A middle-aged woman visits Frederik Ruysch's "cabinet of curiosities" in Amsterdam, where the host takes her on a tour of his grotesque displays of embryos, fetuses, and deformed body parts.

A male stripper lives with his unemployed sister and cousin and their kids and his aunt, who remains cheery and optimistic in the face of every ill fortune, in a dangerous neighborhood. Then, his aunt dies and briefly comes back from the dead as a rapidly disintegrating ghoul with magical powers who bosses them around, determined they work toward a better life. He starts to dream of a better future, all the while wondering why others have so much when they have so little.