Grace, having torn her gown to increase her mobility and armed herself, manages to escape the house after eluding the family's butler Stevens (by scalding him with boiling water). However, he is discovered by his family who capture and restrain him for his betrayal. Alex deactivates the estate's security cameras and unlocks the doors of the house. Grace pleads with him for help, but he laments that he has no options and only grants her a ten-second head start to run before alerting the others.
Daniel who, like Alex, hates the nature of his family, discovers her in the study. While looking for the exit, Grace encounters a second maid, who is inadvertently killed when Grace activates the mechanical dumbwaiter elevator system to silence her. Against his family's wishes, Alex promises to Grace that he will help her escape the estate and then heads to the house's security room after instructing her to go to the exit at the kitchen. Grace is overwhelmed and furious at Alex having not told her about the ritual for fear that she would leave him. The Le Domas family believes that if they fail to kill Grace before dawn, they will all die as agreed by Victor Le Domas and Mr Le Bail (whose name is an anagram of Belial, an alias for Satan), decades earlier. Alex explains that hide and seek is the only game from the box that would prompt the Le Domas family to try to kill Grace, and he didn't tell her believing the odds of were unlikely. Believing the game to be harmless, Grace leaves to hide in the estate while the Le Domas family, excluding Alex, arm themselves with antique weapons to hunt her down.Īlex manages to find Grace before his family, and the pair witness Emilie accidentally kill one of the estate's maids by shooting her in the head with a shotgun. Grace draws from the box a card that reads "hide and seek". Tony also recounts that his great-grandfather Victor Le Domas made a deal with a man named Mr Le Bail where Le Bail would help create the Le Domas fortune if the Le Domas family established the tradition. Tony explains that Grace must participate in a session where she is required to draw a card from a mysterious wooden box and play the game written on the card with the Le Domases to be a full-fledged member. Participating in the tradition with Grace are Alex, his alcoholic brother Daniel, their father Tony, their mother Becky, Daniel's snobbish wife Charity, Alex's drug-addicted sister Emilie, Emilie's whiny husband Fitch Bradley, and the somber Helene, who is Tony's older sister. After the ceremony, Grace is informed of the family initiation custom and meets with the rest of the in-laws. While he is hesitant to be back, Grace is reassuring and eager to become part of his family. Thirty years later, Alex - who has been estranged from his family for years - returns to the Le Domas estate to marry a young woman named Grace. In a flashback many years ago, young Alex Le Domas and his brother Daniel witness the killing of a man named Charles, who has just married their aunt Helene. The wealthy Le Domas family hosts a generations-long tradition of playing a game at midnight on the wedding night with each new addition to the family.