Seven years have passed since Dr. Hannibal Lecter and FBI agent Clarice Starling met in a maximum security prison for the criminally insane. The doctor, having escaped, is now at large, living in Europe and taking advantage of an ungaurded world, unaware that his past has caught up with him. His sixth victim, Mason Verger, though hideously disfigured, has survived and is now out for revenge, using as bait someone Lecter cannot resist: Clarice Starling.