The film opens with Chihiro, a ten-year-old girl, traveling to her new home in Tochinoki, Japan, with her parents. They become lost when her father takes a "short cut". The family pulls up outside a large, mysterious building. Ignoring Chihiro's objections, the mother and father decide to explore. Chihiro reluctantly follows them through a tunnel to a strange landscape of grassy hills and old-fashioned buildings. Chihiro's father says it must be an abandoned theme park.

The parents are curious and decide to explore. They soon smell food cooking, and follow their noses to a deserted stall full of different kinds of meat. Chihiro refuses to eat anything, but her parents help themselves and soon begin gorging on the food.

Chihiro wanders off and finds an enormous bathhouse, the heart of the complex. She encounters a boy on a bridge who warns her to leave before dark. She runs back to the food stall, only to find that her parents have turned into pigs.

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