If you don't behave, Puckeen will come out of his box. Driving home late one evening, Etain Larkin finds a corpse on a country road and takes it to a remote farmhouse. She never speaks of that night again. Two decades later, Betty Fitzpatrick starts college in Dublin, and falls in love with the beautiful but troubled Ashling - who seems determined not to let Betty meet her family, especially her alcoholic mother, Etain. Ashling connects all the horrors inflicted on her family to a beloved children's TV show, about a puppet who lived in a box and would come out if you didn't behave. A puppet who no-one remembers ever seeing... except for Ashling.