuttachan stumble across each other in a clearing in the dark forest, and begin fighting. Kuttachan is about to kill Antony, but the buffalo suddenly emerges from the undergrowth and disrupts the fight. Kuttachan catches the buffalo by its horns and asks Antony to hold its legs, but Antony uses this opportunity to stab Kuttachan multiple times, fatally wounding him. This allows the buffalo to escape. Antony and the villagers chase it towards the river and across a bridge, where the animal becomes stuck in deep mud.
Antony stabs the buffalo, and screams to the crowd of hunters that he deserves the credit for killing it. This kicks off a desperate pile-on, as dozens of men, holding lit torches and bearing crude weapons, jump on top of each other, stabbing both the animal and each other as they form a huge, writhing mass of human bodies. The screen fades to black, then fades back in to a final shot of a group of prehistoric men, wearing loincloths and carrying spears, racing each other through the dark in pursuit of a buffalo.
