In a Connecticut town on the Long Island Sound, the summer is underway and the wealthy locals are summoning up their annual resentments against the day-trippers who descend on their beaches and fishing spots. Cheryl, an ageing former trophy wife, and her stepson Teddy, home in disgrace after expulsion from college, are both facing grim futures from within their ostensibly privileged positions. When a series of disasters both natural and man-made occur, resentment flares into overt hostility, and the town begins to come apart at the seams.