Changes

The story begins off the Cape Ann Peninsula in 1893. A Coast Guard cutter finds John Boothe floating in the water. They pull him aboard and discover that he is still alive. In a moment of consciousness, he asks about his son, who they already found dead. They do not wish to tell him at the time. He falls unconscious again. We see him next after he has just buried his son, Samuel, in his back yard next to his wife, Lucy. We advance to December, 2004, in the fictional town of Grey Harbor, Massachusetts. Frank and Marie Sousa are running errands before the holidays. Frank is a boat mechanic, working out of the shop that his father, Ron, left he and his brother, Paul, a fisherman. Marie works for an insurance company.They pass an establishment that was once a bar when they were kids, now reopening under the name “Cambiamenti.” They decide to go there for New Year's Eve. Later, Frank sees that the place is open, so he goes in for a look. He talks with the owner, Tommy Caruso, who seems to imply that he knew Frank's father, but deflects when pressed further. On New Year's Eve, the Sousas go to Cambiamenti with their friends, Mark and Jenny Foster and Bill and Tina Martin. Many people from town are there, including an older fisherman named Steve Coker. Just before midnight, Tommy pours glasses of champagne from a strange, antique bottle with a medallion of Janus on it. He delivers a toast about change and the risks that it brings. People drink the champagne and the night ends. As Tommy closes up, we see pictures from his past, along with an old picture of a woman and a boy. He wishes Lucy and Sam a happy New Year and turns off the light. A few weeks later, Frank is at the Fosters' house watching a game with the guys. Mark is about to take his family skiing in Vermont. Bill complains of a nagging headache and is planning to see the doctor. The phone rings and Tina informs them that her friends won a lot of money at a casino. Later that week, a blizzard strikes, knocking out the power. Marie worries that the Fosters' pipes might freeze. Frank recruits James, a neighbor with a big truck, to take him over to the house to check on it. They discover that the house was full of carbon monoxide and that the Fosters were dead. Later that month, Marie gets a call in the office from a policyholder whose restaurant just burned down. That evening, Frank and Marie learn that Bill was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. Bill also tells them that his friend Larry Mazzio's lymphoma went into remission, and that Larry thought the New Year's toast had cured him. On a nice weekend in March, Frank, Paul, and Bill go out fishing. As they're unloading afterwards, Frank collapses from a massive heart attack. Frank learns that his heart will likely begin to fail in ten to fifteen years. He tells Paul about this as they sit in Frank's office. It's then that Frank notices something in a picture on his wall. It's their father at a bar on New Year's Eve in the early 1980s, but the man behind the bar looks a lot like Tommy, and in the background is the same strange bottle he saw just months ago. Frank asks Marie to look into the property records of Cambiamenti. Frank goes to Cambiamenti and questions Tommy, learning that he once owned bars in Los Angeles and Manhattan. Frank remarks about the spate of strange events and tells him that Larry Mazzio thought the toast had something to do with his cancer going into remission. Tommy puts it off as the power of suggestion. Later, Marie tells Frank that the bar was once called “Changes,” but had a different owner, and that “Cambiamenti” was just “Changes” in Italian. She also found out that both were owned by the same company—Janus Enterprises, Inc. Intrigued, Frank goes to the library to seek more information. He finds references to bars called “Changes” in L.A., Manhattan, and Gulfport, Mississippi. An old Gulfport newspaper article showed a picture of someone resembling Tommy. Frank asks Paul to take him to the corporate address of Janus. They find a dilapidated house that appears abandoned. They find the headstones of Lucinda and Samuel Boothe, both recently refurbished. Frank tries the door and it is unlocked. They go inside and find evidence of someone sleeping there. In the cellar, they find a large safe and some boxes of memorabilia. Frank finds an old newspaper article about Johnathan Boothe, a survivor of a shipwreck off the coast in 1893. The picture resembles Tommy. After leaving the house, they stop at a realty office and ask about the property, learning that Boothe inherited it from another man, and that it was later deeded to the Janus Corporation in 1893. They visit their mother Julia and tell her about their day. Julia insists that Tommy and the owner of Changes are the same person. When asked why she believes that, she tells them about the strange events of 1983, the year Ron lost a boat and a crew in a freak storm, and the year she lost a pregnancy. She tells them that their father felt cursed and believed that Tommy's toast had something to do with it. Marie goes to the doctor and gets an ultrasound of a healthy, fourteen-week pregnancy. It is farther than she's ever carried, so she shows Frank. He gets the idea to have Larry, Marie, and the Kozacs, who won the money at the casino, to help a reporter at the local paper create a feel-good story about Tommy's toast. His real motive is to see if people come forward with negative stories. Frank suspects that there is something unnatural about Tommy, and that he may be far older than he appears. Some kind of witchcraft might explain his long life and the odd events, so he asks a priest about witchcraft and is admonished about jumping to such conclusions given the tragic history of the area. Later that day, he discovers flyers on cars indicating that his planted story bore the expected fruit. The newspaper also received negative feedback, and they now had to decide how to address the situation. The reporters, Lisa and Carol, figure out that Frank was the likely instigator of the story, so they go to his workshop to question him. There they discover Frank's investigation of Tommy's past. Out at sea, Steve Coker and his son Will are having a terrible day fishing. Steve tells Will that he has to sell the boat to avoid going bankrupt and that he was recently diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Late that night as Tommy is leaving the bar, Steve shoots him point-blank in the chest, sets the fishing boat on fire, and disappears into the night in a small boat. In the morning, Tommy reports the incident, but appears unharmed. When Lisa tells Frank about it, he has a hard time believing Steve would miss a shot like that. When the ballistics report comes back, the policemen are puzzled by the presence of tissue and fiber. They question Tommy again. He is evasive, but gives them a DNA sample, confirming that it was his heart and bone tissue. Frank finds a note from Tommy at his shop indicating that Tommy wants to talk. Tommy tells Lisa he's going alone. At the Janus house, Frank confronts Tommy with his evidence and suspicions about his unnaturally long life. Tommy tells his life story and shows him the Elixir of Life as a storm descends. Frank gets a phone call from Lisa warning him about Steve just as he enters from the cellar stairs. He has come to finish the job. Steve congratulates Frank for his detective work. When asked why he seeks revenge, he reveals that his biological father went down with Frank's dad's boat. Tommy says he can make things right again. The cell phone is still connected, but beeps when the call drops, revealing to Steve that someone was listening. He marches them into the storm at gunpoint toward his boat. Lightning strikes nearby and Steve slips, accidentally shooting Frank in the leg. They reach the boat, but the storm and Frank's injury have complicated his plan. Tommy mixes up a vial of the Elixir of Life, telling Steve that it can cure his cancer. He doesn't believe it, so Tommy gives a dose to Frank, whose leg immediately begins to heal. Steve then takes a dose. Tommy mixes a third dose for Bill and tells Frank to give it to him later. That night at the Janus house, Tommy writes a will, smashes the vials, and takes the last dose for himself. He dies between his wife and son, turning to dust.